The Ordeal of Pregnant Women Detained By ICE: Malnutrition, Isolation, And Miscarriages

El País reports on pregnant women being held in US immigration detention despite the practice having been banned since 2021:

It is unknown how many pregnant women are being detained by immigration authorities because the Trump administration is not reporting to Congress, despite ICE being required since 2019 to detail the circumstances of each pregnant detainee and the length of her detention every six months.

To address the information gap, the advocacy group Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) created a tool in September to report known detained pregnant women. Despite guidelines prohibiting it, they continue to receive cases from ICE that ignore these protections, putting the health and safety of women and their babies at risk. “This tool will bring transparency to a system that has become a black box, so we can fight for the safety and human rights of these women,” said Zain Lakhani, director of immigration rights and justice at the WRC, at its launch.

“WRC has received reports of pregnant detainees begging to bring an apple or a carton of milk into their cells and being denied, forcing them to try to meet their nutritional needs with French fries and frozen burritos, the only food available for purchase, at an exorbitant price,” at the Basile facility, the report states. WRC staff interviewed deported nursing mothers in Honduras, “who were so malnourished by their detention” that their bodies “had stopped producing milk.”