(NewsNation) — Migrants across the country have stopped seeing doctors since President Donald Trump signed off on mass deportations, which medical professionals say is a public health crisis in the making.
Dr. Marsha Griffin, director of the Division of Child and Family Health at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, said the implications of not seeking medical care, not just for immediate health needs but also for preventive issues, are significant.
Griffin said providers in several states have told her they’ve seen drops in the number of patients since Trump signed executive orders on deportations.
Mothers may be afraid to bring in babies when they’re sick, pregnant women may not be going to prenatal appointments and people with chronic conditions may not be managing them, she said. It all could lead to complex and potentially life-threatening situations, Griffin added.
If left undiagnosed, infectious diseases could also spread rapidly, Griffin added, referring specifically to the recent measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico.
Nearly 300 cases have been reported and at least two unvaccinated people have died from measles-related causes.
“We’ll never know the true number of how many people have a particular disease in the community if a large proportion of those people are too afraid to get health care,” she said, adding that “these are all preventable situations.”
Migrants fear of deportation overtakes health priorities
Medical centers have been caught in the crossfires of an immigration policy that no longer safeguards health facilities from immigration agents.
“The first weeks after the inauguration, we did see a pretty meaningful dip in folks coming to their appointments,” Steph Willding, the CEO of CommunityHealth, a free medical clinic in Chicago, told NewsNation.
Willding said about 30% of patients either did not show or canceled without rescheduling and around 40% didn’t pick up medication from the onsite pharmacy in those first weeks.
“When you think about the hierarchy of needs, when your personal safety is at risk, everything else will take a back seat and that includes not only going to the doctor,” she said.
Those numbers have recovered to an extent due in part to an increase in telehealth appointments and a new “micro-clinic” created in a Chicago neighborhood with a high migrant population. However, Willding said that could change at any time.
“As the rhetoric increases, we’ll see a decrease in folks accessing health care and that will cause delays in all sorts of important services that can impact patients’ overall health and wellness.”
Migrant doctor visits dropped during Trump’s first term
Between June 2015 – the start of the Trump campaign – and May 2018, there was a 43% decrease in completed primary care visits among undocumented children and a 34 % decrease among undocumented adults, according to a study that examined Trump’s effect on medical care.
As Trump accelerates deportations in his second term, immigration officials say the administration is targeting violent gang members and those trafficking fentanyl across the border.
“The people of this country mandated President Trump deal with the border crisis, deal with illegal immigration and deal with illegal alien crime. And that’s exactly what we did, we removed terrorists, that should be a celebration, we removed terrorists from the country, and I stand by the president, I support it 100%,” White House border czar Tom Homan told reporters Monday.
Many migrants live in multi-generational or joint homes with family members who are legal, but even those individuals may also be afraid to seek medical care out of fear of their loved ones, Griffin said.
“The objective is chaos and fear and they’re succeeding,” said an executive at a national nonprofit that requested anonymity to protect its staff from retaliation.
“We are talking about human beings and healthcare is a right, and all these policies that are fostering fear among the providers, fear among the people seeking services, preventing them from getting health care that doesn’t help anyone in the community.”
Health centers confused by immigration changes
Medical centers have been flung into the frontlines after Trump scrapped a long-standing policy that prevented immigration agents from arresting undocumented people in sensitive locations like places of worship, schools and hospitals.
Washington-based Multicare said it would appoint designated staff trained on immigration-related issues to be on call at all facilities, reported the Seattle Times.
At Children’s Minnesota and Hennepin Healthcare, staff received written guidance to preserve patients’ federal privacy rights by not sharing information if government agents show up and calling security for help, according to the Star Tribune.
But at Ben Archer Health Centers, which operates in New Mexico, leadership reversed course after reportedly turning away patients who didn’t have birth certificates or other proof of citizenship, reported KVIA.
At NYC Health and Hospitals and NYU Langone Health, employees were enraged after a memo stated, “Please note, it is illegal to intentionally protect a person who is in the United States unlawfully from detention. You should not try to actively help a person avoid being found by ICE,” reported Crain’s New York Business.
This confusion in response is likely contributing to the decrease in visits and public health risks.
“If you’ve got even a tiny portion of your community that is unwilling or afraid to go seek care, it will affect the entire community,” Griffin said.
