California is advising health care providers not to write down patients' immigration status on bills and medical records and telling them they don't have to assist federal agents in arrests. Some Massachusetts hospitals and clinics are posting privacy rights in emergency and waiting rooms in Spanish and other languages. Meanwhile, Florida and Texas are requiring health care facilities to ask the immigration status of patients and tally the cost to taxpayers of providing care to immigrants living in the U.
S. without authorization. Donald Trump returned to the White House declaring a national emergency at the U.
S.-Mexico border, suspending refugee admissions, and challenging birthright citizenship, or the policy of giving U.S.
citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. As he begins carrying out the "largest deportation operation" in the nation's history, states have offered starkly different guidelines to hospitals, community clinics, and other health facilities for immigrant patients.
Trump has also rescinded a long-standing policy not to arrest people without legal status at or near sensitive locations, including schools, churches, and hospitals. A proposal to formalize such protections died in Congress in 2023. But no matter the guidelines that states issue, hospitals around the U.
S. say patients won't be turned away for care because of their immigration status. "None of this changes the care patients receive," said Carrie Williams, a spokesperson for the Texas Hospital Associat.