Unintended Consequences

The nursing home industry is already struggling with unsafe staffing shortages, financial instability from tunneling to related entities, and feeble enforcement of regulations. It is a disgrace how greed and incompetence have ruined the industry.

Skilled Nursing News reported that Trump’s arbitrary enforcement of immigration policies will accelerate the industry’s decline and cause more neglect and abuse. Immigrants make up a significant portion of nursing home staff. In states like California, over half of all certified nursing assistants are foreign-born, and nearly 30% of direct care workers nationwide are immigrants. Many of these workers take on difficult, low-paying jobs that U.S.-born workers largely avoid. Deporting even a fraction of them will worsen an already dire labor shortage.

While these policies aren’t directly aimed at the long-term care industry, their impact will be devastating—cutting off a workforce that the industry desperately depends on. Nursing homes are already struggling to recruit and retain staff.

The demand for caregivers is expected to rise by over 40% in the next decade, but these immigration restrictions will slash the pool of available workers, forcing facilities to either run dangerously understaffed, leading to more neglect, abuse, and preventable deaths; raise wages to attract new workers, increasing costs that many facilities can’t afford; or cut even more corners, prioritizing profit over patient care.

Instead of enforcing stricter oversight or protecting workers and residents, Trump’s administration is expected to loosen regulations on the nursing home industry. This means fewer staffing requirements, allowing facilities to operate with even fewer caregivers per resident; less accountability for corporate-owned nursing homes, which already prioritize profits over patient safety; and weakened inspections and penalties, giving facilities more leeway to ignore understaffing and substandard care.

Meanwhile, Trump is using the “catch and release” program to free thousands of undocumented immigrants from custody since he took office, partly because of limited detention space in U.S. immigration facilities.