Tenzin Dhondup

Tenzin is a junior in Branford studying the History of Medicine & Public Health and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, and Spanish. He has worked with immigrants locally as a Director at HAVEN Free Clinic since freshman year, where he has connected over 550+ patients to critical health services from cardiology to gynecology. At the state level, he organizes with HUSKY4Immigrants, with the goal of expanding Medicaid to all CT residents, regardless of documentation status. He grew up in both New Haven and Hunsur, a Tibetan Refugee Settlement in South India and spent his summer working at the Tibetan Government in Exile's Department of Health in India, where he worked on several programs supporting the health of 100,000+ Tibetan refugees in India, Nepal, and Bhutan. Currently, he is directing his own research at Yale Law School's Center for Health Law & Policy on the extralegal and insidious practice of medical deportation, which has resulted in the deportation of thousands of critically ill, injured, and even comatose undocumented and un(der)insured patients. By researching how this practice - which has disproportionately harmed Latino immigrants in America - can be banned from hospitals, he hopes that his work will translate into policies that protect the health, human rights, and dignity of undocumented patients.