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After the House of Representatives passed bills to send $10 billion in funding to the Department of Homeland Security in January, the nation’s largest union of registered nurses published a demand that Congress abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Nurses demand the removal of immigration enforcement agents from communities, the abolition of ICE, and accountability for this administration’s crimes against all residents of the United States,” read the January 23 statement from National Nurses United (NNU), which represents over 225,000 registered nurses nationwide.

The union’s January 23 statement echoed a call already being made and carried into practice by rank-and-file registered nurses, nursing assistants, and support staff in health care facilities nationwide. Since the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ramped up, nurses’ unions have written open letters to leadership and organized demonstrations to demand that workplace policies be improved to protect the rights of patients in immigration detention. Those rights include freedom from being shackled or bound, the right to communicate with loved ones, the right to have visitors in their hospital rooms during visiting hours, and the right to have private medical conversations with their care teams. Strengthening policies also helps protect workers from liability if federal agents violate those rights.

“The nurses are the ones that oversee the patient care,” Shiori Konda, a registered nurse who works at a hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota, told Truthout. “We’re there 24/7, and we have to be the person protecting the patient’s rights.”

The Twin Cities were the site of the Trump administration’s so-called “Operation Metro Surge,” a federal assault that left Minneapolis residents Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good dead at the hands of immigration agents last winter. During the onslaught, struggles ensued in local hospitals as federal agents violated patient rights and intimidated health care workers.

Minneapolis Health Care Workers Are Organizing to Defend Their Patients From ICE

“We all know from working here [and] from different accounts that ICE agents are not going to act, many times, lawfully,” Konda told Truthout. “[And] workers of color and the immigrant nurses, they are scared. Some of them are scared to come to work because we have seen ICE detaining people right outside the hospital.”

Because of their frontline role in patient care, nurses have unique opportunities to support patients and advocate for their rights. “We nurses are forever patient advocates and that means we will fight to protect you at the bedside and we will fight to protect you in the streets — just as Alex [Pretti] was doing when he was executed in cold blood by border patrol,” said Mary Turner, NNU president and an intensive care unit registered nurse in the Twin Cities, in a statement issued after Pretti’s........

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