Episode #42 Deep Dive – ICE in Hospitals & the Trump Rx Grift
A deep dive into this week's episode of Paging America
››› The ongoing disruption of health care by ICE
Federal agents from ICE and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) continue to disrupt the delivery of health care in Minnesota.
The AP reports that immigration officers arrived at a Minneapolis hospital with a Mexican immigrant who had broken bones in his face and skull. They claimed that, trying to escape, he had “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall” while handcuffed and in their custody:
Staff members at Hennepin County Medical Center determined that could not possibly account for the fractures and bleeding throughout the 31-year-old’s brain, said three nurses familiar with the case.
“It was laughable, if there was something to laugh about,” said one of the nurses, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss patient care. “There was no way this person ran headfirst into a wall.” [...]
At least one ICE officer told caregivers that Castañeda Mondragón “got his (expletive) rocked” after his Jan. 8 arrest near a St. Paul shopping center, the court filings and a hospital staff member said.
“I almost think one doesn’t have to be a physician to conclude that a person can’t get skull fractures on both the right and left sides of their head and from front to back by running themselves into a wall,” Dr. Lindsey C. Thomas, a board-certified forensic pathologist told the AP.
The 19th reports that fear of ICE is keeping pregnant immigrants in Minnesota from critical care:
Pregnant patients increasingly aren’t showing up for prenatal visits. Those who are are asking if they can have fewer.
Some are going without proper nutrition because they’re scared to go to the grocery store.
One provider said that in the past two months, she’s seen multiple cases of a rare complication that often leads to miscarriage after not seeing patients for months.
Verite News reports that a pregnant woman with two American-born children — including a breastfeeding infant — is awaiting deportation in a Louisiana immigration detention facility. She has been separated from her family for more than three weeks:
Family members and attorneys for patients hospitalized after being detained by federal immigration officials said they are facing extreme difficulty trying to locate patients, get information about their well-being, and provide them emotional and legal support. They say many hospitals refuse to provide information or allow contact with these patients. Instead, hospitals allow immigration officers to call the shots on how much — if any — contact is allowed…attorneys said.
Democrats have issued ten demands, what they are calling “guardrails”, on DHS officers as a condition for voting for a bill to restore funding for DHS that expires next week. One of the guardrails impacts medical facilities:
Protect Sensitive Locations – Prohibit funds from being used to conduct enforcement near sensitive locations, including medical facilities, schools, child-care facilities, churches, polling places, courts, etc.
Sign the Committee’s open letter calling for legislation to restore hospitals as sensitive locations, free from the presence of ICE and other federal agents → ProtectMed.org/ICEoutofHospitals
››› Democratic Senators say Trump’s “TrumpRx” website may not be legal
In a letter to a HHS watchdog group, Sens. Dick Durbin, Peter Welch, and Elizabeth Warren wrote:
“Given that oversight requests from Congress for information about the scope, structure, and legal authority underpinning the TrumpRx website have gone unanswered by HHS, and due to the lack of clarity with how HHS OIG [Office of Inspector General] will conduct oversight of a manufacturer’s direct-to-consumer [DTC] platform that is embedded in the TrumpRx website, we cannot be sure that TrumpRx will comply with existing federal laws.”
“Legitimate concerns about inappropriate prescribing, conflicts of interest, and inadequate care have been raised about the exact types of DTC platforms to which TrumpRx would route patients,” the senators wrote in the letter.
More from PharmaVoice:
“In many cases, the discounted prices offered through these websites are more than a patient would pay if they went through insurance. As a result, the program may only benefit uninsured Americans, which is about 8% of the country, those with high deductibles or patients with insurance that doesn’t cover a specific drug. In addition, pharma companies have already raised prices on many TrumpRx-listed drugs this year.”
“There appears to be possible conflicts of interest involved in the potential relationship between TrumpRx and an online dispensing company, BlinkRx, on whose board the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., has sat since February 2025.”
The site launched at 7 pm ET on Thursday.
››› ACIP is reconsidering ALL vaccine recommendations
The Guardian reports that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is now reconsidering ALL vaccine recommendations:
All vaccine recommendations are being reconsidered by the US’s vaccines committee [ACIP], according to its top adviser, who in recent interviews slammed vaccination requirements for attending school and said vaccines should be taken on the advice of an individual’s doctor. [...]
Significant additional changes may be made to the childhood immunization schedule this year, [ACIP Chair Kirk] Milhoan…told the New York Times last week. ACIP may “not necessarily” change the recommendations for all vaccines to become optional, but the committee is “reevaluating all of the vaccine products including risks and benefits”, Milhoan said.
Milhoan has previously said he supported individuals over the collective public and framed vaccine debates as “autonomy versus public health”.
››› More Epstein Files released, Trump says it “absolves” him, new CBS “health” contributor mentioned hundreds of times
A massive tranche of material from the Epstein files was released last Friday and they include some shocking revelations. Trump, who is mentioned over 3,000 times in the files, claims they “absolve” him of any wrong doing:
“I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping, you know, the radical left,” Trump told reporters in his first public comments since the latest release of the files.
“I think it’s really time for the country to maybe get onto something else,” Trump told reporters in The Oval Office on Tuesday. “Now that nothing came out about me, other than it was a conspiracy against me, literally by Epstein and other people.”
One of the people mentioned more than 1,700 times in the files is wellness and longevity influencer Dr. Peter Attia. Attia published a lengthy apology on X in which he claims he never saw any underage girls with Epstein, never witnessed any criminal activity, and basically knew nothing about the sordid criminal life of the man he told Epstein’s assistant that he goes into “withdrawal when I don’t see him.”
Who is Peter Attia? Via The Cut:
Attia is a Stanford-trained physician who dropped out of his surgical residency and spent a few years working in management consulting before opening his own clinical practice in 2014. He shot to prominence following his 2023 best-selling book, Outlive: The Science & Art of Longevity. The Wall Street Journal has called Attia “the favorite doctor of biohackers,” and he has a lot of celebrity fans… In a recent interview with 60 Minutes, Attia said that he charges around $100,000 a year for his concierge practice. A proponent of eating as much protein as possible, Attia is also an investor and the chief science officer for the trendy protein-bar company David, and just last week, Bari Weiss announced he would be joining CBS News as a contributor.
LA Times: Longevity guru Peter Attia keeps CBS News role despite showing up in Epstein files:
CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss has resisted dropping Attia, citing concerns about cancel culture despite crude emails he exchanged with Epstein.
Attia once refused to return to his home in San Diego when his wife when his newborn son was in the ICU because he was meeting with Epstein:
Attia said [when] his wife [called, she] was in the back of an ambulance with their son, who had “suddenly stopped breathing” and had no heartbeat until Jill, a nurse, resuscitated him through CPR.
“When Jill called me from the ambulance, I was in New York, in a taxi on Fifty-Fourth Street, on my way to dinner,” Attia wrote. “After she finished telling me the story, I just said, without a shred of emotion, ‘Okay, call me when you get to the hospital, so I can talk to the doctors in the ICU.’”
Attia remorsefully detailed how his wife spent four days alone in the ICU, pleading for him to come home to no avail. “I stayed in New York, busy with my ‘important’ work…Ayrton’s cardiac arrest happened on a Tuesday, but I did not come home to San Diego until Friday of the following week. Ten days later.”
Meanwhile, an email from the day after his son’s near-death shows Attia solidifying plans to meet Epstein the next morning.
Links for a deeper dive on Episode #42
AP: ICE claim that a man shattered his skull running into wall triggers tension at a Minnesota hospitalThe 19th: Fear of ICE is keeping pregnant immigrants in Minnesota from critical care
Verite News: A pregnant mother in ICE detention says she’s bleeding — and hasn’t seen a doctor in weeks
KFF Health News: ‘I Can’t Tell You’: Attorneys, Relatives Struggle To Find Hospitalized ICE Detainees
Democratic Congressional leaders’ letter listing their ten “guardrails” for ICE
Sign the Committee’s open letter calling for legislation to restore hospitals as sensitive locations, free from the presence of ICE and other federal agents → ProtectMed.org/ICEoutofHospitals
MedPage Today: TrumpRx May Not Be Legal in Its Current Form, Senators Contend
STAT: Senators raise concerns about TrumpRx in letter to HHS watchdog
PharmaVoice: Why TrumpRx is stumbling before it gets off the ground
The Guardian: US committee is reconsidering all vaccine recommendations
The Hill: Trump says latest release of Epstein files ‘absolves’ him
The Atlantic: The Longevity Influencer Who Went Into ‘Withdrawal’ Without Jeffrey Epstein
The Cut: The Celebrity Doctor in the Epstein Files (non-paywalled version is HERE)
Variety: CBS News Contributor Peter Attia Under Fire After Latest Epstein File Disclosures
The Daily Beast: CBS News’ Star Hire Hung With Epstein as Baby Son Fought for Life
The Guardian: A ‘wellness bro’, a cosmologist and an RFK Jr crony: meet Bari Weiss’s new CBS News contributors
Los Angeles Times: Longevity guru Peter Attia keeps CBS News role despite showing up in Epstein files
Thank you for compiling all of these often! It's hard to keep up these days.