DREAMers in the Spotlight: Where Grey’s Anatomy Got it Right and Where Grey’s Anatomy Got it Wrong

Guest blogger: Norah Cunningham, law student, University of San Francisco:

I am a huge Grey’s Anatomy fan. The show’s creator and head-writer Shonda Rhimes is an expert at pulling fans’ heartstrings and developing her characters into relatable, complete humans—a skill she tried to bring into the most recent episode, “Beautiful Dreamer.” The episode featured a surgical intern DREAMer facing the fears and potential consequences awaiting her after an ICE agent entered the hospital where she worked and refused to leave until he spoke with her about a stop light photo of her running a red light. While I am a fan of Grey’s Anatomy, and I do applaud Shonda and the other writers for spotlighting the struggles of DREAMers, particularly in this political climate, this episode was not without its flaws.

Understanding that this was a fictional situation where certain details needed to be discarded to make room for enticing plot lines, here are a few points in the episode where I found myself on the edge of my seat for reasons unrelated to the usual Grey’s Anatomy drama.

When the ICE agent arrived at the hospital and refused to leave:

            In the midst of a busy hospital scene, an unassuming man approached Chief of Surgery, Dr. Bailey, and asked to speak with one of her surgeons, introducing himself as agent Martin Fields, and soon revealing he was with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Dr. Bailey proceeded to show him to her office to make time to find the surgeon he was looking for and gather more information about why he was looking for her. When Dr. Bailey later tried to send him away by saying that his target was busy in surgery, the ICE agent sat at Dr. Bailey’s desk and menacingly stated that he would wait.

Hospitals are sensitive locations under the Morton Memo.

Hospitals are listed as sensitive locations in an October 4, 2011 Morton Memo, which is a letter from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that provides guidelines to ICE agents against conducting operations in sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, and churches. These guidelines are still generally followed, although less so since Trump has taken office. The effect of this letter is that ICE agents are advised to not enter hospitals to carry out immigration enforcement, which made this entire situation frustrating to watch from the very beginning.

There was no question of a warrant.

When ICE agents are trying to apprehend people at their places of employment, they technically need a valid warrant signed by a Federal Judge to enter private areas. While the ICE agent was perhaps free to roam the halls of the hospital looking for his target (if he was disregarding the guidance in the Morton Memo), Dr. Bailey invited the agent into her private office without asking to see a warrant. This turned Dr. Bailey’s office into a vulnerable space for the agent’s target. If Dr. Bailey had asked for a warrant, and the agent had not provided one, he would not have been able to sit in her office and wait for an indefinite period of time.

When the DREAMer, Dr. Bellow, discussed marriage with her U.S. citizen boyfriend:

            The ICE agent’s target was revealed to be Dr. Bellow, a surgical intern who was born in El Salvador and escaped with her mother and siblings after her father was murdered when she was one year old. After a very appropriate panic-fueled reaction to hearing about the ICE agent on the premise, Dr. Bellow was advised by another doctor to marry her citizen boyfriend for legal status. The couple discussed it for a brief moment before Dr. Bellow, looking disappointed, said: “It doesn’t work that way for DREAMers. Getting married won’t get me legal status.”

It is possible for DREAMers to immediately obtain legal status through marriage, as long as they entered with inspection.

            Dr. Bellow’s statement was misleading. DREAMers and DACA recipients can gain legal status by marrying a United States citizen but, if they entered without inspection, they are subject to a ten year bar before they can return and adjust their status. Entering without inspection means entering the United States without being inspected by an immigration officer (typically under some sort of temporary visas). Many DREAMers and DACA recipients entered with inspection and overstayed their visas, resulting in their lack of legal status. While Dr. Bellow may have entered without inspection, which would make marriage not an immediate form of relief for her, there are many DREAMers who did enter with inspection and who can receive immediate legal status through marriage.

When the female doctors ran around frantically asking their male counterparts for help:

            As the show wove in and out of the other plot lines in the episode, there were multiple scenes of the female attending surgeons helplessly asking their male counter parts what they should do to help Dr. Bellow, asking: “Don’t you have someone you could call?” Both of the men that they asked offered no advice.

The not-so-subtle reaffirming of gender roles was frustrating to watch.

            As a brief aside from a strict immigration lens analysis, I was astonished to see an attending neurosurgeon and an attending general surgeon, who are both the heads of their departments, run around the hospital asking the men around them what they should do. Why these incredibly successful and intelligent women were unable to think of some sort of answer themselves in these earlier scenes in the show was unbelievable.

Why didn’t anyone call an immigration attorney?

            Speaking of thinking of some sort of answer, no one in the show suggested calling an immigration attorney. There was a brief scene where a doctor recommended seeing a lawyer in New York who could fake Dr. Bellow’s death, but aside from that, no one suggested seeking legal advice. Aside from hiring a private immigration attorney, a quick google search would have also revealed multiple hotlines in Seattle (where the show takes place) that they could have called to find resources for people being apprehended by ICE agents.

When the plot line humanized the ICE agent:

            What began as a portrayal of a stern and stubborn ICE agent trying to deport one of the hospital’s most talented surgical interns transformed into a portrayal of a man with a wife who hated his job, but even more so, hated the “system” that employs him. Agent Martin Fields’s character developed into a real human when Dr. Bailey discovered he had a heart problem where he was at severe risk of a heart attack. When Agent Fields saw Dr. Bailey doing well in her job, he disclosed that, while he used to be proud to wear his ICE coat and some agents still are, now he’s ashamed at the agency’s practices, particularly the practices of deporting kids and doctors. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” he revealed.

            I actually did not find too much to complain about in regard to this development. At first I was troubled because I thought it was the show’s way of trying to balance the politics of its viewers and appeal to the folks who are commonly heard defending egregious acts by ICE agents on the grounds that they are simply “doing their job.” However, I appreciated how his story took a different focus and instead turned on how Trump era immigration policies are making even those who used to be “proud to wear the coat” now ashamed of their part in the misguided deportations.

            In the end, the ICE agent was looking for Dr. Bellow because she was caught running a red light and faced deportation because of it. Dr. Bellow was able to avoid encountering the agent, though, because the doctors were able to get her into a medical program in Zurich, Switzerland to “further her education,” and she took off that night.

            I appreciate Grey’s Anatomy taking the initiative to spotlight a DREAMer character and portray DREAMers in a light that describes much of the DREAMer population: young professionals who have no connections to their country of birth, and who are facing an immigration system that is constantly searching for ways to kick them out. With that said, this could have been an opportunity to not only spotlight DREAMer experiences, but also spotlight people’s rights and what an employer or a undocumented person should do when ICE comes knocking (aside from having the resources to fly to Switzerland to “continue education”).

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