Healthcare Workers Look For Better Guidelines On How To Handle Immigration Encounters

Here are the morning’s top stories on Thursday, September 25, 2025…

• Healthcare workers across Southern California are struggling to provide medical care to undocumented patients, without clear guidance on how to handle encounters with immigration agents. Medical workers want hospitals to improve guidelines and provide better training so they can protect patients and themselves.
• A nearly seven mile stretch of Highway 1 near Big Sur will remain closed this winter, three years after back to back landslides wrecked the roadway. But things could improve in the spring.

Healthcare Workers Want Better Guidance On Handling Immigration Encounters

Health care workers across Southern California are struggling to provide medical care to undocumented patients without clear guidance on how to handle encounters with immigration agents.

A new bill signed by Governor Gavin Newsom last week will prohibit immigration enforcement from entering restricted medical areas without a warrant. Now, workers want hospitals to improve guidelines and provide better training so they can protect patients and themselves.

Monique Hernandez says the lack of guidance from admin on how to engage federal immigration agents is causing stress for hospital workers. She points to an incident that occurred at Riverside Community Hospital back in June as an example. Hernandez, a veteran nurse at the hospital and vice president of SEIU 121 RN, says agents were allowed inside to guard a detained person despite not having identification. “Any officer that comes into the hospital needs to have a badge on them, needs to show proper identification on them,” said Hernandez. “The nurses didn’t think to ask for proper identification at the time.”

But Hernandez says that burden shouldn’t fall on nurses already dealing with high stress patient care. She says administrators at Riverside Community Hospital could have stepped in to calm things down. Instead, Hernandez says nurses took care of the detained patient, while also negotiating with agents because administration wasn’t around.

This story was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2025 California Health Equity Fellowship.

Highway 1 Through Big Sur To Reopen After Years Of Work

Come next spring, a road trip up to Big Sur should be a little easier for Southern California residents. That’s because Caltrans now says crews are aiming to have Highway 1 fully reopened through the Regent’s Slide area by the end of March 2026.

Two back-to-back landslides — the Paul Slide and the Regent’s Slide — have kept a portion of the road above the Big Sur coastline closed since January 2023.

Kevin Drabinski, a spokesperson with Caltrans District 5, said crews have faced big challenges clearing more than 300,000 cubic yards of material. “We were faced with this, literally a crack in the ground, that we could not bring bodies across,” Drabinski said. Workers were able to use remote-controlled excavators and bulldozers to make progress. Roughly 7 miles between the Esalen Institute in the north and the Lucia Lodge in the south remain closed, but there’s still about 100 miles of smooth Highway 1 driving between Cambria and Carmel.