Politics

Deportation Fears Starting to Impact Home Health Care Industry: ‘It’s Been Detrimental’

Mass deportation efforts are starting to impact the health care workforce.

U.S. Census data shows more than half of home care workers in the Chicago metro area are not U.S. citizens.

Agencies and clients have started to report issues with immigrant employees not showing up for work out of fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, raids. President Donald Trump has pledged to carry out the largest deportation operation in American history.

Those in the industry believe these actions could shrink an already understaffed workforce.

“We usually have the worst shortages in the middle of the winter, when it’s flu season or lung virus season, and the hospitals start to fill up,” said Dr. Stephanie Woolhandler, professor of public health and health policy at Hunter College in New York City and part-time faculty at Harvard Medical School. “So I would expect we’d start seeing the worst impacts when the number of sick people go up. We’re going to be seeing a lot more of them over the next year, as Trump removes these work permits from so many immigrants and scares a lot of the others away from showing up for work.”

Woolhandler co-authored a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association focusing on the effects deporting immigrants is having on home care and long-term care agencies.

“1.1 million health care workers are foreign-born, non-citizens who are at very high risk of being deported by the Trump administration, and that’s going to cause severe shortages of health care workers, particularly in nursing homes and home care, where we heavily rely on immigrant workers to serve as nurses and nurses aides and housekeepers to care for frail elders,” Woolhandler said.

WBEZ reported 65% of the 24,000 people who worked for Chicago-area home care agencies in 2024 were not citizens.

For Michelle Garcia, ongoing immigration reform efforts are having dire effects.

“I depend on health care workers to support me to do my daily activities like cooking, dressing, bathing, and I depend on immigrant home health care workers,” said Garcia, manager of community organizing at Access Living. “ICE raids have decreased their ability to come to support me, because they’re in fear of being detained if they go out of their homes to come to support me, or they fear that ICE can come knocking at my door.”

Garcia has cerebral palsy and uses a motorized wheelchair. Her trouble in finding a home care aide caused her to go three weeks without a shower or assistance around her home.

While her home care aides in the past usually tended to her, they don’t assist with her husband, who has a spinal cord injury and is bedridden. Without the much-needed assistance, Garcia struggled to care for her husband.

“That’s another issue we have, because my husband requires somebody who can turn him in bed and lift him because he can’t move at all,” Garcia said. “It’s been harder to find someone that is a lot more reliable to help him.”

For the past month they’ve had to rely on family and friends to come over and help. However, the lack of consistency has caused her husband to develop bed sores across his back.

“It’s been harder for both of us and it’s been detrimental for him,” Garcia said. 

Woolhandler said the shortage of home care aides and nursing home workers will start to impact other areas of the health care industry.

“Nursing homes won’t be able to take patients in because they just won’t have the staff to take care of them,” Woolhandler said. “The hospitals and emergency rooms are not going to be able to send frail people home, because to go home, they have to have a home care or a nursing home to go to. So there’s going to be backups in the emergency room and at hospital beds. That’s going to cause problems for anybody needing access to care.”

Despite continuous struggles, Garcia and her husband still strive to live independently and vehemently believe immigrant home care aides assist with that goal.

“They are definitely critical to me and others, because I am not the only one that uses support of immigrant health care workers,” said Garcia.

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