ICE agents create fear at California hospitals

As President Donald Trump’s administration continues its crackdown on immigration, concerns about how medical facilities should deal with immigration enforcement agents are growing among attorneys, advocates and health workers, write CalMatters’ Ana B. Ibarra and Kristen Hwang.

Immigration agents and law enforcement officers typically roll up to hospitals because someone they were detaining is suffering from a medical crisis. Protocols exist for these agents or officers when they’re handling a detainee or arrestee. But recent high-profile immigration cases are raising alarms about whether current guidelines are enough to protect hospital workers and the legal and privacy rights of patients.

For 15 days in July, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents occupied Dignity Health’s Glendale Memorial Hospital. They were waiting for one patient, an immigrant from El Salvador, to be discharged for medical care following their detention. Agents stood behind reception desks in the lobby while demonstrators gathered outside the hospital protesting ICE’s presence.

Hospital officials said in a statement they can’t prohibit law enforcement from being in public areas. Though agents can’t roam around the facilities unchecked, the rules are murkier when they bring in someone who is in their custody.

State law and the HIPPA Privacy Rule also require hospitals to protect patients’ personal and health information. Some disclosures are required if law enforcement can prove lawful custody or provide an appropriate warrant — though administrative warrants from ICE do not require immediate access to information.

• Kate Mobeen, an intensive care unit nurse at John Muir Medical Center in Concord: “We have a level of privacy that we owe to patients and their families, and that has just been completely demolished with all of the involvement of ICE coming into hospitals. It creates just a huge sense of fear, not only in our patient population, but in our employee population and our nurses.”

Read more here.

Opposition to Proposition 50 is ramping up as mailers are being sent to California residents and Republican legislators attempt to once again take the matter to court, report CalMatters’ Maya C. Miller and Alexei Koseff.

California voters will decide on Nov. 4 whether to sidestep an independent commission to allow the state to redraw its congressional maps in a way that benefits Democrats ahead of the midterm elections. 

On Thursday — the same day Gov. Gavin Newsom declared the special election — pamphlets paid for by Republican operatives and good governance advocates hit voters’ mailboxes, urging them to reject what they describe as “unconstitutional gerrymandering.”

And despite the state Supreme Court rejecting a similar attempt last week, GOP lawmakers gathered in Sacramento Monday to say they plan to sue the state to remove Prop. 50 from the ballot now that the special election and the measure are officially on the books.

Trump also floated Monday that he may sue the state to stop its redistricting efforts, saying he is thinking of filing a lawsuit through the U.S. Department of Justice and that “we’re going to be very successful in it.”

Read more here.

Supporters of the state’s high-speed rail project gathered in Sacramento Monday to advocate for bills that would support the massive infrastructure endeavor, days after the California High-Speed Rail Authority released its latest status report to lawmakers.

In addition to backing a Newsom proposal that would reroute money from California’s cap-and-trade program to help fund the rail, Sen. Dave Cortese touted his bill that would require the state to commission a study on the economic opportunities along the rail corridor.

• Cortese, a San Jose Democrat and chairperson of the Senate’s transportation committee: “Already the high-speed rail has created more than 14,600 high-quality union jobs, engaging nearly 900 small businesses and generating over $22 billion in economic impact.”

Cortese’s urging for the Legislature to pass both measures follows a week after Congress said it would launch a probe investigating the project. In July, Trump pulled $4 billion of the project’s federal funding, arguing that the rail authority overrepresented ridership projections, missed important deadlines and more.

European wine prices could rise with new tariffs, leaving some imports on hold and straining the three-tier system. CalMatters’ Levi Sumagaysay and video strategy director Robert Meeks have a video segment on why California faces an outsized risk as part of our partnership with PBS SoCal. Watch it here.

SoCalMatters airs at 5:58 p.m. weekdays on PBS SoCal.