As the Massachusetts House advances legislation designed to block federal agents from making civil immigration arrests at courthouses, dozens of doctors visited Beacon Hill Wednesday to secure similar protections at health care facilities.
In a January spending proposal, Gov. Maura Healey proposed blocking civil immigration enforcement actions in nonpublic areas of hospitals and other medical facilities without a judicial warrant. That provision was not included in the PROTECT Act (H 5305) which received an initial vote of approval Wednesday morning in the House.
Leda Anderson, director of advocacy and governmental affairs at the Massachusetts Medical Society, said that medical practices are increasingly seeing cancellations and no-shows and staff are also afraid to come to work.
“I know so many of you are seeing firsthand the impact of current immigration enforcement tactics and what the impact is having on patient behavior, with patients delaying or avoiding really needed medically necessary care out of fear,” Anderson said at the society’s “Doctors’ Day” event in the Senate Reading Room.
“This affects preventive care, chronic disease management, urgent medical needs,” Anderson continued. “And you all know best, that when care is delayed, outcomes worsen, and the broader health system really absorbs that strain.”
Asked Wednesday afternoon why his chamber didn’t include some Healey measures, like those dealing with enforcement in schools and hospitals, House Speaker Ron Mariano said, “Because it never ends.”
“We’d be constantly moving the goal line,” Mariano told reporters after a private Democratic caucus.
“It’s best that we have an outside source that can see where the problems are and evaluate what needs to be fixed,” Mariano continued. “In the hearings that we had with the different groups of reps, once you started this discussion, everything was on the table. What about the daycare center with 10 kids? What about the person? So we just couldn’t answer all the what ifs.”
The House Ways and Means bill that is advancing gives the governor the authority to restrict where immigration enforcement can take place on state property and allows the governor to create regulations on which state agencies should be shielded from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The governor’s and attorney general’s offices can also produce guidance for schools, churches, hospitals and private employers on how to respond to ICE actions, Public Safety co-Chair Rep. Daniel Cahill said last week.
Black and Latino Legislative Caucus Chair Rep. Andy Vargas said the caucus “didn’t want to provide false expectations as to what a ‘safe space’ is when we’re looking at the constitutionality of all this stuff, and so we wanted to be real with our constituents about what’s possible here.”
Cahill told reporters, “We’re in an ever-changing landscape, legally.”
“Codifying certain spaces, right, in law, would then hamstring us to those spaces,” Cahill said.
Giving the governor authority to restrict where immigration enforcement can take place on state property, Cahill said, “can put Massachusetts in a more fluid situation where they can react to some of these court cases, and also we can see where enforcement is starting to be targeted, and the governor can very quickly address those issues.”
Most of the 16 amendments to the bill were withdrawn and the House was moving toward a vote on the bill late Wednesday afternoon.
Alison Kuznitz and Ella Adams are reporters for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach them at akuznitz@stateaffairs.com and ella.adams@statehousenews.com.