Authority Figures in the Democratic Party advocate for a halt to ICE detaining pregnant women under the Trump Administration.
In a concerning development, reports have emerged about the poor medical care for pregnant and newly postpartum women in immigration detention facilities across the United States.
According to a congressional report from April, 14 pregnant women were detained at one facility when Senate Judiciary Committee staffers visited. One of these women, still nursing her infant daughter, was transferred to an all-male detention facility in Miami, Florida, which was not equipped to handle the specific needs of pregnant or postpartum women.
Advocates are increasingly worried about inadequate prenatal care, dangerous pregnancy outcomes, and childbirth conditions in overcrowded immigration detention centers. Lakhani, from WRC, described the issue as a "really significant black box" where it's increasingly hard to find out what's happening inside these facilities due to the Trump administration continually obfuscating basic oversight information.
To combat this lack of transparency, WRC recently launched a confidential, submission-based tracker to help document the conditions of pregnant women detained by ICE. The tracker allows attorneys, family members, and advocates to share information about pregnant or postpartum women and the type of care they received in immigration custody.
The pregnancy tracker aims to address the problem of many, many people identifying issues in a local way but lacking a centralized place to house and analyse this information. It's hoped that the tracker will provide a clearer picture of the situation and help drive improvements in care for pregnant and postpartum women in immigration detention.
In a move to address the issue, 27 Senate Democrats, including Patty Murray (Wash.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), have sent a letter to the Trump administration urging the Department of Homeland Security to stop detaining pregnant immigrant women. The letter demands that the Trump administration share information about how many pregnant and postpartum women are currently detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and what medical care, if any, they're receiving.
ICE's own pregnancy directive, created in 2021, states that immigration officials should only detain pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women when it is absolutely necessary. However, recent reports suggest ICE is not following its own guidelines. In a tragic incident, Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus had a stillbirth while detained by ICE in Nashville.
In an effort to safeguard the rights of detained pregnant women, Senator Murray previously pushed Congress to take action. During Trump's first administration, she introduced a bill to stop the shackling and mistreatment of pregnant women in ICE custody. She reintroduced the bill earlier this year.
Despite these efforts, the senator who introduced a bill in 2021 to prevent the limitation of liability for pregnant women in ICE detention remains unidentified in the provided search results.
Critical oversight departments, including DHS's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, have effectively shut down under Trump's administration. This further complicates the situation, as these departments play a crucial role in monitoring and improving the conditions in immigration detention facilities.
For the few pregnant women who are detained, it is required that they are kept in suitable facilities that can meet their specific medical needs. However, with the ongoing concerns about the quality of care, it seems that more needs to be done to ensure the safety and wellbeing of these vulnerable women and their newborns.
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