Health

Mass. health care workers send open letter to protect immigrant access to care

The Health and Law Immigrant Solidarity Network sent the letter, which garnered more than 400 signatures, to seven of the largest health care networks in the state.

Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest health system, is getting public pressure from its own employees to resist federal funding threats. Lane Turner/Globe Staff

By Emilia Wisniewski

April 17, 2025

3 minutes to read

A group of health care providers, legal professionals, and community members sent an open letter Wednesday to Massachusetts health organizations to protect patients’ access to health care amid deportation fears among immigrants.

The Health and Law Immigrant Solidarity Network sent the letter, which garnered more than 400 signatures, to seven of the largest health care networks in the state.

“Amid a barrage of dehumanizing rhetoric and new anti-immigrant policies, knowing that immigration agents may target healthcare facilities is already harming the health of immigrants, their families and our communities,” the letter says.

The letter comes months after President Donald Trump threw out a policy that classifies schools, churches, and hospitals as sensitive locations for migrant arrests.

Lara Jirmanus, an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a practicing family physician, founded the network in 2017, and it has since grown to 600 members that include health care workers and law professionals.

This is the first public action the network has taken; it usually focuses on sharing resources and monitoring hospital actions, Jirmanus said. The letter took months to draft.

“It took us a few weeks to figure out whether immigrant communities thought that this type of thing would be useful,” Jirmanus said. “Afterward, we got the message that, yes, the more people who speak up, the better. We need the voice of health care workers out there saying that.”

In addition to protecting patient privacy and access to health care, the letter also demands that the hospitals communicate that their facilities are safe to receive care, advocate for their immigrant patients and colleagues, and create medical-legal partnerships.

“We want as much as possible to be able to help provide care in a way that addresses or mitigates their fears,” Jirmanus said. “There’s an element of this work which is figuring out, refining tools, and sitting down and meeting with leadership to try and negotiate an industry standard.”

Lauren Kearney, a critical care physician who has been practicing medicine for eight years, said she did not know many of her patients’ immigration statuses until the administration’s actions, when her patients missed appointments or were tearful during them because of their fears.

“I think the biggest thing that I recognize from the executive orders, the policies, the rhetoric, is that it’s spreading fear that doesn’t just mean fear for patients to come to appointments, that literally means fear for them to leave their homes,” said Kearney, a new member of the Health and Law Immigrant Solidarity Network.

There are some resources that provide guidance on how patients and workers can best navigate care during this time, one notably from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office released on Jan. 31.

Kearney said while these guidelines are helpful, the network believes there should be a concrete, industry-wide standard.

“We are very blessed in the state to have so many health care institutions, but what that also means is that many patients don’t get care at just one place,” she said. “To really optimize the safety of immigrant patients, it takes every hospital doing everything that they can to keep patients safe.”

Kearney said conversations are ongoing as far as next steps for the group but that they hope to meet with representatives from the hospitals the letter was addressed to and to educate others on the issue.

“One of the best things about my job is that I do get to build relationships with people and really understand them as humans,” she said. “When I’m talking to people who don’t have that privilege that I have, it is just reminding them that everyone is a person, and so everyone should be able to go into a hospital and not be fearful.”