\n<\/p>\n
The putrid smell<\/span> emanating from breakfast turned Daniela\u2019s stomach, which wailed internally from hunger and nausea. For months, she had lived mostly on bread and the pantry items she could cobble together from the commissary in her ICE detention facility. Pregnant and trapped at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, she felt the gnawing of hunger and isolation.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not a place for me,\u201d Daniela, whose name has been changed to protect her from retaliation from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, wrote in Spanish in a message to The Intercept.\u00a0<\/p>\n She\u2019d been having abdominal pain, and she caught Covid in early September. According to Amanda Heffernan, a nurse midwife and professor at Seattle University who reviewed Daniela\u2019s medical records at her request, for roughly two months, Daniela never received a prenatal visit with an OB-GYN.<\/p>\n Pregnant people generally aren\u2019t supposed to be held in immigration detention at all.\u00a0Official guidance<\/a>\u00a0in place since 2021 directs ICE to avoid detaining pregnant, postpartum, and lactating women, unless their release is \u201cprohibited by law\u201d or in \u201cexceptional circumstances.\u201d In cases where the government determines that pregnant women must be detained, the guidelines impose strict obligations on detention facilities to monitor their conditions and ensure that facilities meet their mental and physical needs.<\/p>\n The Trump administration appears to be ignoring that directive, according to immigration experts, advocates, a pregnant detainee, and The Intercept\u2019s analysis of congressional reports and letters. Taken together, the evidence indicates that the Department of Homeland Security is detaining pregnant women at alarming rates, in rapidly deteriorating detention conditions.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve seen so many pregnant people in [ICE] detention,\u201d said Tania Wolf, the Southeast advocacy manager at the National Immigration Project.\u00a0Experts at the American Civil Liberties Union and the Women\u2019s Refugee Commission made similar observations.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are cases of people who clearly meet the criteria not to be detained, and that ICE has gone ahead and detained anyway,\u201d said Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU National Prison Project. Zain Lakhani, the\u00a0director of migrant rights and justice\u00a0at the Women\u2019s Refugee Commission, said her group\u00a0has\u00a0noticed<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca significant increase in the number of pregnant detainees, of pregnant women, postpartum and lactating women in detention,\u201d in the months since President Donald Trump returned to office.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hard numbers on the number of pregnant women in immigration detention are nearly impossible to find. The Trump administration has stopped publishing semiannual reports on\u00a0the condition and number of pregnant, postpartum, and lactating women\u00a0in immigration detention facilities.\u00a0Congress used to require that DHS compile the reports, but as of the last funding bill, it had dropped the mandate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, we don\u2019t have functional transparency and oversight mechanisms for DHS and for immigration detention,\u201d said Nithya Nathan-Pineau, policy attorney and strategist for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve seen so many pregnant people in [ICE] detention.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n That leaves the public unaware of how many people there are like Daniela, who said there were two other pregnant women in her unit at the detention facility. The Intercept was not able to speak with the women directly.\u00a0<\/p>\n Christopher Ferreira, a spokesperson for\u00a0GEO Group,\u00a0the for-profit prison company<\/a> that operates Northwest Detention Center and 19 other ICE detention facilities, told The Intercept that GEO provides \u201chigh-quality services,\u201d including medical care, \u201cgoverned by\u00a0standards set by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and independently accredited by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care.\u201d Ferreira also noted that at the center where Daniela was detained, ICE provides government-administered health care to detainees.\u00a0<\/p>\n Daniela, who is 27, immigrated to the United States in 2023 from Venezuela to seek asylum while pregnant with her first child, now a 2-year-old U.S. citizen. She missed her daughter while in ICE detention, she told The Intercept. They were kept apart for those two months.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never left her alone,\u201d Daniela said of her daughter.<\/p>\n Last week, after The Intercept made inquiries to DHS and GEO group, Daniela was released from ICE custody and reunited with her daughter.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cDetention is inherently<\/span> dangerous and damaging for children and pregnant women,\u201d said Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., at a press conference in August.\u00a0He was announcing a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0his staff compiled over the summer, which found 14 credible accounts of pregnant women being mistreated within immigration detention.\u00a0<\/p>\n Pregnant detainees, their partners, ICE officials, and their attorneys have reported pregnant women being denied adequate medical care, being forced to sleep on the floor, and being denied sufficient meals and snacks. Attorneys claimed their pregnant clients had waited \u201cweeks\u201d to see a doctor.\u00a0<\/p>\n The partner of a woman in DHS custody told Senate staff that the woman was pregnant and had been left to bleed for days before facility staff would take her to the hospital. According to their report, once the woman arrived at the hospital, she was left alone in a room to miscarry without any water or medical assistance for 24 hours.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n