A Texas doctor's TikTok telling migrants they do not have to answer questions about their immigration status when receiving medical care has gone viral.
Doctor Tony Pastor posted the video talking about Governor Greg Abbott's executive order requiring hospitals in the state to collect data on undocumented migrants.
The Houston cardiologist said he was afraid the policy, which added a citizenship question to intake forms, would discourage people from seeking medical care.
"It has made all of us physicians and providers super uncomfortable," he said in the video. "No one has told us what people are going to do with this information. The way the country is moving, I worry that this is information that people are going to use to deport people."
Pastor said that hospital staff had been told that patients did not legally have to answer the question, but no one was telling immigrants this.
"Wouldn't it be amazing if everyone who comes in doesn't answer it, and it really messes with whatever data they are looking for?" he added.
Newsweek reached out to Pastor via social media and Abbott's office via email for comment on Friday morning.
When Abbott announced the plans in August, he said it would allow the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) to assess the costs of providing medical care to undocumented immigrants.
The program, which began November 1, was in reaction to an influx of immigrants across the United States-Mexico border over the past two years, including many who had arrived in Texas.
The governor has been one of the biggest voices denouncing current federal government border policies and has implemented his own program, Operation Lone Star, to tackle illegal immigration into Texas.
Ahead of the order's implementation, Texas Hospital Association spokesperson Carrie Williams told Newsweek that patient care would not change.
"Texas hospitals continue to be a safe place for needed care," she said. "On the particulars of implementation, all hospitals are different."
Pastor's video has been liked around a quarter of a million times, while over 7,000 comments included other users saying they had refused to answer the citizenship question and others on intake forms.
"I am in Texas. I will gladly add this to my list of "prefer not to answer" questions at medical establishments. this includes my cycle, marital status, and form of birth control," one commenter, Carlee Nicole, wrote.
Others asked whether the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provided protections against the government accessing certain patient information.
While the act does offer strict confidentiality rules, data can be shared with law enforcement officials under certain circumstances, such as a court order or warrant, or to identify or locate a suspect or missing person.
Abbott has said that the data is used to assess costs, rather than for any immigration enforcement measure, and the executive order requires hospital staff to tell patients their care will not be affected. The first wave of data is set to be submitted in March 2025.
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