By Lora Strum, Managing Editor, ACLU
Shackled and chained while miscarrying, denied prenatal care, given inadequate food and water—these are the conditions that pregnant women in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention must endure.
Despite its own directive advising against detaining pregnant individuals, ICE has increasingly held pregnant immigrants in facilities across the country, where abuse and medical neglect go unchecked. Over the past nine months, the ACLU and partner immigrant rights groups, including the National Immigration Project, Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, Sanctuary of the South, and SNAP, interviewed more than a dozen pregnant women who described horrific treatment at ICE facilities. We found widespread neglect and repeated violations of federal policy.
“Immigration detention is known for medical neglect, abusive conditions, and utter disregard for the dignity of people in ICE’s custody,” says Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, who co-authored a letter to ICE documenting these conditions. “Still, what we heard from the pregnant women we interviewed are some of the most horrifying stories I’ve heard about detention.”
Although ICE has stopped publicly reporting the number of pregnant individuals it detains, and has refused to provide this information to Congress, ICE acknowledged that Basile, a detention center in south Louisiana, was holding 14 pregnant women as of April 2025. That number reflects a broader trend of detaining people who should qualify for release under federal regulations, which require the release of women “medically certified as pregnant.”
Interviews with detained women reveal that ICE officers have arrested pregnant individuals even after they informed staff of their pregnancies, including survivors of domestic violence, who are at heightened risk.
In April 2025, Alicia* arrived for her routine ICE check-in in Louisiana and was detained without warning, sent to Basile. She soon discovered she was pregnant. She was taken to a local hospital for a blood test, but no one explained her medical treatment or provided interpretation. In detention, she received small portions of poor-quality food that left her feeling weak and hungry. By May, Alicia began experiencing severe abdominal pain, cramping, and bleeding. She reported her symptoms to facility staff, who transported her to an emergency room, where medical personnel performed an invasive uterine test without her consent, injected her with an unknown medication, and later informed her that she had miscarried.
Despite this miscarriage, ICE returned her to Basile that night and detained her for two more months. She continued to experience heavy bleeding, swelling, fever, and severe uterine pain, submitting repeated sick call requests that went unanswered. In July 2025, ICE deported Alicia, separating her from her children, and she later sought hospital care for a severe infection acquired while in custody.
Alicia’s experience is far from unique. Marie,* a graduate student and lawful visitor to the United States, was detained for more than 20 weeks at Basile during her high-risk pregnancy. Although she had informed ICE officers that she was pregnant, officers placed in solitary confinement after transferring her thousands of miles from the U.S-Canada border to Basile. She was not sent for medical treatment until other detained women advocated for her. Inside the facility, Marie said the food was often inedible and when she asked about missing prenatal vitamins, a nurse told her, “You won’t die if you don’t take them.”
Marie was released only after legal advocates intervened, but after her detention she developed eclampsia, endured a difficult delivery, and continues to struggle with postpartum depression linked to her detention trauma.
Other women’s stories mirror these experiences. Lucia,* who was detained after appearing for a regular check-in appointment with ICE, began to experience heavy vaginal bleeding in the middle of the night when she was two months pregnant. She requested immediate medical attention, but was not taken to see medical staff for several hours. Instead, medical staff took her to a small room and left her bleeding alone without providing her any food, water, or pain medication. Later that evening, after a significant loss of blood, she was taken to the emergency room, with her arms and legs shackled as she was actively miscarrying. When she arrived at the hospital, she required a blood transfusion because she had suffered a miscarriage.
Julieta,* detained for two months despite having a valid visa, was shackled at the ankles, hands, and waist during cross-country transport and feared that poor nutrition and stress could endanger her pregnancy. Ana,* six months pregnant and still in detention, was denied prenatal vitamins and meaningful medical care. Jenny,* visibly pregnant when detained in February 2025, was restrained during transport, suffered vomiting, diarrhea, and vaginal bleeding, and had limited access to drinking water.
Together, these accounts depict a systemic pattern of cruelty and medical neglect toward pregnant women in ICE custody, in direct violation of agency prohibitions on detaining and restraining pregnant individuals.
“The stories that are represented in this letter are just the tip of the iceberg,” Cho told NBC News earlier this month. “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.”
The ACLU and partners are calling on ICE to act immediately to address this systemic abuse. In a letter to Congress, advocates urged the agency to identify and release all pregnant, postpartum, and nursing individuals and to follow its own directives prohibiting detention except in rare circumstances. They also recommended establishing a clear process for pregnant detainees to request timely release, ensuring access to medical care that meets community standards, investigating neglect and abuse at Basile, and closing facilities that have repeatedly violated detention standards designed to protect pregnant and postpartum individuals.
