Camilla Forte/Borderless Magazine/Catchlight Local/Report for AmericaLa Ley de Santidad y Privacidad de la Atención Médica es un paso para que los inmigrantes se sientan más seguros al acceder a servicios médicos en hospitales, dicen los defensores, pero persisten las preocupaciones sobre si los agentes federales cumplirán con estas políticas.
After Sahida Martinez asked a family why they hadn’t taken a father with diabetes to the hospital when something was wrong with his toe, they said it was because they were afraid of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). By the time he went, his toe needed to be amputated, Martinez recalls.
“This is one case,” Martinez said. “How many cases are in our community that are in the same situation?”
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The fear of being arrested by ICE is widespread across Chicago, especially on the Southwest Side, where Martinez leads a group of promotoras de salud, or community health workers. Based on over a decade of experience connecting residents with health resources through the local social services organization Enlace Chicago, she’s noticed the fear of ICE has kept many from seeking treatment at hospitals.
To help combat the fear of immigration enforcement in sensitive locations and enact stronger regulations protecting immigrant access at courthouses, hospitals and universities, Illinois lawmakers proposed H.B.1312 last year. The bill was signed into law in December and, among other ICE-related provisions, requires Illinois hospitals to implement policies governing staff interactions with immigration enforcement to protect patients’ medical privacy.
“Every person in Illinois deserves access to healthcare without fear,” said Dr. Sameer Vohra, Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) in December. “This new law reinforces IDPH’s commitment to building a healthier and safer Illinois for all families and communities.”
Now, as hospitals prepare for situations that’ll put their policies to the test, some medical staff and advocates are wondering whether internal rules are enough to protect patients in the face of federal authority.
“It’s very hard with somebody who has a gun and says [they’re] a federal agent,” said José Sánchez, CEO of Humboldt Park Health. “What are we going to do?”
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New law aims to limit ICE’s hospital presence
The Health Care Sanctity and Privacy Law required hospitals to develop policies for interactions with immigration enforcement agents by March. It also required hospitals to designate a staff contact person to interact with agents and maintain a separate waiting area for agents conducting immigration enforcement.
The law does not ban ICE agents’ presence on hospital grounds.
The legislation is similar to a bill passed in California last year that restricts hospitals from sharing a patient’s immigration status, and requires healthcare facilities to designate private areas where immigration enforcement cannot be conducted without a judicial warrant.
Illinois and California are among the few states with laws addressing immigration enforcement in hospitals, according to Meghan Carter, a senior staff attorney at the Legal Council for Health Justice. Carter helped draft the hospital provision of H.B. 1312.
“There really weren’t many samples” to draw inspiration from when drafting the Health Care Sanctity and Privacy Law, Carter said.
IDPH has been overseeing the rollout of the healthcare privacy law and has the authority to fine hospitals that do not comply with its regulations. Over 200 Illinois hospitals overseen by IDPH have submitted policies in compliance with the law, and no hospitals have been fined as of March 30, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information request by Borderless.
An IDPH spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on how many hospitals have complied with other requirements of the new law, including displaying multilingual information about immigration rights in areas accessible to patients and visitors.
Carter said the healthcare privacy law’s requirements were modeled after the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’ (ICIRR) framework for what a welcoming hospital should look like.
“The design of the law is to ensure that hospitals are equipped to respond to federal or other immigration officials if they come to the hospital site,” Carter said. “Unfortunately, because of federal law, we can’t tell ICE what to do, but we can equip hospitals to respond to ICE.”
Operation Midway Blitz sets the stage for the new law
Immigration advocates involved in drafting the law had been working on it since late summer last year, according to Luvia Quiñones, senior director of health policy for ICIRR.
But when Operation Midway Blitz began in the fall, Quiñones said ICIRR heard reports from elected officials, immigrant-serving organizations and hospitals themselves that ICE agents had been entering hospitals and “roaming the hallways.” It left staff uncertain of what to do, and Quiñones said the activity moved up the timeline for the legislation.
“Thankfully, there was a lot of interest among legislators,” Quiñones said.
In October last year, ICE agents were stationed at Humboldt Park Health for seven days while monitoring a man hurt during his arrest, according to Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th), who was captured on video being handcuffed by ICE agents at the hospital.
“Out of an abundance of caution [the man who was injured] was taken to [Humboldt Park] hospital for medical treatment,” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson shared of the October situation.
The spokesperson said Fuentes was “escorted out in handcuffs” but was never placed under arrest.
Sánchez, the hospital’s CEO, said agents followed the injured man at every step of his treatment, despite medical privacy laws. Sánchez said the agents were not conducting immigration arrests at the hospital.
“Only the treating physician or clinician [can] have access to your medical care — it’s a privacy act in healthcare,” Sánchez said. “They broke the rule.”
Fuentes said agents’ presence spread fear and panic among others looking for help at the hospital.
“It was scaring patients from going to the clinic,” Fuentes said. “What we didn’t want is that people would fear dealing with a crisis or a medical emergency.”
When asked whether immigration agents violated a man’s medical privacy at Humboldt Park Health, a DHS spokesperson said over email that agents “would only go into a hospital if there were an active danger to public safety.”
“ICE does not conduct enforcement at hospitals — period,” the spokesperson shared. “Of course, if we have a detainee we need to take to the hospital for medical care, we have officers accompany them for their monitoring, safety of the staff, and the public. This is standard procedure for all law enforcement agencies.”
Hospitals start rolling out new policy
Hospitals such as Sinai Chicago, Cook County Health, University of Illinois Hospital, Rush Medical Center and Northwestern Memorial have created policies outlining how staff will respond during interactions with immigration enforcement agents.
According to Cook County Health (CCH) policy, which includes John H. Stroger Hospital, outside law enforcement, such as ICE, in “CCH Emergency or Trauma Departments” must notify a CCH police officer or security officer “as soon as reasonably practicable after their entrance upon CCH Facilities.”
“Per our policy, all law enforcement agents are required to check in with our hospital police or security teams when they come to campus in their official capacity,” said Imani Harris, communications manager for Cook County Health, in an email. “We put up signage on our facility entrances in September 2025 to make that clear.”
According to public records requests, many Chicago-area hospitals share similar protocols for designating staff to interact with law enforcement in accordance with the new healthcare privacy law.
However, some policies are more specific and in-depth than others. Sinai Chicago, for instance, requires an internal attorney to review warrants shown by law enforcement agents to determine whether they’re allowed in private areas of the hospital.
Sinai Chicago also requires the human resources department to train staff on following their law enforcement policy.
An IDPH spokesperson said they are in the process of reviewing hospitals’ submitted policies and “will continue working closely with healthcare providers to keep Illinois communities safe and healthy.”
Sánchez said Humboldt Park Health has developed a response protocol, or response tree, that outlines how staff should respond to ICE’s presence, depending on the time of day and whether agents have a warrant. However, he said meaningful oversight of ICE agents ultimately rests with the federal government — not hospitals.
“It is a very robust system in place that we have,” Sánchez said. “But that doesn’t really mean that [ICE agents] follow the policy.”
Aside from the sensitive location protections, the passage of H.B. 1312 allowed for any person to bring a noncriminal lawsuit against an agent who “knowingly engages in conduct that violates the Illinois Constitution or the United States Constitution” during civil immigration enforcement.
Legal experts analyzing the law have said the provision, entitled the Illinois Bivens Act, aligns with the longstanding U.S. tradition of having state and federal governments “check and balance each other to keep everyone in line with the Constitution.”
However, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign law professors Vikram David Amar and Jason Mazzone escribieron in a November article that, among other issues with the Bivens Act, federal law is supreme over state law and constitutions, and that federal officials cannot be “burdened by unwanted state regulation” if their actions do not violate the U.S. Constitution.
“There are portions of the larger bill of which the Bivens Act is a part that will almost certainly fail to survive federal constitutional challenge,” Amar and Mazzone wrote in November.
As for hospitals that may violate the Health Care Sanctity and Privacy Law, Carter said community members can file a complaint with IDPH by phone, email, online or fax.
Según IDPH’s website, complaints are investigated based on priority, which can take days or months, depending on the nature, scope, and severity of the complaint allegations.
IDPH did not respond to a request for comment on whether any complaints have been filed since March.
As hospitals’ plans roll out and IDPH reviews proposed policies, Martinez, an immigrant herself, said she fears what would happen if she encouraged someone to go to a hospital and they were arrested by ICE.
However, she said having the Health Care Sanctity and Privacy Law in place gives her and other advocates an opportunity to fight back if hospitals don’t follow it.
Every law, she said, is another way she and other community health workers can advocate for the community’s access to health care.
“For promotoras, [it’s] like a new tool,” Martinez said. “This is my tool to fight this situation with ICE in our community.”
Katrina Pham es la reportera enfocada en la participación comunitaria de Borderless Magazine. Envíe un correo electrónico a Katrina a [email protected].
