Attorneys and families said locating hospitalized ICE detainees has become difficult as federal immigration enforcement activity increases, particularly when detainees are taken to hospitals and hospitals limit whether staff can confirm patients are present.
In one case described by KFF Health News and distributed through The Associated Press, Lydia Romero said immigration agents detained her husband, Julio César Peña, in Glendale, Calif., and later took him to a hospital after he suffered a ministroke. Romero said that when she called to ask where he was receiving care, Peña answered, “I can’t tell you.”
Romero said Peña was shackled to the bed by his hand and foot while he was hospitalized, and she said agents were in the room while he spoke to her by phone. Her attorney, Viridiana Chabolla, said she also could not obtain basic location information about Peña after he was transferred to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center area following his hospitalization.
Chabolla said Peña’s deportation officer and the medical contractor at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center refused to tell her what hospital he was in. When she tried calling a nearby facility, Providence St. Mary Medical Center, Chabolla said staff indicated they would not confirm whether a person in ICE custody was there, saying only ICE could provide the information; the hospital confirmed that policy to KFF Health News.
KFF Health News and The Associated Press reported that families and attorneys say hospitals use “blackout” procedures—such as registering patients under pseudonyms, removing their names from hospital directories, or restricting even whether staff will confirm that a person is in the hospital. Shiu-Ming Cheer, deputy director of immigrant and racial justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center, said hospitals have used blackout procedures across multiple hospitals in the state, and called that “very concerning.”
ICE’s own guidelines, as described in the report, say people in custody should have access to a telephone, visits from family and friends, and private consultation with legal counsel. The guidelines also say ICE can make administrative decisions about visitation when a patient is in the hospital, but should defer to hospital policies on contacting next of kin when a patient is seriously ill.
Hospital and medical experts who said they have dealt with custody-related care said the practical effect is often that hospitals narrow information flows and deny access. William Weber, an emergency physician in Minneapolis and medical director for the Medical Justice Alliance, said members of the public typically can call a hospital and ask for a patient by name to determine whether they are there, and authorized family members can visit. But Weber said that when a patient is in law enforcement custody, hospitals frequently agree to restrict information-sharing and access, citing concerns that hospitals lack prison-style security infrastructure and that hospitals are trying to prevent threats to the patient or law enforcement personnel.
The report said David Simon, a spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, said that “there are times when hospitals will — at the request of law enforcement — maintain confidentiality of patients’ names and other identifying characteristics.” When asked about hospital practices related to patients in immigration custody and whether there are best practices hospitals should follow, Ben Teicher, a spokesperson for the American Hospital Association, declined to comment.
Chabolla and other attorneys described difficulty getting information even after people were sick enough to be hospitalized, and they said hospitals can frustrate efforts to provide emotional and legal support. The report described Nicolas Thompson-Lleras, a Los Angeles attorney who counsels immigrants facing deportation, saying two of his clients were registered under aliases at different hospitals in Los Angeles County last year and that hospitals initially denied his clients were there and refused to let him meet with them.
The report also said Peña had no criminal record, according to his wife, and that he has terminal kidney disease and survived a heart attack in November. Romero said Peña was detained Dec. 8 while resting outside after coming home from dialysis treatment, and Romero said she initially used the ICE Online Detainee Locator System to locate him. She said, however, that the locator did not show where he was after he was hospitalized, and she said she and relatives were turned away when they drove to a detention facility to find him.
The report said Romero received occasional calls from Peña in the hospital that were less than 10 minutes long and took place under ICE surveillance, and that Peña told her he could not disclose the hospital. The report also said Peña’s attorney later received a call from ICE that Peña was at Victor Valley Global Medical Center, about 10 miles from Adelanto, and about to be released; when Romero and family arrived, they found Peña intubated and unconscious, with his arm and leg still handcuffed to the bed, according to the attorney.
Tim Lineberger, a spokesperson for Victor Valley Global Medical Center’s parent company, KPC Health, said he could not comment on specific patient cases because of privacy protections, and said the hospital’s policies on patient information disclosure comply with state and federal law. The report said Peña was finally cleared to go home on Jan. 5, that no court date had been set, and that his family is filing a petition to adjust his legal status based on his son’s military service.
The broader context in the report was that Peña is among more than 350,000 people arrested by federal immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. It said that, while there are no publicly available statistics on how many people are sick or injured in ICE detention, ICE’s news releases point to 32 people who died in immigration custody in 2025 and six more who have died so far in 2026. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not respond to a request for information about ICE policies or Peña’s case.