More than 1,100 healthcare professionals from across Europe have urged MEPs to reject proposed measures aimed at increasing the deportation of undocumented people, warning they could threaten public health by transforming essential public services, including hospitals, into sites of immigration enforcement.
The draft plans, which are due to go to a vote on Thursday, have been in the works since last March, when the European Commission laid out its proposal to target people with no legal right to stay in the EU, including potentially sending them to offshore centres in non-EU countries.
The measures, launched after the far right made gains in the 2024 European parliament elections, are part of a broader effort by the EU to overhaul how it manages migration.
Before the vote, which is one of the last steps before negotiations begin between EU institutions over the final text, doctors and nurses from Portugal to Ireland and Greece were among those who signed an open letter expressing concerns over the plans.
“We refuse to become instruments of immigration enforcement,” the letter noted.
Published in six languages and sent to MEPs before the vote, the letter argued measures would have a wide-reaching impact: “Behind technical language lies a profound transformation of our societies and the destruction of the social fabric.”
At the heart of their concerns is a proposed requirement for all member states to implement broad, vaguely defined detection measures to identify undocumented people. “In practice, this risks legitimising racial profiling, and turning schools, hospitals, shelters, workplaces, public transport and even private homes into sites of immigration enforcement,” the letter said.
The proposals could also mean healthcare workers are required to report undocumented people, in what was described as a threat to the ethical duties of protecting patient privacy and guaranteeing safe access to care.
The result would be a “climate of fear” that could deter people from accessing care, the letter said. “When people are afraid to access care, everyone’s health is at risk,” it added. “It also erodes trust in social services and threatens public health, as it is already happening in countries like the US, where ICE-style raids occur daily.”
In the UK, where rules were introduced in 2017 to compel hospitals in England to charge most undocumented migrants upfront for many forms of hospital-based medical care, the impact had been noticeable, said Anna Miller, head of UK policy and advocacy at Doctors of the World UK.
“In our clinics in the UK we see patients too afraid to go forward to the NHS in case it leads to an ICE-style raid at their home address,” she said. “This EU regulation risks creating the same climate of fear across the EU, driving people away from healthcare services, with serious consequences for individuals and for public health systems as a whole.”
In announcing the proposals last year, the European Commission described them as “effective and modern procedures” that would increase the deportations of people denied asylum or who had overstayed their visa. Currently about one in five people without the right to stay are returned to their country of origin, and the rate has changed little in recent years.
Campaigners have long expressed concerns over the proposed measures, warning that they risk turning everyday spaces, public services and community interactions into tools of ICE-style immigration enforcement.
In February, 75 rights organisations said the plans “would consolidate a punitive system, fuelled by far-right rhetoric and based on racialised suspicion, denunciation, detention and deportation.” The joint statement came weeks after 16 rights experts from the UN wrote to the EU listing more than a dozen concerns over how the plans could contravene international human rights obligations.
In this week’s letter, healthcare professionals also expressed concerns that the regulation would lead to more people in detention, including children, within and outside Europe. “Detention has well-documented health consequences: respiratory and infectious diseases, severe anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, retraumatisation, acute psychiatric needs and higher incidences of suicide,” it noted. “In the case of children, the impact of detention is devastating and long-lasting; it will never be in their best interests and is prohibited under international law.”
The open letter was organised by Médecins du Monde, which said it was calling on EU institutions to remove any provisions that could deter people from seeking healthcare. “Migration enforcement cannot come at the expense of the right to health,” said Andrea Soler of the organisation. “The EU must ensure that its migration policies protect public health, uphold medical ethics and guarantee safe access to healthcare for all, regardless of migration status.”
