Health Care Workers: Organize Committees to Defend Immigrant Patients

ICE Out of the Hospitals – Free Chidozie Wilson Okeke!

For Workers Action to Stop the Deportations

We reprint below a leaflet which was distributed on May 9 outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center. A week earlier, ICE agents had brought Chidozie Wilson Okeke, a Nigerian immigrant, to the Emergency Room for medical clearance after violently kidnapping him from his car, and then hauled him off to detention as the NYPD blocked protesters. The Healthcare Working Group of the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants, along with members of the Internationalist Group and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, brought out union activists and students to a scheduled rally to defend Mr. Okeke and demand ICE out of the hospitals.

The May 9 rally had been announced by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and several rights groups calling for “Justice for Mr. Okeke.” Their statement said the protest would take place "rain or shine." But as the time of the rally approached and skies were overcast, the DSA told people to go to a nearby bar where they instead held a campaign event for four of their candidates. Despite the cancellation, some who had come out for the rally headed over to the hospital to hold a protest. Speakers from the LCDI, IG, RIY and Hunter Committee to Defend Immigrants as well as community members and health care workers emphasized the urgency of organized workers action, chanting “ICE out of the hospitals” and “Free Mr. Okeke!”

MAY 8 – On the evening of May 2, Chidozie Wilson Okeke, a Nigerian immigrant, was surrounded in his car by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Brooklyn, New York. The agents broke his car window and cut his seatbelt while he kept calling out for a lawyer. Videos show the feds trying to drag Okeke out of the vehicle, punching him and choking him while he screamed in pain (The City, 4 May). They then brought him to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, which serves low-income residents in the Bushwick area, to obtain medical clearance from his injuries before they could take him in for detention.

Quickly, news went out on rapid response Signal chats. By 10:30 p.m. a crowd that grew to some 200 protesters formed outside the hospital demanding that the detainee by freed (at that point people did not know his name). Soon the New York Police Department’s notoriously brutal Strategic Response Group (SRG) arrived in force. The massive cop presence didn’t deter the rapid responders, and activists were able to contact a pro bono immigration attorney. But due to health information privacy concerns, an Emergency Room charge nurse wouldn’t let the lawyer in to see Okeke, even though she provided credentials and had a City Council member alongside her.

After a standoff of several hours, around 2:30 a.m. on May 3, a wall of NYPD cops acted as a shield for masked ICE agents as they hauled Mr. Okeke – who had shackles on his hands and ankles – out of the Emergency Room into the hospital’s ambulance bay. The agents dropped Okeke on his back as the hundreds of protesters continued to demand he be released. The SRG thugs brutalized any who got too close. The feds then shoved their victim into an ICE vehicle and took off with an escort from the NYPD. Okeke is now imprisoned at Metropolitan Detention Center.

Many health care workers, members of NYC unions, students and community members throughout the city are indignant and alarmed by this racist attack. This is a wake-up call about the reality we are living in today, and must be a call to action by the entire labor movement.

This was no isolated incident. In Minneapolis during ICE’s occupation this winter, many incidents resembling Okeke’s arrest occurred . ICE brutaled patients and then brought them to the hospitals for medical clearance. A 31-year-old Mexican immigrant, Alberto Castañeda Mondragón was brought to a Minneapolis hospital by ICE with eight skull fractures and brain hemorrhages in five areas. Agents claimed he ran headfirst into a wall, but nurses and doctors didn’t buy the bull. ICE officers attempted to shackle him to the bed, but health care workers intervened to push back.

Similarly, when Los Angeles was invaded last summer, Milagro Solís Portillo suffered a medical emergency while being arrested by ICE. She was brought to a Glendale hospital where workers admitted her and refused to discharge her for several days, buying time to get her the support she needed. During her stay, ICE agents occupied the lobby of the hospital and tried to pressure her to leave against medical advice. Members of the community “called out Glendale Memorial Hospital for allowing detention officers on the property … creating a hostile environment for staff and patients” (KABC, 19 July 2025).

Hospital Workers: Organize to Defend Patients and Staff Against ICE Terror

The recent threat by Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan to “flood” New York City with a “surge” of ICE agents, ominously warning that “mass deportations are coming,” has defenders of immigrants citywide bracing for impact. Even before the renewed threats, health care workers have been discussing how to defend their patients and staff. Recently, several NYC health care unions – New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), 1199 SEIU, CWA, Council of Interns and Residents, and Doctors Council — held a joint “Know Your Rights” event, seeking to prepare hospital and clinic employees in case ICE shows up.

The brutal kidnapping of Chidozie Wilson Okeke underlines the urgent need for health care workers to organize and prepare for similar events, which will come. Every hospital should be home to a committee to defend immigrants, where workers, backed up by health care unions, can be educated as to patients’ and employees’ rights, share information and build resistance to ICE terror that endangers everyone. When in the 41-day NYSNA strike this winter union negotiators raised the issue of immigration agents barging into hospitals, the bosses claimed it wasn’t “germane” to contact negotiations. But there’s nothing more germane to health care workers than the safety and well-being of their patients.

Among the demands raised then, as a NYSNA delegate told a conference of the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants (LCDI) in February, were: training for employees on how to handle ICE; protections for employees who stand up for patients; protection for employees who are immigrants or have Temporary Protected Status, and for extensive signage with Know Your Rights information.  After Veterans Administration nurse Alex Pretti was murdered by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis in January, the Health Care Workers Working Group of the LCDI put out a leaflet demanding: “No ICE/Border Patrol/DHS in hospitals or any health care facilities!”

In addition to demanding the immigration agents not be allowed into hospitals, health care workers should call for:

• Patients should be provided with KYR information, including that they have a right to consult an attorney.
• Hospitals and clinics should instruct personnel on how to get legal assistance for patients, and have immigration lawyers on call.
• Staff should be made aware that ICE detainees are not being held as criminals, but for a supposed civil violation. They have the right to privacy when on the phone or speaking with medical personnel or an attorney.
• Coded overhead announcements could make workers aware of ICE presence at or near the hospital so that the necessary preparations can be made.

• All hospital personnel should know that under HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) they have a legal right and responsibility to protect private health information and must not provide patient information of any kind to ICE.
• The unions should demand no reprisals for workers who protect their patients. That’s their job.

Health care workers – many of whom are immigrants themselves – must be prepared to defend their patients and fellow workers. This cannot just happen spontaneously. It must be an organized effort by workers and unions. Health care workers should demand, “ICE: hands off our patients! ICE out of the hospitals!”

To contact the Health Care Working Group of the Labor Committee to Defend Immigrants, and to get a copy of the LCDI Immigrant Rights Defense Packet for Health Care Workers, write to: Laborconference@gmail.com.

Democrats No Friends of Immigrants – Build a Revolutionary Workers Party

So far New York hasn’t seen many incidents of immigration enforcement in health care settings since the start of Trump’s mass deportations drive. The Department of Homeland Security has targeted one city at a time to unleash rampaging ICE and Border Patrol agents. Some liberals chalk this up to NYC mayor Zohran Mamdani’s charm offensive to cuddle up to the white supremacist in the White House. While the mayor has called the president a “fascist” and Trump refers to Mamdani as a “communist,” so far the city hasn’t been occupied by thousands of paramilitary agents as occurred in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Minneapolis.

But the floodgates may be opening, and the action of nearly 100 NYPD cops in aiding the brutal kidnapping of Chidozie Okeke on May 2 is a striking illustration of how the mayor, a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), will respond: he will claim to have nothing to do with ICE raids, while his SRG riot police attack protesters and shield the masked federal agents. Mamdani said the video of an NYPD officer slamming a demonstrator to the ground outside Wyckoff hospital is “deeply disturbing,” but like Democratic city and state officials across the country, the reality is that the DSA Democrat mayor is aiding the immigrant-snatching ICE Gestapo.

A May 9 rally called by the New York City DSA and rights groups calls for “Justice for Mr. Okeke” and demands “legal support for Mr. Okeke,” but it pointedly does not call to free Chidozie Wilson Okeke. Democrats are loath to call to free the detainees being held in ICE concentration camps or to demand an end to the deportations. Why? Because Democrats Obama and Biden built up the whole deportation machine and expelled far more immigrants from the U.S. than Trump has done. The rally calls to “abolish ICE,” but what about the Border Patrol? And if ICE is eliminated, the capitalist rulers will just set up another immigrant-snatching agency.

The fact is that Democrats, even supposedly “progressive” Democrats, are no friends of immigrants, or of working people overall. On May Day, Mayor Mamdani bragged that he “stood there alongside NYSNA nurses” during their recent strike. Yet at the same time he endorsed Governor Kathy Hochul, who helped the bosses herd scabs by issuing executive orders allowing nurses without New York state licenses to work during the bitter six-week strike. Now Hochul is taking credit for a package of “sanctuary” provisions in the state budget to ban ICE agents wearing masks and ban formal measures deputizing local police, but refusing to prohibit all cooperation with ICE.

Whether under Democratic or Republican governments, decaying American capitalism requires the persecution of immigrants, exploiting low-wage workers without rights and then deporting them when they are no longer needed. The Internationalist Group calls to smash the ICE Gestapo with workers revolution. We demand full citizenship rights for all immigrants and call for mass workers action to stop the deportations. And while the pseudo-socialist DSA is embedded in the Democratic Party of imperialist war abroad and racist repression at home, the Internationalist call to break with the parties of capital and build a revolutionary workers party. ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

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