“Firearms are prohibited on hospital grounds, even for police officers. But ICE agents refuse to leave their weapons outside. They intimidate the staff. They look at us with a gun in their hands and tell us that we don’t have the right to call patients’ families, which is false. Once, one of them said, ‘If anyone calls this patient’s family to tell them he’s here, we’ll arrest everyone here.'”
Sarah (not her first name) is a resident physician at Los Angeles General Medical Center (or “LA General”), California. She asked to remain anonymous, for fear of being suspended or losing her job. Like many American caregivers, this emergency worker is faced with the increased presence of members of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in her workplace, since the increase in anti-immigration raids by its infamous police force across the country.
It is in fact not uncommon for federal agents deployed by the Trump administration to go to emergency rooms to treat people in their custody. “Often the arrest is so violent that patients have to be taken to hospital for their injuries. Or they have a heart attack when they are arrested and we have to call an ambulance to take them here.” On site, the climate between caregivers and police officers can be hostile and working conditions can often be very stressful, with attempts at intimidation and nurses in tears.
Sarah also confides that she was very afraid when dealing with people detained by ICE. One day, she explains to the agents her patient’s HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, signed into law in 1996) rights, which guarantee the confidentiality of his medical appointment unless he consents to someone else being in the room.
“The officers refused to leave the roomsays the emergency doctor. By insisting, I finally managed to get them to leave, but they wanted me to leave the door open. And when I tried to close it they pushed it against my face. As soon as I walked out of the room, they cornered me and asked me for my name and ID number because I was obstructing the law. I know my rights, I refused. I left and a few moments later I had a panic attack and started crying.”
A reality that groups of doctors are reporting all over the United States. And which is now interfering in fiction, thanks to the very committed medical series The Pittthe first season of which was released in early 2025 and the second is currently streaming on HBO Max.
Cold snap in Pittsburgh emergency room
“Shit.” This is the reaction of the Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) during episode 11 of season 2, when he sees two ICE agents who have just arrived in his emergency department. And he is right to worry: in less than twenty minutes, the presence of the federal immigration police, notorious for their violent and illegal methods, will disrupt the already precarious balance of the fictitious hospital in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania).
Excellent medical series, The Pitt was created by alumni ofEMERGENCIES (1994-2009): we find the producers R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells, but also Noah Wyle, who became famous for having played young Dr John Carter and who now wears the coat of the Dr Robby. Like the previous one, the second season takes place over the course of a single day, each episode depicting, almost in real time, a new hour of duty for the team of caregivers led by Robby.
Treatment of rape victims, treatment of patients without insurance, carrying weapons, addiction or burn-out of medical staff… With an immersive staging, without music, the undeniably progressive series uses its hospital arena to address a whole host of contemporary social issues. But episode 11, broadcast on March 19, 2026, offers a rare echo of the burning news of the raids carried out by ICE.
In this powerful episode, two officers arrive at the emergency room to treat Pranita, a woman injured in the shoulder during her arrest in a restaurant. Handcuffed, in tears, she is forbidden from contacting her loved ones or making the slightest phone call.
In a decidedly tense atmosphere, the nursing staff try their best to take care of Pranita without provoking the agents. As news of their presence spreads throughout the hospital, the usually packed waiting room begins to empty. For fear of being arrested, many patients who have not yet been seen decide to slip away, as do several nurses and hospital employees.
A few minutes later, as the authorities grew impatient and forcibly dragged Pranita to a detention center, a nurse intervened. He is then tackled to the ground by the agents and arrested in turn, under the helpless gaze of his colleagues. The scene is all the stronger when we know that the character of the arrested caregiver, Jesse, is played by Ned Brower, an actor and singer, who became a real emergency nurse during the 2010s.
A very real health and social crisis
Sarah, who also works in a clinic, has never seen a colleague be arrested. But it confirms that many patients no longer access the care they need, for fear of being arrested and deported. “They no longer come to see us for monitoring of chronic illnesses like diabetes or hypertension. Some parents decide to no longer vaccinate their children and tell us: “It’s either this or I risk my life by leaving the house and getting arrested.” I have also seen patients who miss their chemotherapy appointment and whose cancer has gotten worse because of that.”
Still others end up in the emergency room after avoiding routine appointments. “They don’t go to the pharmacy to pick up their medications and they end up in the emergency department in a worse state than when we left them”laments Sarah.
“I already kept in touch with a patient in a detention center. He told me that he had not been given access to his medication. He was detained for three weeks and is now deported.”
At LA General, the resident doctor observed an even more drastic drop in attendance than that depicted in The Pitt: 70 to 80% of its patients now refuse to come in person. “We have one of the best emergency services in the region, if not the best. The waiting room is usually always full. Some patients have to wait twenty-four hours to be seen. But when the (ICE) raids started in June, at the time of the protests, the room was empty. Several doctors, including me, were even asked to go home because we had no one to examine.”
To continue to provide the best possible care to her patients, Sarah offers consultations by telephone. “When the raids calm down a little, we warn them to tell them to come.” She and her colleagues also compiled a list of immigration lawyers for detained patients.
“When a patient detained by ICE is admitted to our services, we try to find him a lawyer before releasing him, so that he can at least have this resource at the detention centerSarah continues. And no matter what the agents tell us, we always try to put patients in contact with their families so that their loved ones can at least know where they are. The doctor also makes sure to provide them with enough medication for three months, even though she knows the effort is probably in vain: “I already kept in touch with a patient in a detention center. He told me that he had not been given access to his medication. He was detained for three weeks and is now deported.”
An alarming diagnosis across the United States
Los Angeles is of course not the only American city concerned. In Minneapolis (Minnesota), scene of the tragic deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of federal agents in January 2026, caregivers are mobilizing to denounce the presence of immigration police and its impact on the health system.
At the end of January, during a demonstration in Minneapolis, the DD Avalon Swenson, resident doctor in this northern US city, hammered through a megaphone (see video below): “ICE’s occupation of Minnesota has created untenable working conditions for doctors and healthcare workers. Our patients are terrified to come to our clinics and hospitals. (…) And when they finally come to see us, they see other patients detained and handcuffed to their beds.”
Pediatrician Janna Gewirtz O’Brien, during another press conference given in Minnesota at the end of January, also deplored the disastrous consequences of these police operations on the health of her patients: “I’ve seen babies who miss their follow-up appointments for jaundice because their parents don’t feel safe in the hospital. We have seen mothers call us saying, “My baby is having trouble breathing, but I don’t know if I should come.” We saw ruptured appendixes that could have been detected several days earlier if these patients had not been afraid to go to the hospital.”
The concern of medical personnel is increasing almost everywhere: in Los Angeles, in Minneapolis, but also in San Francisco (California) on the west coast or in Boston (Massachusetts) on the east coast of the United States. Faced with the drop in the number of vaccinations and the increase in the number of missed medical appointments, particularly by pregnant women, many American caregivers fear the emergence of a health crisis with lasting effects in the country.
Portrait of a country in pain
It is rare that a fiction series offers such immediate impact, especially in the current context, where Hollywood is becoming increasingly cautious about the Trump administration. One of the producers of The PittJohn Wells, said at the end of February, in the podcast The Town with Matthew Bellonithat HBO’s only request was to treat the plot in a manner “balanced”: “We want to make sure that we represent both points of view, because the job of the show is not to just preach to the convinced.” His series remains in any case one of the most openly politicized in the current media landscape.
The moving season 2 of The Pitt takes place on the 4th of July, a choice that is anything but trivial. The American national holiday is in fact a fertile source of triggering incidents, since our doctors in Pittsburgh must manage patients who are heavily alcoholic, victims of sunstroke or affected by debris from fireworks and other firecrackers. But this anniversary date also melancholy underlines the political purpose of the series.
Better than any other program currently broadcast, The Pitt paints the portrait of a sick America, which rapes its citizens awaiting care and arrests its nurses without cause. A country where ventolin is a luxury product and where diabetic patients without insurance would rather die than bury their families in medical debt. The series, already crowned with awards, has been renewed for a third season. Hoping that its future is not affected by the takeover of Warner Bros. (parent company of HBO Max) by Paramount, a channel increasingly on the right and close to the Trump administration.
