Pregnant Women Are Being Denied Food In ICE Custody

Earlier this month, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) released a report on rarely available public data on ICE’s detention of pregnant, postpartum and lactating women. According to Zain Lakhani, Director of Migrant Rights and Justice at WRC, the organization recorded an alarming number of 16 miscarriages, and she described that at least 10% of pregnant women detained were in their third trimester of pregnancy. Lakhani went on to explain that the gutting of federal oversight bodies like the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties by DHS has left migrants with no agencies to which they can submit complaints about the violations they experience under detention. “ICE detention centers have become a black box,” Lakhani told The Preamble.

Given the lack of public data, the Women’s Refugee Commission launched a Detention Pregnancy Tracker to collect confidential reports from pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women who have been in immigration detention. It spoke to detainees at reception centers in Mexico and Central America who described being shackled and put in restraints during visits to ob-gyn offices — something that violates ICE’s 2025 detention standards — with ICE officers present during medical examinations and even inside bathrooms for urine tests. “They took me to the hospital to see a gynecologist, but they took me in handcuffs, like I was a criminal,” said a woman who had been deported to Honduras. “It was really awful.” The report also describes multiple instances of pregnant women in their second and third trimesters being transported on long bus rides and flights.