People were looking to get medicines to their loved ones held inside the ICE detention center in Broadview. Protests come amid President Trump's immigration enforcement crackdown.

A 45-year-old Hispanic mother came to our emergency room after a week of stomach pains and vomiting. She had developed fevers and was now sluggish and drowsy. It turned out her appendix had burst, leading to sepsis.

If she had come in even one day prior, she would have gone through a routine appendectomy surgery. Instead, she spent a week in the intensive care unit receiving medications through a straw-sized IV in her neck and went home with a drain in her abdomen.

She nearly died.

When she was better, I asked her why she waited so long to come to the hospital. Through a Spanish translator, she told me it was because she was an undocumented immigrant, and she feared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would take her away.

Unfortunately, this is the consequence of the Trump administration’s inhumane stance on undocumented migrants. Mothers, fathers, grandparents and children are dying because of the fear that our own U.S. government has created.

Recently, Vice President JD Vance questioned the basic tenet that we should treat noncitizens as our fellow man deserving of health care, saying, “If you’re an American citizen and you’ve been to the hospital in the last few years, you’ve probably noticed that wait times are especially large and very often somebody who’s there in the emergency room waiting is an illegal alien. … Why do those people get health care benefits at hospitals paid for by American citizens?”

I took an oath to treat anyone – regardless of citizenship status

This cruelty is from the vice president of the United States. President Donald Trump hasn’t shown restraint in his rhetoric either, calling undocumented immigrants “animals” that are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

As a doctor, I cannot stand aside and stay silent when a person, regardless of citizenship status, is ill. I would not, as Vance implies he would do, refuse care to a dying undocumented person because they couldn’t pay, and would increase ER wait times. That’s not just against the Hippocratic oath ‒ it’s against any sane person’s conscience.

Vance is wrong anyway: Long ER wait times are thought not to be from endless lines of sick undocumented migrants but from a variety of other systemic issues. In addition, governmental health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid already exclude undocumented immigrants.

The law, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, also clearly states we should treat everyone presenting for emergent situations at the hospital.

This act, by the way, was signed by a Republican president, Ronald Regan. How far the extreme wing of the GOP has fallen to support a president whose administration would dismantle this lifesaving law if it could.

Trump administration's cruelty isn't making America safe

It is clear this administration does not care about the lives of undocumented people in this country. In fact, it isn’t entirely clear that they care about the health of actual American citizens either. Reducing funding to rural hospitals and clinics in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, making cuts to Medicaid, and allowing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to push through anti-science and anti-vaccine policies have all damaged the well-being of Americans and overall public health.

The government shutdown and GOP refusal to address expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies represent even more callousness from the far-right wing. The more than 24 million American citizens enrolled may suddenly find their health care unaffordable.

But it is the most vulnerable that will suffer the worst, including the undocumented neighbors in our community. When the time comes, we need to vote out all those who continue to enable the most uncompassionate and worst aspects of MAGA.

I made an oath to do no harm. I wish President Trump, Vice President Vance and the people of their administration had done the same.

Dr. Thomas K. Lew is an assistant clinical professor of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and an attending physician of Hospital Medicine at Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley. All expressed opinions are his own. Follow him on X: @ThomasLewMD

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump would have doctors like me leave undocumented patients to die. We won't. | Opinion

Reporting by Dr. Thomas K. Lew / USA TODAY

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