by Capital & Main generated this story.Permission is granted for its publication here.
Gabriella Oloye, a calm, soft-spoken nurse, thinks carefully before speaking as she describes a recent home visit she had with an immigrant patient.
The nurse saw baggage at the door as Oloye, who was 6′ 8″, entered a South Los Angeles residence in June for a visit with a middle-aged mother. The undocumented immigrant mother had made the decision to return to Mexico with her family by self-deporting.
Her kids were concerned that by going to their child’s middle school graduation earlier in June, she and her husband had put their safety in danger. The parents believe it is safer to go back to Mexico, even if their children, who are U.S. citizens, wish to remain in Los Angeles.
According to Oloye, it reminds me of the stories I heard in middle school about people hiding, staying indoors, and not going to parks during World War II. Their eyes are filled with [terror].
Or in their voice,” she says, referring to her medical assistant colleague Peggy Hernandez.
Two mobile medical teams from St. John’s Community Health in South Los Angeles, including Oloye, Hernandez, and Isaac Palacios, are tasked with navigating the fear-based environment in immigrant communities where people without legal status have become reluctant to leave their homes, even for medical reasons.
The three-person team’s visits are a component of the community health organization’s Health Care Without Fear program, which was started earlier this year and aims to provide healthcare directly to the homes of undocumented patients who are frightened to go to one of its clinics.
In addition to doing their best to treat untreated medical conditions like unmonitored blood pressure, diabetes, and infections, the three-person team has seen firsthand how the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies of at-large arrests and deportations are negatively affecting public health by making some patients avoid seeking medical attention because they are worried about their immigration status.
Every day, two squads are mobilized. Each drives a small Ford Transit Connect van that is small enough to fit the small team and their equipment into urban parking lots. How 6 8 Oloye manages to make it work is beyond me.
Throughout Compton and Central and South Los Angeles, St. John’s Community Health operates a network of 24 clinics and four mobile units. More than 120,000 low-income patients who are uninsured or underinsured, or who receive Medi-Cal, are treated at St. John’s.
Since its announcement in March, Health Care Without Fear has increased its efforts since June. At that point, the Trump administration launched a flurry of aggressive immigration enforcement operations against California, employing federal agents who were highly armed and wearing masks.
The Cato Institute, a libertarian research tank, claims that the raids have mainly resulted in the capture of individuals who have not been convicted of violent crimes.Immigration officials have also detained U.S. citizens.
In late June, after spending the morning driving to patient homes south of downtown Los Angeles, I meet the mobile team in the parking lot of what the staff refers to as St. John’s HQ in South L.A. As we chat, the three of them are clearly worn out; they are speaking quietly and moving slowly, their shoulders hunched a little.
I would like to know how doctors continue preventive care for frightened patients in this setting.
“We’re learning as we go,” Hernandez says.St. John’s Community Health driver Isaac Palacios delivers mobile medical teams to undocumented patients’ homes. (Capital & Main photo by Barbara Davidson)
The crew comes at 8:30 a.m. to review the day’s files, and the day officially begins. The patients’ needs are taken into consideration when they pack. They collect prescription refills, cups for urine and stool samples, vials and syringes for blood testing, and devices to measure heart rate and blood pressure.
The group must also think on the path they will follow. The crew returns to St. John’s headquarters if blood or other samples need to be sent back to a lab. Otherwise, before treating the next patient, they will take a lunch break wherever they are.
To ensure that there are no surprises, they take considerable caution. Hernandez gives patients a call before their appointment and again when they show up.
Hernandez explains that they don’t think they can trust anyone. Not even for the door to be opened.
To get to each patient, the team allows themselves forty-five minutes. In light of traffic, 45 minutes from door to door throughout South Los Angeles is not that long, even if the streets are noticeably less crowded during the summer school break.
The team’s driver, Palacios, takes into account safety concerns such as parking, traffic patterns, and whether or not there have been any documented immigration raids in the area. As an immigrant himself, Palacios is carrying the documents that allow him to reside and work in this nation. Even with documentation, he fears he may be apprehended by federal officials like other aliens.
“S, perostill,” says Palacios, “they don’t care.”
Oloye claims that she is now more cautious when using her phone out of concern that immigration may attempt to follow social media metadata.
The team starts a standard clinic visit as soon as they arrive at the patient’s house, which includes taking their heart rate and blood pressure, checking on any known chronic problems, and inquiring about any new health issues. Oloye claims that throughout the last three weeks, they have encountered patients who were at risk of not receiving treatment for infections, high blood pressure, nerve damage, uncontrolled diabetes, and pneumonia.
Clinic employees saw a rise in missed appointments in the first two months of this year and recognized a possible public health emergency, which led to the creation of the Health Care Without Fear program. In June, Jim Mangia, the president and CEO of St. John’s, informed Capital & Main that the number of patients missing their appointments had increased to between 25% and 30%, which is almost three times the usual amount. Fearful of the increasingly blatant ICE raids in and around Los Angeles in the early months of President Trump’s second term, patients were refusing to come in.
Since he first descended that gold-colored escalator and declared his intention to run for president in 2015, Donald Trump has specifically targeted Mexican immigration. A mass attack on the Latino community in the area started on June 6 with two well-planned raids in the Fashion District of Los Angeles and a nearby Home Depot.
Videos of masked men grabbing people off the street while wielding weapons, gas, and flash-bang grenades and refusing to identify themselves are all over social media and local news in Los Angeles. To defend people who are being targeted for arrest and deportation, locals have responded by forming community defense organizations.
Raids have slowed but not stopped since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration’s mass deportation techniques earlier this month on July 11. Despite a sharp decline in arrests in July, the Los Angeles Times reported that since June 6, U.S. and Customs and Border Protection have made over 4,000 arrests in the Los Angeles area.
A St. John’s staff member introduces me to a patient, a Mexican undocumented lady whose identity we agree I won’t disclose, prior to my meeting with the mobile team. After Ana Ruth Varela, a community health support organizer, or promoter, with St. John’s, volunteered to walk the woman from her nearby house, accompany her to the clinic for her appointment, and then return home, she grudgingly went in for her doctor’s visit that day. The woman’s young adult sons contacted several times to inquire about their mother’s safety and whereabouts.
Since the birth of her children, the woman has been attending St. John’s for many years.
Get neighborhood news in your inbox. It’s free and enlightening.
Become one of the 20,000+ individuals who receive breaking news alerts and the Times of San Diego in their inbox every day at 8 a.m.
Weekly updates from San Diego communities have also been provided! You acknowledge and agree to the terms by clicking “Sign Up.” Choose from the options below.
As we speak in Spanish, I notice that she s suddenly shaking, with twitches and spasms in her arms, neck and head. I would try to find comforting words to calm her; she smiled when I say that I playson jarocho, the traditional music of her region in Mexico. But her involuntary movements interrupt her speech. She says she is shaking because she is scared and anxious about the raids and abductions.
She was there for a regular checkup and to get her blood pressure taken. She noted it was high but played it down and insisted she was OK. A staff member warned the woman, however, that in fact her blood pressure was very high and worrisome.
Concerned with her symptoms, I try to end our interview, but she continues speaking.
The masked men with rifles and no identification rampant across Los Angeles reminds the woman of thenarcos,drug-trafficking cartels, that invaded her rural home along Mexico s Gulf Coast as a child, she tells me. When the narcos would come, she and the other children would flee and hide among the nearby trees and bushes. Their signal to return was their mother singing.
Many patients are sharing similar memories of the places they fled as they see masked men in the streets of Los Angeles, Varela says; the raids are triggering post-traumatic stress disorder.
While the mobile teams are deployed to tend to patients physical wellbeing, Oloye has since June begun asking them about their mental health during checkups. Oloye asks how they are feeling, probing for signs of depression, anxiety and stress. She has seen patients who need medication for depression and anxiety.
In her calm and steadfast voice, Oloye notes that adding a psychiatrist or psychologist to the team would be helpful. She says patients who have been staying home from work also need rent support and money for food and to pay bills.
Oloye sighs as she considers the gravity of what she has witnessed.
I wish I could do more, she says.
Capital & Mainis an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time, including economic inequality, climate change, health care, threats to democracy, hate and extremism and immigration.
Copyright 2025 Capital & Main
