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with coalition organizations to make comprehensive lists of demands from both hospitals and elected officials. The need for creative policies and protections for patients, workers, families, and communities really hit home for Rubesch when he considered how instrumental an expansive state sick time law passed about two years ago was to Min- nesotans' resistance to ICE. Called the Earned Sick and Safe Time law, it requires employers to provide a certain number of hours of sick leave to all employees working more than 80 hours per year. But perhaps equally transfor- mational are the expansive rules about what that leave can be used for: not only to care for and attend medical appointments for your- self or family members, but to include friends, neighbors, or anyone who relies upon you as your chosen family. The leave can also be used when an employee does not feel safe to go to work. "It was so fortuitous that this passed when it did," said Rubesch. "Because of this law, our nurses were able to use it to defend their communities, to say, 'I need to be in my community today because there is an ICE patrol running and I can't leave my neighborhood.'" Minnesota Nurses Association also worked with its partners to create a model policy for hospitals that would be most protective of patients and workers, which included provisions such as not allow- ing ICE into care units, ensuring agents carry no firearms into the building, banning agents from being in the room when patients are receiving care, and ensuring that patients have access to certified interpreters, social workers, and legal resources. MNA decided to first approach Hennepin County Medical Center to adopt the model policy, not only because it represents the RNs there, but because it is the largest trauma facility in Minneapolis, a publicly owned hospital, and ICE regularly took detainees there for medical treatment. Due to some other organizing that MNA was leading, last year the county commissioners assumed direct control of the hospital and it was no longer governed by an intermediary board. MNA and labor allies were able to apply pressure to commissioners, who in mid January adopted an ICE policy for the hospital that was largely what the unions had advocated. Now that MNA has won a foothold, it is working on convincing every hospital in the Metro area to adopt the policy. It is also requesting a meeting with the Minnesota Hospital Association to demand that its hospital members adopt the policy. Rubesch said that union nurses will not stop advocating for patients on every possible level. "We continue to be present and add our voices and our names to a whole host of public demands of elected officials, standing in solidarity with community demands and any other creative approaches to push back," he said, giving examples of a proposed statewide eviction moratorium to protect workers who have been afraid to work and cannot pay rent, and another proposal to review liquor licenses of restaurants that are serving alcohol to federal agents carrying firearms. "We nurses are leading the care team not only at the bedside, but also the community," said Rubesch. "We are everywhere, at our church organizations, at our kids' soccer teams. We made us ready, and every- thing we've done makes me really proud of our membership." Lucia Hwang is editor of National Nurse magazine. J A N U A R Y | F E B R U A R Y | M A R C H 2 0 2 6 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 21 "It almost brings me to tears to think about the horrors of the reality we are dealing with, but also feeling heartened and hopeful seeing the solidarity, the compassion, the care that members were showing for each other. Just the power in seeing people stepping up and coming together."