Back pain sent Bonfilia Sanchez Dominguez to the ER early Thursday morning, driven by her husband, Liborio Parral Ortiz.
But a stop by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents turned the Mounds View couple’s trip to the hospital into a nightmare.
Within 24 hours, Parral Ortiz was in ICE detention in El Paso, Texas, and Sanchez Dominguez was trapped at Mercy Hospital’s Unity Campus in Fridley, blocked by ICE agents and hospital staff from access to her bedside.
Security staff at the hospital also threatened to arrest the woman’s lawyer when he attempted to speak with her, the couple’s daughter, Shelly Parral Ortiz, said.
“They were just racially profiled and picked up and kidnapped without a destination,” she said, her voice breaking.
In a statement to Sahan Journal, Allina Health spokeswoman Jenny Griswold Steingas declined to comment on the case, citing patient privacy. Allina Health owns Mercy Hospital.
The statement said the hospital system “follows long-established procedures when interacting with law enforcement, including ICE.”
Early-morning health emergency
Around 6:30 a.m. Thursday morning, Parral Ortiz was driving Sanchez Dominguez, who was experiencing back pain, to the Mercy Hospital Unity Campus. Before they could arrive, however, they were stopped by ICE.
Liborio was on the phone with his daughter when he was pulled over.
“They got in front of their car and didn’t let them go past,” Shelly said. “They started opening their doors and pulling them. They were not asking them any questions, they just started grabbing them.”
Liborio Parral Ortiz was immediately taken into custody, while Sanchez Dominguez was taken by ICE to the hospital. According to his family, Parral Ortiz was moved to El Paso, Texas, less than 20 hours after he was initially detained, before they could bring him his diabetes medication. As of Saturday morning, ICE’s detainee locator system confirmed Liborio was still in El Paso.
Shelly and her brother arrived at the hospital later that morning to be with their mother, who had several ICE agents waiting outside her room. Shelly was told by hospital staff that if they left, they would not be allowed to return to see their mother.
“The nurses told me that if I walk out I’m not going to be able to come back and find her,” Shelly said. “Because I’ll look for her name, I’ll ask for her name, and she will not be in the system and they’ll tell me she’s not here.”
Later that morning, Shelly accompanied her mother to an MRI scan. After the scan was complete, Shelly said her mother tried to leave the hospital.
However, another nurse intervened and physically prevented Sanchez Dominguez from leaving, pushing her back onto the MRI table, Sanchez Dominguez told Shelly. Shelly said that at no point was Sanchez Dominguez informed by ICE agents why she’d been detained.
Nurses then took Sanchez Dominguez to her room on the second floor and told Shelly and her brother to take the elevator and meet their mother there. When they arrived at the room, hospital staff told her ICE agents said that the siblings were not allowed to be there.
“ICE wouldn’t even let us sit in the lobby,” Shelly said. “They eventually told us that ‘You guys have to leave this lobby, you’re not allowed to be here.’”
‘There’s no patient here with that name’
The same morning, Ray Valenzuela, a pastor at the Minnetonka Seventh-Day Adventist Church, where the family attends services, arrived at the hospital to support the family.
With his pastor ID and Bible in hand, Valenzuela approached the front desk and said he was there to see Sanchez Dominguez. The staff told him there was no one by that name under the care of the hospital.
“At first I second-guessed myself, maybe I went to the wrong hospital, have the wrong room,” Valenzuela said. “But I’m literally texting Shelly and she gave me the hospital and room.”
“I repeated [the room number] to the front desk and she said “no, no,” and she was just a little nervous.”
Valenzuela contacted an attorney from the congregation, Paul Hultgren, who agreed to assist the family. When Hultgren went to Mercy Hospital the following day, he was met with the same resistance as Valenzuela from the front desk staff.
““[I] said ‘I’m here to see the mother, I’m the attorney and I need to speak with my client,’” Hultgren said. “The check-in person, she kind of immediately knew who I was talking about, and she said ‘I have to talk to my supervisor.’”
After waiting in the lobby for 25 minutes without an update, Hultgren and a family friend went upstairs to the second floor. There, a security guard brought out a managing nurse who reiterated that Sanchez Dominguez was not at the hospital.
“I was like that’s absurd, Shelly and the family were there yesterday,” Hultgren said. “She’s still here. And he kind of just kept on repeating that, saying there’s no patient here with that name.”
The security guard then threatened to arrest Hultgren and the family friend for trespassing on hospital property. Hultgren told Sahan Journal that as they were leaving, the security guard followed them to their cars and recorded his licence plate number.
In a brief phone call with Sahan Journal, an unidentified representative in the emergency department of Mercy Hospital’s Fridley campus said she could not provide any information before abruptly hanging up.
Sahan also reached out to ICE and DHS, and is awaiting a response.
Health care workers push back on ICE presence
ICE presence has been reported at hospitals across Minnesota, including at Regions Hospital in St. Paul and Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis.
Earlier this week, dozens of health care professionals and community members packed a Hennepin County Board of Commissioners meeting to express their concerns about ICE presence at the Hennepin County Medical Center.
In a phone call with Sahan Journal, Jamey Sharp, a community organizer and health care worker who works with the nonprofit Unidos Minnesota, said ICE has been increasingly using hospitals in their operations. He said that hospitals have also been slow to prevent them from doing so.
“I think these facilities are unfortunately afraid to stand up to ICE,” Sharp said. “They’re doing something called anticipatory obedience, where they’re complying in advance out of fear of consequences or retribution later. They’re actually doing the administration’s work for them without being asked.”
Sharp said the hospitals’ best line of defense is to exercise their rights prior to ICE entering the building. Without a judicial warrant, ICE agents are legally not allowed to enter hospital premises without permission. Those protections diminish once they’re in the building, however.
“Once you let them in, you can’t get them out,” Sharp said.
In its statement, Allina noted the “highly unusual” nature of having immigration agents in health care settings.
“While we are unable to provide patient information, we are aware of the concerns raised by Sahan Journal and extend our sincere sympathy to this family during a deeply distressing time. We are navigating a complex and unprecedented situation as we continue our commitment to caring for our community, while balancing our legal obligations related to patient privacy and interactions with law enforcement,” the statement said.
Valenzuela said the couple’s situation is another example of how detainees are cut off from their family and the community they have built in the United States. In Sanchez Dominguez’s and Parral Ortiz’s cases, Shelly says it is a community they have been building for more than 30 years, 20 of which were spent in Minnesota after Parral Ortiz moved to the state for a manufacturing job at a local company. Now, it has been torn apart.
“They’re just kind people,” Shelly said. “They’re hard working people, they’re normal people; there’s no reason to take them.”
