Plate Nº 40 · recorded October 10, 2026
Health & Medicine ResearchReported finding
Foreign-born L.A. ER visits fell over 20% after immigration surge
At three Los Angeles County safety-net hospitals, ER visits by foreign-born patients fell more than 20% in the four weeks after immigration operations intensified in June 2025, a USC study found.
By James Calloway3 min read547 words
In brief
- Foreign-born ER visits fell more than 20% in the first four weeks after immigration operations intensified in June 2025.
- By October 2025, the gap between foreign-born and U.S.-born ER visits had narrowed to about 10%.
- Hospitalization rates rose 4.8 percentage points for Mexican-born, 5.1 for Central/South American-born and 2.5 for Asian-born patients compared with U.S.-born patients.
- Researchers analyzed three L.A. County safety-net hospitals: Los Angeles General Medical Center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Olive View-UCLA Medical Center.
- The study, led by Sarah Axeen of USC, was published Oct. 5 in JAMA Network Open.
ER visits by foreign-born patients at three Los Angeles County safety-net hospitals fell more than 20% in the four weeks after immigration operations intensified in June 2025, a USC study published Oct. 5 in JAMA Network Open found.
The gap narrowed to about 10% by October 2025, but patients who did come in arrived sicker. Hospitalization rates climbed sharply for every foreign-born group the researchers tracked:
- Mexican-born patients: +4.8 percentage points versus U.S.-born
- Central/South American-born: +5.1 percentage points
- Asian-born: +2.5 percentage points
"Our findings suggest that immigration enforcement may discourage immigrant patients from seeking acute care when they need it, with potentially serious health consequences for patients and economic costs for the health systems that serve them," said lead author Sarah Axeen, a scholar at the USC Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service and assistant professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
The study adds to a growing body of evidence that immigration crackdowns reshape how — and whether — immigrant patients seek medical care in the United States.
What did the researchers measure?
The team tracked self-reported country of birth for every patient who visited the emergency rooms of Los Angeles General Medical Center, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. Those three public hospitals serve a large share of immigrant households in the region and accept patients regardless of insurance or immigration status.
They compared the 12 months before June 2025 with the four months that followed. Federal and local operations became a daily presence in downtown Los Angeles and surrounding neighborhoods that June, after smaller-scale activity earlier in the year.
Why are sicker patients showing up?
The pattern fits a long-standing hypothesis in public health: fear of enforcement keeps people away from hospitals for less urgent problems, while those with serious symptoms eventually seek care anyway. The result is a smaller ER census overall and a higher share of admitted patients.
A higher admission rate is a proxy for severity. ER physicians admit patients who need overnight stays, IV medication, surgery or close monitoring. Conditions that would normally be caught early are likely progressing into more advanced, harder-to-treat stages before someone decides to seek help.
How big could the ripple effects be?
The study did not calculate dollar costs. The authors warn that delayed care produces economic costs for the health systems that serve them.
What are the limits of the study?
The analysis covers only three hospitals and a four-month post-surge window. It cannot prove enforcement itself caused the drop. Other factors — including insurance changes or shifting illness patterns — could also contribute. Country of birth was self-reported and may undercount immigrants who chose not to share that information at registration.
The team also notes the gap narrowed from 20% to 10% over four months. That could reflect patients adjusting to the new environment, exhausting deferred care needs, or a partial return to baseline for some conditions.
What's next?
Axeen and colleagues plan to track whether the difference continues to close, stabilizes or widens again as enforcement policy shifts. They also want to break the data down by diagnosis to see which specific conditions go untreated during enforcement surges.
via Medical Xpress (Source)
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Staff writer covering marketplaces and e-commerce at SciBeat.
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