Report: Pregnant Women in ICE Custody Claim Neglect, Trauma

Some pregnant women in ICE detention camps say they are not receiving the medical treatment they are guaranteed by law, and are instead subject to “inhumane” treatment which may have caused them to miscarry, according to a harrowing Monday report from BuzzFeed News. In December, BuzzFeed reports, the Trump administration overhauled an Obama-era mandate that pregnant women should only be detained in “extreme circumstances.” Instead, ICE is now required to stop detaining women once they have reached their third trimester, and to “ensur[e] pregnant detainees receive appropriate medical care including effectuating transfers to facilities that are able to provide appropriate medical treatment.” Many once-pregnant detainees, however, told BuzzFeed that they were repeatedly denied adequate medical care, and were subject to physical and psychological trauma that jeopardized their pregnancies. One woman said that when she was four months pregnant and started “bleeding profusely” in a detention facility, officials told her that “it was not a hospital and they weren’t doctors.” They refused to give her any medical attention, the woman said. She later miscarried, and accepted voluntary removal to El Salvador. “My soul aches that there are many pregnant women coming who could lose their babies like I did,” she told Buzzfeed, “and that they will do nothing to help them.”