The primary care doctor for the East Palo Alto housekeeper with a chronic medical condition who collapsed when arrested by ICE last week was “catatonic” at Stanford Medical Center last Friday morning, and questioned her suitability to be discharged into federal custody that night.

During a protest outside the hospital Tuesday evening, Dr. Yusra Hussain, a physician on staff at Stanford for 20 years who was brought on Friday morning by the woman’s family to check on her care, accused Stanford of “caving in” to federal agents. They had stood guard outside her hospital room door since her arrest Aug. 25 and banned visits from family for all but the first day she was admitted. Stanford didn’t inform the family when she was being discharged, Hussain said.

“When I went to see her that morning, she barely could lift her arms to hold my hand. She was drenched in sweat. She couldn’t talk,” Hussain said. “She was literally in the state of catatonia. She could barely move her eyes and just answer with a nod.”

She appeared to be “in shock” from her arrest, Hussain said.

Nonetheless, she said she was assured by medical staff after her discharge that she was safe to be released.

The arrest of Aleyda “Yeny” Rodriguez, a 47-year-old married mother of three, has drawn attention both to the widening pool of immigrants the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is targeting under the Trump Administration’s directives, as well as Stanford’s authority over patients in federal custody.

Hussain made her comments at a gathering of about three dozen protesters, including Stanford health care workers and local activists, some of whom stood vigil with Rodriguez’s father outside the hospital last week.

Citing patient privacy, Stanford did not answer questions from the Mercury News about Hussain’s assertions, including whether Rodriguez was under a doctor’s care in Bakersfield or why the family’s access to digital medical records was apparently deactivated the night before she was discharged.

In a statement, however, the hospital said it “will continue delivering the highest quality clinical care to all our patients and complying with federal law enforcement directives.”

ICE has repeatedly declined to comment on Rodriguez’s case.

At the rally, Issy Tovar, a cousin of Rodriguez, said Dr. Hussain’s assessment of her catatonic condition “was worse than what we imagined.”

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “It feels a bit of a betrayal.”

Rodriguez’s father, Armando Rodriguez Garcia, who traveled on a tourist visa from Mexico to the Bay Area a few weeks ago to visit his family, thanked the crowd for their support. He said last week that he had intended to take his daughter and his youngest granddaughter back to Mexico with him in a few months because his daughter was “tired” here, but her arrest upended those plans to self-deport.

Rodriguez was dropping off her husband at her brother’s house in East Palo Alto, where they were meeting up to spend the day working together as gardeners, when ICE confronted them that Monday morning. After a brief grapple, her husband, Oscar Flores, fled to a neighbor’s yard, where the agent stopped his pursuit at the property line. Without a warrant, federal agents are prohibited from making arrests on private property. On a public street, however, they only need probable cause to suspect someone is not an American citizen to make an arrest.

Both husband and wife had tourist visas that expired two years ago, Flores told the Mercury News last week. Those visas are good for multiple entries for up to 10 years, usually for stays no longer than 180 days at a time. The family had settled into life in Silicon Valley, with both parents working and their daughters going to school here. The oldest graduated from college. The youngest daughter is 11.

Unbeknownst to the couple, the ICE agents arrested Rodriguez’s nephew, Dario Jasso, outside the same house earlier that morning. Flores said that, except for the expired visas, none of those involved in the arrests had any other criminal record – not even a speeding ticket. Jasso’s father, Ernesto Jasso, had told Flores that two weeks earlier, two unidentified men pulled in front of his house asking for his ID. He went into his house, however, and didn’t come out until after they left. But Jasso believed that with his work truck filled with gardening equipment out front, they might have been trolling for immigrants in the U.S. without permission, Flores said.

After Flores fled to the neighbor’s yard, he videotaped his wife screaming as the agents handcuffed her on her knees. She fainted as they hauled her to their van. On the video, Flores can be heard yelling that his wife is sick and could die.

Her family says she has a blood condition called thrombocytosis that had been treated by Stanford in the past. With low blood pressure and high stress, she can pass out, they said.

“This was a patient who was clearly not just physically sick, but psychologically ill with her catatonia,” Dr. Hussain said. “And we know very well that part of psychological healing is having access to familiar faces, to people who can actually rehabilitate you and make you feel better.”

In Rodriguez’s hospital room on Friday morning, Hussain called one of the housekeeper’s daughters on Facetime, but she was able to do little than respond “yes or no.” Since her discharge to Bakersfield, the family has been told that Rodriguez has access to her phone, Tovar said, yet they have yet to hear from her — a lack of communication that instills more concern.

An immigration lawyer working for the family had plans to try to visit her later this week. U.S. Rep. Sam Liccardo, who represents Santa Clara County and parts of the peninsula, is also working with the family to get more information.

Hussain said Rodriguez’s relatives, frustrated about not getting enough information from Stanford about Rodriguez themselves, contacted her through her activist group called “Healthcare Workers for Palestine,” that organized two years ago.

“Outside of that,” Hussain said, “we are taking on issues related to ICE cases and other things that are really highlighting injustices.”

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