Pregnant women describe miscarrying and bleeding out while in ICE custody, advocates say

The ACLU and other groups are pressing for ICE to identify and release all pregnant women in custody and to stop detaining anyone known to be pregnant, postpartum or nursing.

Over a dozen women told advocates and their attorneys that they suffered mistreatment and neglect while they were pregnant and held in immigration custody, including “medical neglect” and substandard care during pregnancy and miscarriage, such as being shackled, placed in solitary confinement and fed with poor-quality food, according to a letter sent to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and Senate committees Wednesday.

“The stories that are represented in this letter are just the tip of the iceberg,” said the author of the letter, Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “You have women who are talking about being shackled and restrained while they’re actively miscarrying; you have women begging and pleading for things as basic as prenatal vitamins and being denied.”

In addition to the ACLU and its Louisiana chapter, the National Immigration Project, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the Sanctuary of the South and the Sanctuary Now Abolition Project signed the letter. They are pressing for ICE to identify and release all pregnant women in custody and to refrain from detaining anyone known to be pregnant, postpartum or nursing.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to request for comment about the letter. In August, a DHS spokesperson denied allegations of mistreatment of pregnant detainees in a statement to NBC News after a report by the office of Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., found 14 credible alleged reports of mistreatment of pregnant women in ICE custody.

Federal agents detain a woman who is nine months pregnant women after she exited a hearing in immigration court in New York on Sept. 11.Michael Nigro / LightRocket via Getty Images fileAdvocates from the groups involved in Wednesday’s letter “met and documented the experiences of over a dozen women, including those who were pregnant, or who had recently experienced a miscarriage” in custody, according to the letter. Six of those women agreed to share their stories publicly, it added.