Immigration raids push patients into telehealth

Patients in need of care are increasingly scared to seek it after Trump rescinded a Biden-era policy that barred immigration officials from conducting operations in ‘sensitive’ areas such as schools, hospitals, and churches. Clinics and health plans have taken a page out of their COVID playbooks

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Jacob Sweidan has seen his patients through the federal immigration raids of the 1990s, sitting governor's call to abolish birthright citizenship, and the highly publicised workplace crackdowns and family separation policies of President Donald Trump's first term.

But in his 4O years as a pediatrician in Southern California serving those too poor to afford care, including many immigrant families, Sweidan said he’s never seen a drop-off in patient visits like this. “They are scared to come to the offices. They're getting sicker and sicker,” said Sweidan, who specialises in neonatology and runs five clinics in Los Angeles and Orange counties. “And when they are near collapsing, they go to the ER because they have no choice.” In the last two months, he has sent young children to the emergency room because their parents worked up the courage to call his office only after several days of high fever. He said he attended to a 14-year-old boy in the ER who was on the verge of a diabetic coma because he'd run out of insulin, his parents too frightened to venture out for a refill.