Trigger Warning: This article contains descriptions of pregnancy loss, medical neglect, and abuse.
She was two months pregnant when immigration officers detained her at a routine check-in. That evening, she began to bleed heavily and asked for medical help. Instead of receiving care, she was taken to a small room with no food, no water, and no pain medication, and left there alone for hours. When she was finally taken to hospital, she was shackled at the arms and legs, still actively miscarrying. By the time she arrived, she needed a blood transfusion.
Her name in the documents is Lucia. It is not her real name. She is too frightened of retaliation to use it.
Lucia is one of more than a dozen women whose experiences were documented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and partner organisations in a letter sent to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Senate committees in October 2025. The accounts, gathered from facilities in Basile, Louisiana, and Lumpkin, Georgia, describe a pattern of medical neglect, physical restraint, and institutional indifference that human rights lawyers say is not only dangerous but in direct violation of the agency’s own rules.
“The stories that are represented in this letter are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, who co-authored the letter. “You have women who are talking about being shackled and restrained while they’re actively miscarrying; you have women begging and pleading for things as basic as prenatal vitamins and being denied.”
A policy ignored
The legal picture is startlingly clear, even if the reality on the ground is not. Under ICE Directive 11032.4, the agency is instructed not to detain pregnant, postpartum, or nursing individuals for an administrative immigration violation unless “release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.” In 2021, the Biden administration strengthened this position, ordering ICE to avoid detaining anyone known to be pregnant or nursing outside of genuinely exceptional cases.
The Trump administration, which returned to office in January 2025, has not formally revoked that policy. But advocates say it is being ignored in practice, and the numbers bear this out. According to data compiled by the Transactional Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, the total number of people held in federal immigration detention increased by 50 per cent between early January and late September 2025, from around 40,000 to approximately 60,000. As the detention dragnet has widened, more pregnant women have been swept up in it.
Critically, no one knows exactly how many. A reporting requirement that previously compelled the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to track the number of pregnant, postpartum, or nursing people in custody has lapsed. ICE has refused to provide this data to Congress, the ACLU, or advocacy groups who have formally requested it. The Center for Reproductive Rights, which published a detailed account of conditions in custody in February 2026, notes that “even the number of pregnant, postpartum, or nursing people in custody is unknown.” Based on ICE’s own rules, that number should be near zero.
As recently as April 2025, a single detention centre in Basile, Louisiana acknowledged holding 14 pregnant women, a figure that, given the broader surge in detention, almost certainly understates the national picture.
“The most chilling stories”
The individual accounts are harrowing.
Alicia, a Louisiana resident and mother of two (one of whom is a US citizen), arrived for a routine ICE check-in in April 2025 and was detained without warning. She was sent to the Basile facility, operated by the GEO Group, a private prison corporation, and soon discovered she was pregnant. She received small portions of poor-quality food. By May, she was experiencing severe abdominal pain and bleeding. When taken to hospital, medical staff performed an invasive uterine procedure without her consent and administered an unknown medication. She was told she had miscarried. ICE returned her to the detention centre that same night. She continued to bleed for two more months, submitting sick call requests that, she says, went largely unanswered.
A woman called Julieta, detained despite holding a valid visa, was shackled at the ankles, hands, and waist during cross-country transport. A woman called Jenny, who was visibly pregnant when detained in February 2025, was also restrained during transit; she experienced vomiting, diarrhoea, and vaginal bleeding, and had limited access to drinking water.
In January 2026, The 19th, an independent newsroom covering gender, politics, and power, reported on Cecil Elvir-Quinonez, a woman who was breastfeeding her youngest child while awaiting deportation from a Louisiana ICE facility states away from her family. On 6 January 2026, she experienced heavy bleeding and was taken to hospital; staff confirmed she was still pregnant. She was flown the following day to a long-term detention centre. She had not been counselled about her reproductive options, a particularly grim detail given that abortion is illegal in Louisiana and banned after six weeks in Florida, the state where she had been living.
Also in January 2026, the Nevada Independent reported that ICE has not paid any third-party medical providers since October 2025 and currently has no functioning mechanism to provide prenatal care.
What the science says
This is not merely a humanitarian failure; it is a public health crisis with well-documented consequences. Research cited by the Democratic Women’s Caucus, a group of 61 Democratic lawmakers who wrote to ICE acting Director Todd Lyons demanding the immediate release of all pregnant, postpartum, and nursing detainees who do not pose a security risk, shows that women who are pregnant and give birth while in custody experience increased rates of miscarriage, increased rates of premature birth, and higher rates of medically unnecessary caesarean sections compared to the national average.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology sets minimum standards for prenatal care in correctional settings that include regular pregnancy testing, access to appropriate nutrition and vitamins, depression screening, delivery in a licensed hospital, and postpartum care. The accounts emerging from ICE facilities indicate that these standards are not being met.
There is also the matter of stress. Medical professionals are clear that the anxiety of arrest, indefinite detention, and family separation, with no timeline for resolution, places pregnant women at compounded physiological risk. “There are more people in detention than ever,” said Mich González, co-founder of the Sanctuary Now Abolition Project. “Detention is becoming increasingly prolonged. The stress alone of being in detention right now is horrific, especially because most people have no idea when it will end.”
One woman, documented by the ACLU, developed eclampsia, a life-threatening pregnancy complication involving elevated blood pressure and convulsions, after her release from detention. Her condition was so severe that she remained hospitalised for weeks following the birth. She continues to experience postpartum depression linked, her advocates say, to the trauma of her time in custody.
The government’s position
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have consistently disputed these accounts. In August 2025, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News that pregnant women in custody “receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care,” and called reports of substandard conditions “false.” She also said that all detainees undergo medical, dental, and mental health screenings within 12 hours of arrival and have access to 24-hour emergency care.
ICE has not, however, released the data that would allow independent verification of any of these claims. It has not responded to data requests from Congress, the ACLU, or civil rights organisations. Nor did it respond to multiple requests for comment from the reporting organisations who have investigated these conditions.
A cross-party concern
What makes this story unusual, and particularly significant, is the breadth of the coalition pushing back. In February 2026, a group of pro-life organisations, including Secular Pro-Life, Live Action, and the Equal Rights Institute, published an open letter to the Trump administration urging the reinstatement of protections against detaining pregnant women. “Pregnancy and early postpartum are medical states that require care that immigration detention facilities are structurally unable to provide,” the letter stated. Their concerns were grounded in precisely the same facts as those raised by the ACLU and feminist reproductive rights advocates.
The Center for Reproductive Rights is currently calling on members of the public to demand that their Congressional representatives visit ICE facilities and investigate the treatment of detained women directly.
The bigger picture
These cases sit at the intersection of immigration policy, reproductive justice, and the systemic devaluing of women of colour, the demographic most affected by both ICE enforcement and inadequate maternal healthcare in the United States. They are happening in a country where abortion has already been stripped from most states, where maternal mortality is rising, and where the question of who deserves bodily autonomy and medical dignity is being answered, in practice, through policy.
For these women: mothers, asylum seekers, women with valid visas, women who came for a routine appointment and never went home, the answer being given to that question, right now, is the wrong one.
If you are affected by these issues or wish to take action, you can add your name to the Center for Reproductive Rights’ campaign demanding Congressional oversight of ICE detention conditions.
