Horrific Reports Reveal Abuse of Pregnant Women and Children in US ICE Detention Centers

Since the Trump administration took office in early 2025, the number of pregnant women held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has risen sharply, even as ICE's own policy directs that pregnant individuals should not be detained at all except in narrowly defined "exceptional circumstances" — limited to cases involving national security threats or an imminent risk of serious violence. Separately, federal regulations mandate that anyone medically confirmed to be pregnant at the time of detention must be released on parole.

Those protections exist on paper. In practice, pregnant women across the country are being held in horrific conditions that violate those rules. An analysis of ICE data found that the agency has been routinely neglecting the health care needs of pregnant and postpartum detainees.

What that neglect looks like in practice is devastating. A Senate investigation led by Senator Jon Ossoff catalogued case after case of pregnant women waiting weeks for basic prenatal appointments, being told to drink water instead of receiving medical evaluation, and reporting severe symptoms that went ignored. Some women miscarried after medical attention was repeatedly denied. Others miscarried alone — without a nurse, a doctor, or anyone present — with only a bottle of water nearby. 

Many organizations documented additional abuses in that same investigation, including invasive procedures performed without informed consent, denial of prenatal vitamins, placement in solitary confinement during high-risk pregnancies, and the use of physical restraints on detainees who were actively miscarrying. There have also been reports of stillbirths linked to inadequate care inside detention.

ICE's own standards acknowledge that pregnant and postpartum people require more medical attention. The 2025 ICE National Detention Standards explicitly call for close medical supervision after a pregnancy is confirmed, access to specialized prenatal services, comprehensive counseling, lactation support for postpartum detainees, and recognition that pregnancy increases a person's nutritional and caloric needs. However, the documented reality inside many detention centers bears little resemblance to those standards.

Equally disturbing are the accounts involving children. The Ossoff’s staff documented 18 credible reports of mistreatment of minors in ICE and CBP custody.

One attorney shared the case of a U.S. citizen child with severe medical issues who was hospitalized three times while in custody with her mother. When the child began vomiting blood, her mother pleaded for medical help. A CBP guard allegedly responded with: “Just give the girl a cracker.”

Other children have faced life-threatening neglect. A 10-year-old U.S. citizen recovering from brain surgery was detained with her family and denied necessary follow-up care, leading to ongoing brain swelling and serious developmental complications. In another case, a four-year-old undergoing treatment for metastatic cancer was reportedly deported without being allowed to consult a doctor.

The scale of child detention under the current administration is staggering. The number of children held in ICE custody on any given day has risen more than sixfold under the administration — with some days seeing 400 or more children detained at once. 

Nowhere is the human cost of family detention more visible than at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley — the country's only dedicated family detention facility, reopened by the Trump administration in March 2025. The facility quickly developed reports of contaminated food and a measles outbreak drawing national headlines alongside widespread accounts of mistreatment.

Under the Flores Settlement Agreement, the federal government is legally required to release children from immigration detention within 20 days — a limit the Dilley facility has violated repeatedly, holding more than half of the children detained there in its first year of operation for longer than the law allows. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who has made seven oversight visits to the Dilley facility, described detainees being treated "as prisoners" and has demanded the facility's closure, calling it in "perpetual violation of the law" for routinely holding children beyond the legally permitted 20-day limit. Over 6,200 children have been detained by ICE over the past year. Many have been held at Dilley for over 100 days — some for nearly a year.