Immigration Advocacy Toolkit

This toolkit was designed to provide information, resources, and tools for emergency department (ED) clinicians, staff, and operations teams to support immigrants who seek care in the ED.

Organization Source:
Society for Academic Emergency Medicine 

Organization Website:
https://www.saem.org/home 

Categories:
Interaction with law enforcement (LEA) | LEA – ICE at Health Centers or Hospitals

 Date Last Updated: April 25, 2024 

Basic

  • Create a safe environment. This can be facilitated using care affirming signage, expressed through buttons worn by clinicians, or disseminated via social media and other media platforms depending on what’s most appropriate to the local context.

Intermediate

  • Develop a policy for interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in conjunction with ED/hospital legal counsel
  • Review hospital policies to ensure that coverage for care of undocumented immigrants is included
    • Establish relationships with health centers like Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) to ensure patients receive primary care and follow-up
  • Identify and collaborate with local mental health providers and support organizations to address concomitant challenges
  • Designate an immigration point person or task force in your department to keep referral resources up to date, provide provider and staff education, maintain protocol implementation, and monitor and improve quality of care provided to immigrant and refugee patients
  • Ensure a commitment to cultural sensitivity through periodic in-services aimed at understanding social and health factors unique to the local immigrant and refugee population

Advanced

  • Create an ED and/or hospital-wide patient advisory board to connect and empower immigrants and refugees so they can engage productively with the healthcare system address issues specific to immigrants and refugees
  • Consider expanding telehealth services to allow access for patients with transportation challenges, and for those who may be reluctant to visit the ED
  • Establish medical-legal partnerships with local and national advocacy and/or legal organizations that can assist patients with legal support
Examples of support include:
  • Understanding rights about status
  • Adjusting status if possible
  • Deportation defense
Medical-legal resources:

en_USEnglish
Scroll to Top