Alicia reported for her scheduled check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in April, a process she had completed many times as an immigrant living in Louisiana for nearly a decade. This time, she was abruptly taken into federal custody.
ICE transported her to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, where agents conducted a health screening that revealed she was pregnant. Despite an ICE directive generally prohibiting the detention of pregnant women, Alicia was held there for three months.
At the facility, away from her two kids â a teenager and a child under 5 â she was given small portions of âsubstandardâ food that left her hungry. She also underwent a medical examination that she did not consent to, and suffered a miscarriage, civil rights groups said in a letter to ICE last month.
The groups demanded that ICE conduct a review to identify and release all pregnant women in its custody. The Independent has asked ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for comment.
Alicia is one of more than a dozen pregnant and postpartum women who reported being put in restraints, receiving inadequate nutrition, and suffering âmedical neglectâ at the hands of ICE agents at the Basile facility, and another detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia, according to the letter.
âThere’s really no circumstance where detention is the appropriate setting for someone who’s pregnant,â Sarah Decker, a senior staff attorney at RFK Human Rights, a nonprofit advocacy organization, told The Independent. Decker spoke to Alicia, who is only identified by a pseudonym, while she was in detention.
About a month after she was detained, Alicia began experiencing severe abdominal pain, vaginal discharge, cramping, and bleeding. She was taken to a nearby emergency room in shackles. There, she underwent an invasive medical procedure, without her consent, according to the letter. After the procedure, medical personnel told Alicia, only in English rather than her native Spanish, that she had suffered a miscarriage.
âFor her, that was very traumatizing, because she wasn’t able to understand why she had the miscarriage, what they did to her,â Decker said. National detention standards require ICE to provide language assistance for detainees with limited English proficiency.
After six hours at the hospital, she was returned to the Basile facility, where officials told Alicia that she would be deported to her country of origin, which her lawyer has not revealed to protect her identity. Although itâs not clear why facility officials made this remark, Alicia interpreted the comment as retaliatory, to silence her after her complaints about medical neglect and abuse, her lawyer said.
In fact, she remained at the facility for two more months. Unrelenting symptoms – bleeding, swelling, foul-smelling vaginal discharge and excruciating pain â persisted. The pain became so severe that she struggled to sleep.
When Decker and her team spoke to Alicia in June, âshe could barely have a conversation with us, because she was in so much pain and she was crying so much,â the attorney said. Alicia placed numerous sick call requests with medical personnel at the facility, but they went unanswered, according to the letter.
It wasnât until Alicia was deported in July that she was able to obtain antibiotics to treat the vaginal infection sheâd developed from the miscarriage that had gone untreated while in ICE custody.
Aliciaâs story is a harrowing example of why only limited exceptions for detaining pregnant women exist – if they are a national security concern, or pose an imminent risk of death, violence, or physical harm to someone, according to a 2021 ICE policy.
But even under those exceptions, the agency is required to monitor detained pregnant women to ensure appropriate care.
And yet, under the second Trump administration, pregnant women have been repeatedly detained. The exact number of pregnant women in immigration custody is not immediately clear, and The Independent has requested that figure from ICE.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told The Independent on November 6 that pregnant women make up â0.133 percent of all illegal aliens in custody.â
âPregnant women in custody are also subject to elevated oversight,â she said. âThe ACLUâs letter includes anonymous, unsubstantiated, and unverifiable claims. Pregnant women receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care.â
Data, available from a patchwork of media, lawsuits and Congressional reports, suggests dozens of pregnant, postpartum and nursing women have been detained so far this year.
ICE facilities have become a âblack box,â Zain Lakhani, director of migrant rights and justice at the Womenâs Refugee Commission, told The Independent.
The commission launched its Detention Pregnancy Tracker to build a record of the treatment of pregnant women in ICE custody by piecing together information from lawyers, health care providers, and labor organizers.
From 2019 through 2024, Congress required DHS to provide semiannual reports on the pregnant, postpartum or nursing women in ICE custody, including âdetailed justificationâ as to their detention. But Congress did not renew that requirement in 2025.
Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray, and 28 Senate colleagues, wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in September requesting information about how many pregnant women have been detained.
Noem has not responded to the letter as of November 25, a spokesperson for Murray confirmed to The Independent.
The senator told The Independent that sheâs fighting for âstronger oversight and humane treatmentâ of pregnant women in ICE detention.
âThe Trump administrationâs approach to immigration is cruelty for crueltyâs sakeâthey have been downright gleeful about breaking the law and using overwhelming force against law-abiding immigrants for no reason,â the Washington Democrat said.
Doctors and health agencies recommend certain dietary guidelines during pregnancy, typically advising women to consume at least an extra 300 calories a day. Alicia said the portions were small, even for her alone, and the food wasnât always edible, according to the civil rights group letter.
Some pregnant women reported only being fed a tiny frozen burrito for the entire day, while others said their food was moldy or covered in insects, Lakhani said.
Others reported staples served at ICE facilities included less than a handful of beans, half a piece of white bread, a handful of âsoggyâ green beans, and a âmystery ground meat,â according to Decker. And itâs reportedly not uncommon to go long periods without any meat, particularly at the Basile facility.
âWe’ve had women tell us that they dream of eating meat because they’ve gone weeks without any protein source,â the attorney said.
A 2024 ICE directive specifically requires those who are pregnant be given âregular accessâ to meals, snacks, milk, and juice.
However, the problem of pregnant detainees going hungry appears to be widespread, far beyond the Basile and Lumpkin centers. At an ICE facility in Broadview, Illinois, pregnant detainees were ânot provided with regular access to meals, nor additional snacks, milk, juice, or any of the extra nutrition recommended for pregnant people,â lawyers said in a legal filing regarding the centerâs unhygienic, overcrowding conditions.
At the Basile facility, Alicia similarly complained about the freezing temperatures and unsanitary conditions, Decker said. Federal judges have ordered several ICE facilities to improve conditions after disturbing reports.
Other detainees have reported instances of medical neglect, similar to Aliciaâs experience. One man, held at the Broadview facility, reported seeing a detained pregnant woman asking ICE officers for medication and being denied it, he said.
âShe asked the ICE officers for medication that she needed, but they would not provide her with any medication,â he said in declaration that is part of the lawsuit around the âcrisis conditionsâ at the facility.
Beyond the harsh conditions, family separation is inherently interwoven with the detention of pregnant and postpartum women. Lakhani said women, who already have children, have expressed âgrievous levels of stress and distress around being separated.â
In July, ICE issued a new version of a 2022 directive concerning the detention of parents of minor children. The new directive weakened ICEâs obligations, making it more difficult for parents facing deportation to make arrangements for their children.
The 2022 directive stated that ICE âmust affordâ parents an opportunity to consult with a lawyer to decide next steps for their minor children, like who would care for them, before being removed from the U.S. The 2025 version states that ICE âshould, to the extent practicableâ give detained parents those opportunities.
Lakhani expressed concern over the lack of long-term tracking of children after parents get swept up by ICE, especially in the confusion of mass arrests.
âThere isn’t that attention to detail to ensure that if you’re arresting a parent, you know that they’re going to be able to stay in touch with their child, that they’re going to be able to be reunified with a child,â Lakhani said.
For Alicia, being separated from her children âcaused her extreme psychological distress,â Decker said. âThat alone is enough to cause serious complications with a pregnancy, if someone is going through something like that.â
To this day, she remains separated from her children.
