Doctors in Minnesota decry fear and chaos amid Trump administration's
immigration crackdown
[January 21, 2026]
By TIM SULLIVAN and CLAIRE RUSH
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — There was the pregnant woman who missed her medical
checkup, afraid to visit a clinic during the Trump administration’s
sweeping Minnesotaimmigration crackdown. A nurse found her at home,
already in labor and just about to give birth.
There was the patient with kidney cancer who vanished without his
medicine in immigration detention facilities. It took legal intervention
for his medicine to be sent to him, though doctors are unsure if he's
been able to take it.
There was the diabetic afraid to pick up insulin, the patient with a
treatable wound that festered and required a trip to the intensive care
unit, and the hospital staffers — from Latin America, Somalia, Myanmar
and elsewhere — too scared to come to work.
“Our places of healing are under siege,” Dr. Roli Dwivedi, past
president of the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians, said Tuesday at
a state Capitol news conference in St. Paul, where doctor after doctor
told of patients suffering amid the clampdown.
For years, hospitals, schools and churches had been off-limits for
immigration enforcement.
But a year ago, the Trump administration announced that federal
immigration agencies could now make arrests in those facilities, ending
a policy that had been in effect since 2011.
“I have been a practicing physician for more than 19 years here in
Minnesota, and I have never seen this level of chaos and fear,”
including at the height of the COVID-19 crisis, Dwivedi said.
‘I can’t believe we're having to resort to this'
At Minneapolis' sprawling downtown Hennepin County Medical Center,
doctors and nurses have moved communications about the crackdown to an
encrypted group chat, where they have described run-ins with Immigration
and Customs Enforcement officials, including a recent incident when an
officer was accused of unnecessarily shackling a patient.
The medical center, a nationally known trauma hospital, has the busiest
emergency room in the state and is an important safety net for patients
who are uninsured, including people in the U.S. illegally.
“I can’t believe we’re having to resort to this,” said one nurse who was
not authorized to speak to the media and did so on the condition of
anonymity. Plainclothes ICE officers have become a fixture around the
hospital, the nurse told The Associated Press, focusing on people of
color and asking both patients and employees for paperwork as they
leave.
“How is this all happening?” the nurse asked.
Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, denied
that federal officers are interfering with medical care.
ICE, McLaughlin said, “does not conduct enforcement at hospitals—period.
We would only go into a hospital if there were an active danger to
public safety” or to accompany detainees.
“If anyone is impeding Minnesotans from making appointments or picking
up prescriptions, it's violent agitators who are blocking roadways,
ramming vehicles, and vandalizing property,” she said in a statement.
The medical chaos isn't limited to Minnesota. Crackdowns are happening
in many states -- especially Democratic-led ones -- to varying degrees.
Immigrants are “absolutely” avoiding medical care due to fear of being
targeted, said Sandy Reding, a vice president of the National Nurses
United union and president of the California Nurses Association, noting
some hospitals in Southern California have seen a declining numbers of
patients.
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Cars are parked outside Hennepin County Medical Center on Tuesday,
Jan. 20, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Sarah Raza)
 Nurses say ICE agents have
pressed to get detainees discharged from a Portland hospital
In Oregon, for example, a nurses union has raised concerns about ICE
officers bringing detainees to a Portland hospital. In a letter to
Legacy Emanuel Medical Center, the Oregon Nurses Association wrote
that officers have pressured nurses and doctors to skip assessments,
tests or monitoring to have them discharged more quickly.
“Nurses have reported instances where physicians have recommended
continued hospitalization, but ICE insisted on removing the patient,
effectively forcing discharge over clinical advice,” the union
wrote. “In some cases, nurses report that detainee patients have had
little or no opportunity to participate meaningfully in these
decisions; the officers simply announce, ‘We’re going,’ and Legacy
staff are left to accommodate.”
In an emailed statement, Legacy Health said it has reviewed its
policies to “ensure we are providing the protection we can to
impacted communities, while complying with both state and federal
laws.” It added that it's "committed to providing medical care to
everyone who needs it, including individuals who are in custody and
regardless of immigration or citizenship status.”
‘Our patients are missing’
The Minnesota crackdown, which began late last year, surged to
unprecedented levels in January when the Department of Homeland
Security said it would send 2,000 federal agents and officers to the
Minneapolis area in what it called the largest-ever immigration
enforcement operation.
More than 3,000 people in the country illegally have been arrested
during what it dubbed Operation Metro Surge, the government said in
a Monday court filing.
“Our patients are missing,” with pregnant women missing out on key
prenatal care, said Dr. Erin Stevens, legislative chair for the
Minnesota section of the American College of Obstetricians and
Gynecologists. Requests for home births have also increased
significantly, “even among patients who have never previously
considered this or for whom, it is not a safe option,” Stevens said.
The surge in the deeply liberal Twin Cities has set off clashes
between activists and immigration officers, pitted city and state
officials against the federal government, and left a mother of three
dead, shot by an ICE officer in what federal officials said was an
act of self-defense but that local officials described as reckless
and unnecessary.
The Trump administration and Minnesota officials have traded blame
for the heightened tensions.
The latest flare-up came Sunday, when protesters disrupted a service
at a St. Paul church because one of its pastors leads the local ICE
field office. Some walked right up to the pulpit at the Cities
Church, with others loudly chanting “ICE out.”
The U.S. Department of Justice said it has opened a civil rights
investigation into the church protest.
___
Rush reported from Portland, Oregon. Jack Brook in Minneapolis and
Jim Mustian in New York City contributed to this report.
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