Legal Rights in The Pitt Episode About ICE in Hospitals

In a recent episode of HBO’s hit medical procedural show The Pitt, two agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enter the emergency department.

Episode Summary

The agents arrive with a detainee named Pranita, claiming that she injured her shoulder from a fall. Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch orders an X-ray for Pranita to check for a fracture. Nervous about the agents’ presence, a flurry of patients and staff begin exiting the premises.

When Pranita’s X-ray shows no fracture, Dr. Robby says that she can be discharged once nurses fit her with a sling. He urges the ICE agents to leave promptly to prevent further disruption. The agents comply, but one agent starts dragging Pranita out by the arm before nurses could finish treating her injury.

Alarmed by Pranita’s reaction of pain, Nurse Jesse rushes to separate her from the agent. In response, the agent wrestles him to the floor, applies handcuffs, and arrests him. The scene ends with the agents escorting Nurse Jesse and Pranita out of the building, leaving the emergency department in chaos.

Grim Reality

The Pitt’s depiction of ICE received widespread attention, with fans praising its timeliness, anti-fans dismissing it as biased, and critics suggesting that it did not go far enough to capture the full extent of ICE’s brutality. 

Regardless of your stance on the episode, the ICE storyline was indisputably motivated by real events. In January 2025, the Trump administration rescinded guidelines passed under President Obama that directed ICE to avoid focusing enforcement actions in “sensitive locations” such as hospitals, schools, and churches. As a result, health care workers have reported a dramatic increase in interactions with immigration enforcers, many of which have been hostile.

Already, ICE presence in clinical settings has increased the risk of negative health outcomes. Between 2023 and 2025, the percentage of immigrant adults who reported delaying health care increased from 22 percent to 29 percent. A large share of these adults attributed their hesitancy to immigration-related concerns, even if they were lawfully present immigrants.

What legal rights exist for health care workers to protect their patients? Helpfully, we can analyze this question by referring to distinct moments in The Pitt’s recent episode.

Legal Right #1: Emergency Care

The Pitt directly names a key legal right for patients when it mentions the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) in the following conversation:

Dr. Robby: [The ICE agents] are not gonna leave without their patient. We just need to treat her.

Nurse Emma: Even if she’s undocumented?

Nurse Dana: All patients, regardless of immigration status, have the right to emergency care under EMTALA.

EMTALA is a federal statute that requires hospitals receiving Medicare funding (which are most hospitals) to provide stabilizing treatment to everyone who shows up to the emergency department, regardless of immigration status. Courts have recognized that EMTALA creates a right to emergency care that applies broadly because the statute uses the term “any individual,” not “any citizen.”

In other words, any assertion from ICE that a hospital doesn’t need to treat an undocumented immigrant is wrong. The staff could point to EMTALA to insist that they have an affirmative duty to provide care.

Legal Right #2: Reasonable Search and Seizure

Next, the following exchange highlights how the hospital in The Pitt could have done more to help patients invoke their constitutional rights:

Ms. Lupe [hospital clerk]: So ICE is here? People are leaving the waiting room. Ten patients already. What should I do?

Dr. Robby: Just tell them the truth and hope they stay for the treatment that they need.

Under the Fourth Amendment, all patients, regardless of immigration status, are guaranteed the right to be free from unreasonable search or seizure. Unreasonable search or seizure is defined as a violation of someone’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

Unfortunately, the patients in The Pitt had no reasonable expectation of privacy. The waiting room was clearly a public area of the hospital, as it was directly accessible from the building’s entrance and defined by glass walls. In public areas, ICE agents are permitted to investigate anything in “plain view” or “plain hearing.”

Ideally, the hospital would have created a reasonable expectation of privacy by stationing security guards at building entrances to sign in visitors, directing patients to wait in examination rooms, or using signage to designate private waiting areas for patients who are expecting care soon. In these private areas, ICE agents cannot enter without a judicial warrant or consent from an authorized person at the hospital.

Legal Right #3: Patient Privacy

Finally, Dr. Robby touches on another legal right:

Dr. Robby: OK, time for you to go.

Agent Russo: I was just having a chat with Ms. Peters [hospital clerk] here.

Dr. Robby: You can see how busy this department is, right? You’ve been nothing but a distraction and a disruption since you’ve been here. I’m already short-staffed … So please, for the love of God, can you just go wait over there in the room with your detainee, so I don’t lose any more patients or staff?

Any conversation between Agent Russo and Ms. Peters poses a risk of violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which prohibits providers from disclosing patient health information, including immigration status. Providers may only disclose a patient’s immigration-related information if there is a judicial warrant, the disclosure is necessary to prevent serious and imminent harm, or the patient provides consent to disclose.

Even though HIPAA grants patients the important right of privacy, the ever-present risk of HIPAA violations explains why advocacy organizations recommend that health care providers outright avoid collecting information on patients’ immigration status if doing so is not necessary for care. In The Pitt, the staff adhered to this advice. No one asked Pranita about her immigration status; her injury remained the focus.

For health care workers, it might feel frustrating to be assigned the extra burden of defending patients’ rights in the face of ICE. After all, as The Pitt often shows, our health care workforce is resource-strapped and tasked with a dizzying array of responsibilities already. But until we have a federal government that supports a prohibition on ICE enforcement in hospitals, providers must be vigilant about their rights and the rights of patients if they hope to preserve their quality of care.