The Girls Of San Benito, The Center Where Trump Sends Pregnant Migrant Minors

Via El Pais: Since last July, the Trump administration has been sending all unaccompanied migrant girls who show up pregnant at the U.S. border to a single center located in San Benito, a small border town in South Texas, the state with one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. In recent months, more than a dozen girls have been transferred to this facility. At least half of them became pregnant as a result of rape. Some are 13 years old.

In theory, everyone who arrives at the San Benito center has the right to be informed of their options, including abortion, through a notification called a Garza notice. In practice, however, that right is in jeopardy, according to Sarah Corning, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “We remain concerned that doctors will refuse to perform abortions for fear of prosecution, something we’ve seen happen far too often since the ban went into effect” in the state, she says.

For Zain Lakhani, director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, the danger to the girls at San Benito goes beyond abortion. This organization does not have access to the center, so it cannot verify firsthand the conditions in which the minors or the babies born there are kept. However, they have spent months documenting what happens to adult pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. What they have seen in these places provides a sense of the treatment pregnant women receive in federal immigration custody: women held in cells without water or medical attention for more than 24 hours; women who have been deported while bleeding, or who go days without food.

ICE and ORR are separate systems and, therefore, work in different conditions, Lakhani explains. What happens in one cannot be directly transferred to the other. But the concern is real. “Even for girls who want to keep their babies, any complication requires emergency medical attention. And we have seen very troubling stories and trends in Texas about when women are actually allowed to access that care, especially when it requires the evacuation of a fetus or procedures that have been criminalized by the state,” she notes. “Concentrating pregnant women in a state with these laws puts their health, and sometimes their lives, at risk,” she adds. “This isn’t just about abortion, but about what happens to their bodies and their access to care during pregnancy, including life-saving care.”