At Los Angeles General Medical Center, signs in the hallways and elevators promise immigrants that the hospital cares for them and their rights. However, when a doctor tried to give a detained patient privacy to contact his family and call a lawyer, hospital administrators gave a different order.
“They just kept saying ‘Defer to ICE,’” said the doctor, who asked that her name not be used for fear of retaliation from hospital administration.
Annenberg Media spoke with six doctors at L.A. General who detailed experiences with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who brought in detained patients. They described a consistent pattern: ICE agents remain inside patient rooms, limit communication and, at times, interfere with care — while doctors are told by hospital leadership to defer to these same agents.
In March 2026, L.A. Health Services implemented a new policy governing patients in civil detention, or noncriminal immigration custody, that affirmed patient care as the priority — but across interviews, doctors have expressed concern about whether hospital leadership at L.A. General will enforce it.
A pattern inside the hospital
When Annenberg Media spoke with doctors at L.A. General, they said one of the biggest issues physicians faced was their requests for privacy not being honored.
The first doctor said when ICE brought in a patient in February due to injuries that they inflicted while detaining them, she asked the agents to step outside, citing federal privacy laws. She was met with pushback, as ICE agents were willing to step out but required that the door stay open so that they had a line of sight on the patient.
“I told them no, because it’s my patient, so I closed the door,” she said, adding that she had to hold her body against the door to keep it closed.
She retained privacy for a bit while inside the room, but was met with harassment from ICE officers the second she stepped outside.
The agents cornered her, she said, and asked to speak with her supervisor while demanding her name and ID.
Another doctor at L.A. General told Annenberg Media that ICE brought in a patient with a life-threatening injury, and the doctor was met with inconsistent responses to his requests for patient privacy.
“There was a mix of fairly cordial to overtly hostile interactions I had with them,” he said.
He described the experience as “hugely frustrating” because it prevented him from providing what he described as “a basic standard of care” to his patient.
“I will often ask family members to step out if I need to ask sensitive questions,” he said. “I’m often trying to filter things through the lens of, could this information somehow be used against the patient. I know it certainly makes the patient hesitant to share things that were relevant to the injury.”
A third doctor Annenberg Media spoke with said the presence of federal agents intimidates patients and makes it harder for physicians to do their jobs. He described lack of safety as a “common theme” when ICE officers are at bedside.
“They have visible firearms. They don’t provide identification. Many of them remain masked at bedside,” he said.
The doctors said ICE agents were not always armed or wearing masks when in patient rooms.
A fourth doctor, who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation from hospital administration, told Annenberg Media that interacting with the federal agents involved a lot of “back and forth,” and that they often refused to give names or badge numbers when asked.
All of the doctors said ICE would impede their efforts to contact family members or tell the patients their rights, which they said made it difficult to treat the patient since they couldn’t always obtain accurate medical histories.
“They told me explicitly and repeatedly that my patient was not allowed to have a phone call to anyone,” the second doctor said.
The first doctor said when she and others attempted to call their patients’ family, ICE officers threatened arrest.
“[They] told the emergency room physician that if anyone called his family to let them know that he was in the hospital, that they were going to arrest everyone and find out who called the family,” she said.
She said while the patient was in her care, she saw a direct impact that the ICE agents had on their mental health. Patients, she said, would sometimes suffer panic attacks due to intimidation from ICE agents.
Another problem doctors addressed was the lack of follow-up care for patients who needed it. The first doctor discharged a patient who had arrived in critical condition. The doctor learned afterwards that ICE agents had not brought the patient back for a “critically important” appointment.
Concerns about access to medical care in immigration detention facilities are not new. Independent investigations have repeatedly found gaps in treatment, delays in care and failures to provide necessary medications to people in ICE custody.
A recent analysis from KFF, a nonprofit specializing in health policy research, found that deaths in ICE detention have increased sharply in recent years, with many involving people who had preexisting medical conditions that worsened while in custody. A recent Reuters report noted that at least 15 people have died in ICE custody so far this year, and L.A. Times reported that detention centers are facing lawsuits alleging inhumane conditions and medical neglect.
The first doctor also told Annenberg Media that she spoke with a patient who was deported two weeks after being discharged. The patient told her that while in detention, he did not receive medical care or medication that doctors said he needed.
“Part of safe discharge is to send the patient home, or to a detention center, with all of their medications, and the place is supposed to agree to dispense them,” the doctor said. “There’s absolutely no medical care in those facilities, even though — the physicians or nurse practitioners, whoever they are that we talk to on the phone — they’re telling us, yes, we’ll be able to give the medications. All lies.”
How hospital administration responded
When the medical doctors that Annenberg Media spoke with raised concerns about ICE agents interfering with patient care, they said they received a consistent response from hospital leadership: Defer to ICE.
Across interviews, doctors described bringing issues through multiple channels — supervisors, hospital leadership and the L.A. County Department of Health Services — only to encounter what they saw as a reluctance to challenge federal agents.
The second doctor recalled being discouraged from pushing for a patient’s right to contact family, describing concerns from administrators about drawing attention from federal authorities.
“I was told not to rock the boat,” the doctor said.
In a statement to Annenberg Media, L.A. Health Services wrote that patient safety and privacy is their priority.
“LA Health Services remains committed to providing extraordinary care to every patient, while supporting our staff and protecting patient privacy,” the statement read.
Another medical doctor told Annenberg Media that when they were struggling with ICE, they felt no support from hospital administration.
“I work at L.A. General, and we’re supposed to be serving vulnerable populations in L.A. county,” the doctor said. “Our hospital should have had their backs, not just say ‘Defer to ICE.’”
The third doctor said in some cases, decisions about patient access — including whether a patient could speak to a family or a lawyer — were effectively left to ICE agents themselves.
“We have been told explicitly that the discretion of the ICE agents at bedside is going to dictate what rights are respected and what aren’t,” he said.
Advocates say that dynamic reflects a broader pattern. A medical student at UCLA working with the People’s Care Collective who spoke anonymously due to a “documented record of retaliation against hospital staff” said the system is shaped by “fear” — where hospital officials are hesitant to confront federal enforcement, even in clinical settings.
“We’ve seen a lot of anticipatory compliance,” they said, pointing to what they described as slow action from hospital leadership despite months of concerns raised by doctors and community groups.
This was echoed by one of the doctors at L.A. General, who said while he didn’t see the hospital administration as being intentionally malicious, the lack of guidance left them conflicted.
“I get the sense that they were legitimately concerned about the hospital-wide impact of these things,” the doctor said. “But for me as a physician sitting in front of this patient, my duty is to that patient.”
Multiple doctors Annenberg Media spoke with also said beyond telling staff to defer to ICE, L.A. General also took actions at the request of federal agents, which L.A. Health services confirmed in a statement to Annenberg Media.
This came in the form of changing patient names to pseudonyms meant to make them unsearchable in public records — a move that one of the doctors said was meant to keep families from finding patients.
Another doctor said when they had a patient brought in under ICE custody, they were initially registered with their legal name. After someone attempted to visit them, the administration changed their name to an alias.
A third doctor said this was an upsetting decision because it was made by the hospital voluntarily, not as a result of ICE’s enforcement.
“The intention is to prevent others from locating the patients we have in ICE custody. That’s not something ICE has the power to enforce within our health system,” the doctor said. “It’s something our hospital has done voluntarily in line with the interests of ICE officers and at the expense of our patients.”
In a statement to Annenberg Media, L.A. Health Services confirmed that there are particular cases where they use pseudonyms for patients but said this practice is done so that “unauthorized people” cannot find them.
They also said these practices are not unique to patients under civil detention and can be used in other cases where privacy measures are needed, such as allegations of partner violence.
In their statement, they said ICE can request alternate names for detainees, but the patient’s legal name remains in the directory until the change is approved.
When Annenberg Media asked follow-up questions to L.A. Health Services regarding what determines whether ICE’s request for changing a patient’s name is approved or not, they did not answer and wrote that their focus is on “ensuring patients feel safe seeking care, while upholding our legal obligations and longstanding commitment to privacy and dignity.”
What is the policy?
The incidents described by doctors took place throughout last year and this year, with the most recent being in February of 2026, before the county put forward a new civil detention policy in March 2026.
During that time, doctors said there was little to no clear, accessible guidance on how to handle patients brought in under ICE custody.
“We have escalated our concerns to hospital leadership,” the doctor said. “Progress has been really slow.”
In March 2026, L.A. Health Services enacted a new policy governing patients under civil detention. On paper, the policy attempts to address many of the issues that doctors raised: It affirms that patient care should not be interfered with, instructs staff to ask officers to leave during sensitive exams, and states that patients retain rights to privacy and communication.
In a statement to Annenberg Media, L.A. Health Services wrote that their policy supports their mission to “prioritize patient care in cases of civil detention, including those in ICE detention.”
The policy places much of the burden on the doctors themselves. When conflicts with ICE agents arise, staff are instructed to request compliance from officers, document refusals and escalate concerns to supervisors.
One of the medical doctors that Annenberg Media spoke with said while the policy is a “promising start,” their primary concern is enforcement — whether or not hospital administration will be willing to step in when ICE attempts to control hospital policy.
“Just because we have it in writing doesn’t mean that if there is tension at patient bedside, that the hospital administration will step in and enforce it,” the doctor said.
Another doctor, when asked whether he felt hospital leadership would enforce new policies on civil detention, said that he wants to have hope, but that the hospital’s track record makes him skeptical of whether it will happen or not.
All of the doctors that Annenberg Media spoke with said that they had not received any official notification from L.A. Health Services about the March civil detention policy.
Patient advocates argue that the issue is not just what the policy says but whether it changes behavior in practice.
“The average employee does not know their rights and has not been actively informed of their rights by their employer,” said the UCLA medical student working with the People’s Care Collective.
They added that while state and federal laws already provide protections for patient privacy and communication, hospitals have been slow to translate those legal standards into enforceable procedures.
“We’re not asking hospital administration to commit acts of civil disobedience or avert policy to protect patients,” they said. “We’re asking for the legal rights afforded to people.”
ICE did not respond to questions regarding the actions of its agents at L.A. General.