Undocumented, Unseen, and Unwell: Accessing Healthcare in the US South Between 2010–2024

This exhibit is designed to contextualize and highlight the challenges that undocumented migrants have faced in accessing healthcare in the U.S. South over the past decade. Drawing from a wide range of materials—including oral histories, newspaper articles, and public records—it attempts to uncover the systemic, legal, and social barriers that shape migrants' encounters with the healthcare system.

Purpose and Importance
Access to healthcare for undocumented migrants in the United States remains unequal. Today, most undocumented people are excluded from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s coverage options, leaving them dependent on a fragmented safety net of emergency rooms, free clinics, and community health centers. These services vary drastically by region, and nowhere is this disparity more visible than in the U.S. South. In the South, state-level decisions, underfunded infrastructure, and political hostility toward immigrants have created some of the country’s harshest conditions for undocumented patients.

This exhibit will focus on the period from 2014 to 2024—a decade marked by shifting federal policies. This timeframe captures a critical juncture in healthcare access, public discourse, and migrant advocacy in the South.

Why the South?
The U.S. South is sometimes overlooked in national conversations about immigration and healthcare, yet it has become one of the fastest-growing destinations for migrant communities, particularly states like Georgia, Texas, North Carolina, and Alabama. At the same time, many Southern states have rejected Medicaid expansion under the ACA, increasing the risk of medical neglect for undocumented populations. The region’s rural geography and legacy of racial inequality make it a key place to study to understand how policy can shape healthcare access.

This project builds directly on our website's themes of marginalization, structural violence, and the historical roots of healthcare inequality. It serves as a case study that shows how the past can inform present-day disparities. This exhibit is aimed at an audience of academic peers, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and activists working towards more equitable healthcare solutions. 

Call to Action
This is meant to be more than a digital timeline, it is an invitation to consider how law and society intersect to affect millions of people. By incorporating lived experiences and structural analysis, the exhibit challenges viewers to reconsider what it means to offer “care."