Advocates Worry Undocumented NYers Will Be Scared To Seek Medical Help For COVID-19

Years of hardline immigration rhetoric and policy by President Donald Trump's administration will have a chilling effect on undocumented New Yorkers who might need to seek medical help for suspected COVID-19 cases, some immigrant advocates fear.

As the number of coronavirus cases in New York increases, public officials have recently emphasized that the city's medical resources are available to everyone regardless of health insurance or legal status.

"While this may sound daunting, we have the BEST health care system in the nation. Our hospitals will NOT ask documentation status and we will NEVER withhold care from those who can’t afford it," said Mayor Bill de Blasio on Twitter Wednesday.

Last year, de Blasio announced New York City will spend up to $100 million a year to expand health care coverage to people without health insurance, including undocumented immigrants.

It's a reminder echoed by Rebecca Telzak, the Director of Health Programs for Make the Road New York.

"Anyone can go to a doctor without being scared. This has been the case forever and continues to be the case" now, Telzak said.

But the Trump administration's immigration policies may have scared undocumented immigrants from seeking services and help, even as public health experts say getting as many people as possible to seek medical help is the best tactic to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.

"How do you give the undocumented and the vulnerable communities enough reassurance that they need to feel okay to trust a local government?" said Jo-Ann Yoo of the Asian American Federation, the New York-based umbrella group of more than 60 non-profits serving Asian communities.

"To opt into (healthcare)...it requires people to raise their hand to say, 'I don't feel good. And I don't have papers,'" Yoo said. "People will have to make these tremendous leaps of faith."

The federal Department of Homeland Security has led the charge in tightening the country's immigration policies as a priority of the Trump administration. New York and several other so-called sanctuary cities and states drew the administration's ire as they've fought back against the DHS's efforts to utilize the local police forces and motor vehicle data in their deportation efforts carried out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

In the backdrop to the skirmishes with the sanctuary cities is the Public Charge Rule, where the Trump administration amended the Immigration and Nationalization Act to deny admission or permanent residency to most noncitizens who are “likely at any time to become a public charge” by using government benefits within a certain timeframe. Criticized for being a "racist wealth test," the Public Charge Rule was reaffirmed in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision and implemented across the country on February 24th.

That's when people began withdrawing from the social safety net, despite reassurances that healthcare is not one of the areas that would involve Public Charge, Yoo said.

"It's a perfect storm of this horrible thing called Public Charge, which set in before any advocates, before any of us had any time to come up with a plan and then coronavirus hit," Yoo said.

"My fear ultimately is all of these people who's now disenrolled from public benefits -- if they get sick, where will they go? How will we keep track?" she said, and pointed out that the city's service and gig economies would likely to continue to draw workers during the outbreak -- many "in the undocumented community (are) ready to take on riskier and riskier jobs, and they're going to have more and more exposure to all kinds of risks."

New York filed a lawsuit in January to stop the Public Charge rule but the policy is upheld while litigation is pending.

Last week, Bob Ferguson, the attorney general for Washington State -- where the country's worst outbreaks were centered -- sent a letter to the DHS asking for the agency to suspend implementation of the Public Charge Rule during the coronavirus pandemic, calling the implementation "irresponsible and reckless."

The "DHS openly concedes the Rule could lead to 'increased prevalence of communicable diseases,' disenrollment from public programs, and increased use of emergency rooms as a primary method of health care," Ferguson said. "Communities across America are undertaking extensive efforts to limit the spread of COVID-19. Your agency’s Public Charge Rule undermines those efforts by deterring individuals from accessing critical health benefits. Failure to immediately stay implementation of the Rule so that we can take the steps necessary to contain and mitigate the outbreak of the disease puts the public health and safety of our communities at increased risk."

"DHS’s policy of deterring immigrants from using the medical benefits to which they are legally entitled directly undermines and frustrates our public health professionals’ efforts, putting our communities and residents at unnecessary risk," he added.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and 16 other attorneys general, as well as dozens of local Washington officials, signed Ferguson's letter.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told CNN, "The public charge rule takes into account the totality of circumstances and no one aspect of an individual's situation would deem them ineligible for change in status. Nowhere in the rule does it say an immigrant will be denied a change in status if they seek medical care."

James's office did not respond to a request for further comment.

Noticia LI spoke to David, an undocumented worker from Central America who now lives in Queens and talked about how fear of deportation has changed his attitude towards seeking health care.

“In my country [Guatemala], not here, I am one of those that are not afraid of the disease. You have to take good care of yourself. You have to know who you are hanging out with," he said in the translated article published in AMNY. Working as a carpenter, David said he's scared to miss a day's pay if he fell ill but he'd also be prudent -- "In the past I have gone (to work), but only with common illnesses like the flu and because I had to work. But, if it’s a fatal illness, you have to take shelter with a doctor. You have to look for the solution to prevent death."

While tracking communicable diseases like COVID-19 does require cooperating with government health agencies, Telzak of Make the Road New York pointed out that all patients are protected by confidentiality and privacy laws: "If they don't want details of who they are being publicized, there are lots of HIPAA laws that protect that," she said.

As ICE has recently ramped up its deportation raids in New York and other sanctuary cities, human rights advocates have called on the president to explicitly carve out hospitals and other designated "sensitive zones" from immigration enforcement procedures -- procedures that typically are suspended during national disasters or crises, unless there are “exigent circumstances.”

“Coronavirus is not considered an exigent circumstance, and individuals seeking medical treatment for the virus should continue to do so without fear or hesitation,” ICE said in an email last week to the Miami Herald. “Claims to the contrary are false and create unnecessary fear within communities.”

Nonetheless, immigration continues to be a favorite target of the Trump administration -- on Wednesday night the president said he was going to combat a virus that's already on American soil by suspending all travel from Europe, with the exception of the U.K. and Ireland, by non-citizens for 30 days beginning this week.