When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents brought a detainee to a California hospital in 2025, they didn’t know they would leave empty-handed. Using capacity they built over months of organizing, Healthcare workers intervened quickly to protect and ultimately free their patient from the clutches of federal secret police.
Based on an interview with local healthcare worker, organizer, and Black Rose/Rosa Negra member Morgan, this article breaks down how hospital staff launched campaigns and won victories that pushed ICE out of their workplace. Although steps are listed numerically, in reality they feed off and into one another at any given time.
by Juan Verala Luz
1. Build the Culture
A big hurdle to pushing law enforcement out of healthcare settings is the normalized culture of collaboration. “We have all different kinds of cops in the hospital all the time,” Morgan explained. Like many similar settings, management forces staff to cooperate with police mandates often “beyond what is necessary in the law.” For example, workplace policies prevent workers from helping patients in custody to contact their families. Those kinds of requirements are often taken-for-granted.
Trump’s barbarous attacks on immigrant communities created openings to challenge that. In a “sanctuary city” that serves many immigrants, management quickly put out basic know-your-rights information about warrantless entries and other gross violations of the law. Without clear procedures for responding to real-world scenarios, staff across the health center felt this inadequate response left them unprepared and confused about what to do if ICE came to the hospital.
A core of organizers seized the opportunity to reshape the culture. They passed out informational flyers about interacting with ICE and partnered with local legal clinics to host healthcare-specific “Know Your Rights” training. They also adapted for their workplace “What to Do if ICE Comes” badge buddies–a small card outlining common procedures, codes, and other need-to-know parts of the job that people could wear everyday under their hospital IDs.1
Questioning ICE’s presence with everyday parts of the job not only increased awareness about workplace rights, but it also permitted coworkers to imagine a different way of interacting with them. It showed one another that they could have the workplace they want–one that protects themselves and their patients.
2. Grow Networks and Strengthen Relationships
The core of organizers didn’t materialize out of thin air. The group, which drew in “a mix of people with different jobs like medical residents, nurses, dieticians, physical therapists,” and more, met in no small measure thanks to years of organizing against the genocide of the Palestinian people. A local Healthcare Workers for Palestine chapter deepened their connections with each other, other healthcare workers in the region, and allies outside their industry.
Following Trump’s reelection, they began planning how they could keep ICE out of their workplace. This small group couldn’t stop ICE on their own, but they knew that their committee’s diverse membership could activate coworkers across their institution.
To do that, they began adding all their coworkers to a WhatsApp chat. Here, they invited one another to upcoming “Know Your Rights” training and planned to alert each other if ICE is in the building. This chat is generally open for any coworker to join with a focus on spreading the word instead of tight security. There is one exception: they keep out management because, however well-meaning individuals are, “they have different pressures on them than we do, and some of those pressures come from above that are going to be reactionary forces.”
Relationships didn’t stop at the hospital doors though. Healthcare workers developed ties with a neighborhood rapid-response network. They also learned from colleagues at nearby facilities frequented by ICE about how they created a powerful policy to protect patients in ICE custody. And connections with lawyers who trained staff about their rights would later provide pro bono legal support for a patient’s release from ICE.
3. Set Goals and Make Demands
Growing arrests at courthouses and brutal conditions in ICE detention centers put more detainees in medical emergencies. In 2025, the deadliest year to date, 32 people died in ICE custody. Although Morgan’s coworkers hadn’t treated patients in ICE custody during this uptick, they didn’t want to panic when they inevitably arrived at the hospital’s doorsteps. With a wider reach and a growing culture of resisting ICE, coworkers began setting goals, formulating demands for management, and committing themselves to defending one another and their patients.
“Our real demand is that we should not even allow ICE in our hospital at all,” Morgan emphasized. But because that was “going to be a harder one to win,” hospital workers began formulating interim demands. In the medium term, healthcare organizers drafted a workplace policy that would restrict the agency’s reach within their hospital. Modeled after another California hospital’s policy shared with them through organizing networks, their version demanded protections to help detained patients exercise basic, constitutional rights, like access to legal counsel, and allow them to contact families about medical concerns.
Even if management wouldn’t accept the policy wholecloth, healthcare workers promised one another they would act as if it was in place. They readied a petition that would urge management to provide the protections they wanted for their patients.
Demands gave shape to the growing anti-ICE sentiments among hospital workers, showing one another that they weren’t alone and, together, they could envision the workplace they wanted.
4. Act Courageously, Ethically, and Innovatively to Win
The first time ICE brought in a sick patient, on-duty personnel pinged the WhatsApp chat about agents’ presence. Attending staff and coworkers “immediately started putting pressure on management,” gathering hundreds of signatures in a few short hours on the prepared petition. Despite the healthcare workers’ best efforts, administrators failed to act and the patient was eventually discharged back to ICE.
Bolstered by their powerful but ultimately unsuccessful efforts, organizers pushed even harder for a clear, strong anti-ICE policy. To turn up the pressure, they scheduled a public forum about the dangers of ICE in the hospital where they invited management to answer for the facility’s inadequate protections. This proved a turning point in their struggle.
Shortly before the forum began, management quietly posted to the hospital’s intranet the demanded “ICE interactions” policy. Emboldened, healthcare workers and community organizers grilled management about further strengthening the protections. They had no better proof-positive of their needs than when ICE hauled in another patient that same day.
Upon the patient’s arrival, hospital staff moved quickly. They sought support from lawyers they got to know from the healthcare worker legal trainings who, with little hesitation, agreed to take on the patient’s case. Meanwhile, attending physicians provided maximum care to the patient, ordering numerous tests that slowed their discharge. Those delays allowed lawyers to petition the court that the patient was unlawfully detained – an injunction the judge upheld. Beaming with pride, Morgan concluded “the ICE officer who had been accompanying them had to walk out of the hospital and leave and this person was able to be discharged back to their home.”
On their own, demands weren’t enough to change hospital policy and secure their patient’s freedom. Collective action grounded in cunning, courage, and a commitment to control over their workplace–and, in a small measure, society writ large–carried hospital workers to victory.
5. Keep Fighting
Morgan—and an increasing share of coworkers—won’t isolate ICE from other police agencies. “I think the goal should be to make our policies for anyone incarcerated to have these protections.” Federal agents and municipal police alike, they proclaim, should be kept out of their hospital. Hospital workers have issued another deadline for management to update all their policies on interactions with law enforcement, and are ready to act if they don’t respond.
To be certain, these gains build on nearly a decade of organizing. Without rank-and-file union reformers challenging stodgy leadership with a successful strike that secured a stronger contract years ago, many of today’s organizers would not have gotten to know one another. Without prior workplace organizing and struggle against genocide in Gaza, many healthcare workers would not have come to know they can reshape the culture and policies at their institutions.
Even though you and coworkers may not have been building for years, it doesn’t mean that you can’t still win nor that you shouldn’t start fighting today. ICE is not slowing its fascistic spread–and neither should our defense of each other, patients. As Morgan reminds us:
You’re not always going to win things. When you don’t, you’re making relationships and learning skills that you can use next time to win things. It feels impossible right now, but you definitely will not win anything unless you fight.
Notes
- Although not used in this campaign, we have collected some examples of the kinds of flyers, know-your-rights information, training, and badge buddies described above. ↩︎
If you enjoyed this piece, we also recommend Organizing to Keep ICE Out of Your Workplace and How Everyday Organizing Stopped Trump’s Bay Area ICE Surge.