Last summer’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions drove many foreign-born Los Angeles residents away Afraid of venturing out, even when their Health depends on it.
A new study from the University of Southern California found that emergency room visits by patients born outside the United States fell by more than 20% in the first four weeks since arrests were escalated in June 2025.
Those patients who did come in were significantly more likely to require hospitalization than U.S.-born patients, suggesting they delayed treatment until their illness became severe.
The study examined patient data from three safety-net hospitals in Los Angeles: Los Angeles General Medical Center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.
Before the enforcement upgrade in June, the three emergency rooms treated a cumulative average of 1,943 U.S.-born patients and 2,367 foreign-born patients each week, most of them from Mexico and Central or South America.
After the arrests began, hospital staff noticed an immediate change in the number of patients.
“Everyone came back from get off work and reported that there was no one in the emergency room and there was no one in the hospital,” the lead author said, compared to a typical shift. Sarah Ackerson, Assistant Professor, Keck School of Medicine of USC.
Immigrant patients who presented to emergency rooms in the first four weeks after June 5, 2025, were significantly more likely to be ill enough to require hospitalization. Admission rates increased by 4.8 percentage points for patients born in Mexico, 5.1 percentage points for patients born in Central or South America, and 2.5 percentage points for patients born in Asia.
Emergency department visits among immigrant patients eventually rebounded, but are still 10% below pre-implementation levels in October 2025. Hospital use among U.S.-born patients did not change during the observation period.
The research was published Monday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
These data reflect conditions at other clinics serving low-income patients Seen during the raid.
A spokesman for Martin Luther King Community Hospital said the number of monthly emergency room visits by non-English-speaking patients from June to August 2025 dropped 16% compared with the monthly average for the first five months of this year.
At the height of the enforcement operation, about 35 percent of people who had appointments at the St. John Community Health Center clinic did not show up, compared with 9 percent before the raids began, President Jim Mangia said. “Patients don’t come for treatment until the condition becomes more severe. They give up treatment until the condition becomes unbearable,” Mangia said.
During the raid, St. John’s launched a program called “Healthcare Without Fear,” which provides virtual and home visits to patients worried about the prospect of arrest.
Due to ICE raids start to rise Mangia said, again in Los Angeles, so there was also Patience’s absence. Management will meet this week to determine whether Fear-Free Healthcare backup needs to be activated.