There is simply no way to defend the current posture of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department on pregnant women. Since Donald Trump took office and sparked a full front attack on immigration, ICE decided to ignore their own policy that discourages the prolonged detainment of pregnant women, and started to viciously persecute them, prompting several legal advocacy groups to file a 13-page complaint with the Department of Homeland Security last Tuesday, where they urge ICE to abide to their own policy.
Only this month, according to The Center for Investigative Reporting, ICE had detained 33 pregnant women and held them in detention centers across the country. Data also shows a 35% increase in the detention of women by ICE this year, with as many as 292 pregnant women, being detained between January and April of this year.
The officers enforcing this cruel practice, are ignoring direct instructions from the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Thomas Homan, who was also the highest-ranking official at ICE under President Obama. In August of 2016, the director signed a memo that read “Absent extraordinary circumstances or the requirement of mandatory detention, pregnant women will generally not be detained by ICE.”
An ICE spoke person talked to KUOW-FM 94.9, a National Public Radio member station in Seattle, and stated that their policy on the prolonged detention of pregnant women remained unchanged, something that the ACLU, the American Immigration Council, the Women’s Refugee Commission, and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies have a really hard time believing, due to the testimonies from nine formerly detained pregnant women, who claim they weren’t given proper medical care while in ICE custody.
“This issue is of immediate concern given the administration’s executive orders directing ICE to dramatically increase immigration enforcement actions and detentions as well as overall detention capacity,” read’s the coalition’s letter to the DHS. “These broad enforcement directives raise serious questions about the future of ICE policies on the detention of pregnant women and the agency’s ability to properly provide medical care while pregnant women are in its custody.”
Previously, when ICE detained pregnant women, they were released after only one day with an ankle-monitoring device, but ever since President Donald Trump started criminalizing mothers and children by spewing slurs like ‘anchor baby‘ without any consequence, it seems that pregnant woman have now become fair game. Exactly what can a country that doesn’t respect women and motherhood can expect?