California hospitals and clinics are on high alert as immigration raids continue and their patients — both legal residents and undocumented immigrants — afraid to step out are increasingly canceling medical appointments.
One Los Angeles-area clinic system, St. John’s Community Health, told CalMatters about a close encounter with officials who appeared to be immigration agents. Staff said armed officers wearing tactical gear tried to enter a parking lot in Downey, about 10 miles southeast of Los Angeles, where doctors and nurses in a mobile health clinic were seeing patients, many of them walk-ins from the community.
Alfredo Contreras, the driver of the mobile clinic, said five unmarked SUVs and vans on Wednesday morning pulled up to a gate in the parking lot where they had set up, located at a drug and alcohol recovery center. Contreras and a security guard stood in front of their vehicles, blocking the entrance…