Public health crisis unfolding in Minneapolis as residents avoid healthcare

Key Highlights

• They fear unfamiliar cars idling outside clinics and in hospital parking garages.
• Pregnant patients are laboring at home; diabetic patients are diluting or forgoing their insulin; injured and sick people are avoiding the hospital and postponing surgeries.“They are afraid of being pulled out of their car and taken to the Whipple building and sent on a flight to Texas, even our legal permanent residents, United States citizens.
• Everybody is afraid,” Conley added. Munira Maalimisaq, founder and CEO of the Inspire Change Clinic in Minneapolis, noted that “even people who are documented are not going to their doctor’s appointments People who have their citizenship are not coming in.”“It is a health issue.
• When people are too afraid to seek care, diseases worsen and emergencies increase and people die unnecessarily,” Maalimisaq said. Providers said that there are immediate and long-term health dangers from the federal occupation of Minnesota, including clashes with agents, stress, food insecurity, exacerbation of chronic illness and acute emergencies.“If people aren’t getting their medications and they’re not getting their treatments, they will die,” said Mary Turner, president of National Nurses United (NNU) and an ICU nurse in the Minneapolis area.
• “I dread the day that the stories start to come out about finding people dead in their homes because they’re afraid to seek medical care … We’re going to start to find dead bodies.”Many organizations, including NNU, are calling for the abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).“All they’ve become now is a violent, racist, lawless agency, and you can see that in our streets.