A group of health care professionals joined a weekly rally outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Burlington Wednesday, airing concerns about the impact of immigration enforcement on their industry.
Doctors, nurses and immigrant advocates demanded an end to immigration raids, saying they are disrupting patient care and creating fear among immigrant health care workers.
“The way that ICE is persecuting and prosecuting immigrants in our country is shameful,” said Trina Portillo, a local Presbyterian minister who joined the protest.
Health care providers at the rally said the effects of immigration enforcement are seen in their clinics and hospitals.
Immigration advocates share what you should know if ICE agents come to your home or approach you on the street.
Dr. Brett Lewis, regional vice president with the Committee of Interns and Residents SEIU, noted that immigrants make up a significant portion of the health care workforce.
“Not only are our patients afraid to come into clinic, they’re afraid to get prenatal care, they’re afraid to call 911 — but also our colleagues are afraid to come into work,” Lewis said.
According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 40 percent of nursing home staff in Massachusetts are immigrants.
Many, like medical assistant Meleida Cruz, are working legally under Temporary Protected Status, or TPS.
“At any moment they can tell us it’s gone and you have to go back, which is scary,” Cruz said.
As hundreds of thousands of immigrants lose their legal status under new Trump administration policies eliminating humanitarian parole, it’s left many workers in limbo — including at a Massachusetts facility where people with special needs receive care.
Physicians are also witnessing a decline in patients seeking care. Dr. Scott Gilbert, a physician with Atrius Health, said fear is keeping people away from routine checkups and emergency services alike.
“Patients are supposed to come for a yearly physical,” he said. “They’re not. Or they’re sick and elderly, and they’re not coming in.”
Gilbert drew parallels between what some immigrants are experiencing now with ICE and what his mother and her childhood friend Anne Frank faced during the Holocaust: “The ICE Gestapo in the thousands just picking people up during the day, covering [their face] with masks — that’s no different than what my mom and millions of others experienced in the Hitler and Nazi period.”
The uncertainty among immigrant workers is also felt in other industries.
Last month, the Trump administration announced the creation of a temporary Office of Immigration Policy aimed at addressing labor shortages in sectors dependent on immigrant workers, but details of how that policy will be implemented remain unclear.
