Immigration and customs enforcement agents entered UCLA Ronald Reagan Medical Center in Westwood Tuesday afternoon to attract a crowd of protesters seeking emergency medical care for detainees and worried about the agent’s presence.
Two ice officers have brought detainees to the emergency room for treatment, Steve Lully, UCLA Associate Deputy Prime Minister for Campus and Community Safety, told The Times. The patient’s medical evaluation did not require him to be admitted to hospital and was later discharged to ice custody. There was no information regarding patient health.
“Despite reports on social media, there are no ice operations at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center,” UCLA Health said in a statement.
Hospital staff called UCLA police officers to the building to verify the identity of federal agents. Officers confirmed the agent’s qualifications and confirmed that they were on ice, Lurie said.
A crowd of about 50 people gathered outside the hospital Tuesday afternoon in response to reports of ice cream presence, highlighting the height of community tensions over ongoing immigration behaviour in the Los Angeles area.
Health facilities that serve low-income patients have reported a recent spike in no-shows as they have chosen to skip medical visits amid rumors of attacks at hospitals and clinics. On Wednesday, LA Mayor Karen Bass will speak at a 11am community briefing hosted by St. John’s Community Health in response to fears that medical facilities are being targeted by immigration agents.
“As a former healthcare professional, Mayor Bass is deeply interested in the ripple effects these attacks have when families don’t have safe access to critical healthcare services,” a spokesperson for the mayor said in a statement.
Trained observers from the LA Rapid Response Network witnessed a woman being escorted from the underground parking lot of the medical center by two federal agents and loaded into a van at 3:37pm, said Jorge Mario Cabrera, the coalition’s director of communications for the coalition for the coalition of human immigration rights, leading the network, to train the network.
“At one level, I feel a little more relieved, at least not that ICE is taking patients out, rather than taking them out,” said Randall Coon, a UCLA public health professor who came to the facility in response to an agent’s report. “ICE doesn’t necessarily have a reputation for being very focused on the health of detainees.”
However, he added that he is concerned about the risk that patients will experience another medical emergency if the stress of being restrained by ice causes health problems. He also raised questions about whether the patients received linguistically and culturally appropriate care.
“Has the person been assessed for the social determinants of health?” Koon said. “It was them [doctors] Given the presence of ice agents, can you address the possibility that a person may be at risk if they are released? ”
Lurie said the process of discharging detainees is the same as that used by law enforcement to bring people detained in hospitals for treatment.
If Tuesday’s incident at the medical center was actually enforcement action, UCLA police would not have been able to intervene. The agency has no authority to block federal immigration agents from entering publicly open campuses or medical facilities.
If an immigration enforcement officer attempts to enter an accessed medical area, such as a patient room or a closed ward, UCLA will advise staff to contact the administrator and legal representative of the medical center to consider a warrant or subpoena to determine whether entry is permitted. Staff are told to ask the agent for their name, identification number and agency affiliation and tell them they need to contact the administrator rather than hinder the process.
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