Pregnant immigrants are detained for months despite the rules

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Pregnant immigrants are detained for months despite the rules

Lorena Pineda was five months pregnant when masked agents picked her up on a street corner near the San Fernando Home Depot in June.

The agent caught him from the sale, ran to his sister and put him in the car. He told her. “Be careful,” he told her. “I’m pregnant.”

“Don’t think I’m going to let you go because of that,” she recalled him saying.

Immigration policy and Customs Enforcement Agents should not be arrested, arrested or arrested pregnant, Mr. Bancelisa and violations of immigration conditions “or if their removal” is prohibited by law. ”

Lorena Pineda was examined by a doctor at the clinic on Oct 16, 2025.

(Karla Gachet / The Times)

But pregnant women are increasingly being picked up, deported and imprisoned under the Trump Administration, lawyers and advocates argue.

Pineda, 27, was held at the Downtown La Processing Center before being transferred from San Bernardino, Atlanta to Alexandria, where he began his victims in Alexandria.

The American Civil Liveties Union documents more than a dozen cases of pregnant women being held without proper medical care at the Stewart Detention Center at the Stewart Detention Center in Stewart, LA.

In one case, a woman was struck while walking erratically. Another high-risk woman was placed in solitary confinement. In some cases, women are denied remote care or do not offer translation services to talk to medical staff. Others complained that their pleas for treatment services were ignored for weeks, according to the ACLU.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” said ACLU attorney and author of a book called Ice Director Todd Todd Lydd in October asking that pregnant women be removed.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia Mclaughlin, it is “very rare” for pregnant women to be detained. Those who are like that, he said, receive “continuing maternity visits, mental health services, healthy food support, and housing in accordance with the standards of public care.”

It is not yet clear how many pregnant and postpartum women have been arrested, because the conmetion authority reports semi-annually that the number has expired due to the expiration of the Republican-led Congress.

Lawyers across the country said their pregnant clients were being driven into difficult situations. In California, Angie Rodriguez, an asylum seeker stuck at the Mesa Verde Ice Processing Center in Bakersfield, Missivedrorder in July. He has since been released.

In the case at hand, Netsos Mairena was six months pregnant with twins when she was admitted to the hospital after having complications last month and was confined to a hospital bed, said her lawyer, Theya Crane.

These women, they said, “I have been taken away from their families, they are sent to detention facilities thousands of kilometers away from their families, and they remain imprisoned in these terrible conditions – but also with the health and safety of their pregnancy.”

McLauglin noted that Pineda, Rodriguez and Mairena all crossed the southern border in the past five years and were “taken out of the country under the administration of the bid.”

Tied medical care, may be the “Best Healthcare” many immigrants have received in their lives.

McLauglin said the ACLU’s findings did not identify women by name and rate “in” anonymous and unverified claims. ”

“Pregnant women currently make up 0.133% of all illegal aliens in custody,” he said, adding that they are “under supervision.”

He also added that “all of the painful, four-year-olds took place at the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center – That’s 10% of the inmates who are pregnant and below the national average.”

McLauglin said Rodriguez did not even know she was pregnant when she was arrested and placed in long-term detention.

Mairena, a Nicaraguan immigrant, was not stabbed in a hospital bed and arrested on suspicion of cruelty to youth, McLallin said.

Crane, her lawyer, said Mairena was charged with domestic abuse for child endangerment because her 7-year-old daughter was present during the argument with her partner. Crane is fighting those charges, saying Mairena was acting in self-defense.

Mairena was released from custody on November 26, after being questioned about her crime.

After his arrest, Pineda spent more than three months in a Louisiana prison. The state has become a hotbed of immigration detention under the Trump administration.

He knew one of the foreign women who lived in a large room with 54 beds and a television for many waking hours. The second Salvadoran mother said she felt her child grow inside her as the days passed and she settled into the rhythm of the fake, arresting strangers longing for children, family and home.

He lists at least 20 other women who are pregnant at the facility. Some of those who gathered were released, said Pinedaya; Others were quickly dismissed.

One of the women, he remembered, was about four months pregnant with twins. The woman cried and begged the guards for days after they helped her get pills to drive the children away – help that didn’t arrive before Pineda left the place.

Another pregnant woman he met was removed, but the officers caught him and he was injured for misbehavior. Eight days later, they deported him, he said.

“Think,” said Pinedaya. “They waited until she lost the child before kicking her out.”

Conditions at the center were difficult. The guards shouted. Eating inside, he said, with junk food. Hot dogs, spaghetti. The news he heard drove him crazy.

A woman he met at that center was arrested leaving the hospital after having a C-section. She said immigration officials eventually took her out without her child, even though they met later.

“I was afraid of something like this,” Pinedaya said. “You never know what’s going to happen.” She was terrified of giving birth in a cage.

The Women’s Commission for Women, a Washington, DC, non-profit, has been trying to track the number of pregnant, postpartum and nursing mothers arrested by immigration agents and document the conditions they face. Its leaders say they have encountered important obstacles.

“We don’t really know what’s going on inside the detention centers,” said Zain Lakhani, the Commission’s director of rights and justice.

With reporting requirements eliminated and access to buildings reduced after the administration perfected many of the legal systems within the institutions, it is difficult to get the true picture. “We used to talk to them and raise complaints, either to the office of civil rights and civil liberties or directly, the internal type is also there.”

Since launching the tracker, it means, the group has received important reports pregnant, PostPartum, including women arrested, “although he was not willing to share the statistics. There is evidence that the snow does not follow the policy to provide adequate housing, medical care and healthy food.

“These are very vulnerable things that require special health care, special nutrition and food,” said Lakhani. “We know clearly from all the medical guidelines around pregnancy that you are someone who needs to be able to go to the doctor and the emergency, and just the emergency of the health needs that you have.”

In July, the investigation led Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA.) For the purpose of human rights for those who have been abused and “credible reports of abuse of pregnant women.” Reports include a lack of adequate medical care, timely screening or adequate food.

“The presentation of humanity to pregnant women by the administration is a shame,” he wrote to the democratic values and wrote to Ice Director Lyons last month, demanding the release of pregnant women, Postpartum and nurses who did not pose a security risk.

Pineda moved to El Salvador in 2023, part of an unprecedented wave of millions who arrived at the US20 border by 2025. Her husband, with her husband, ran away from her husband at work, she said. His father had already settled in the US

They found a “coyote” who was charging thousands of dollars and asked his mother to put her land up as the debt was paid. But when they arrive, they find that the end is difficult. They are torn between homes in the San Fernando Valley, living with relatives and sometimes strangers.

After a while, her husband had a solid job in construction. Her daughter, now, was learning English and enjoyed school. Her 3-year-old son is making friends. Pineda and his sister-in-law had started a food stand, where he sold breakfast and pundus to workers near the home depot.

On June 19, he got up hours before daylight, got dressed and went to his sister’s apartment. As the sun rises, they start preparing food and start selling in the parking lot at 6 a.m. They earn about $200 a week from the area and use the money to help children. He was nervous about going out that morning.

Two weeks earlier, an attack prepared by the US Border Patrol CMDR. Greg Bovino had raised the Los Angeles community’.

Around 8:30 am agents were pulled over in an unspecified vehicle.

Pineda still has surveillance video of the arrest on his mother’s phone. You can’t make him pull out.

“I couldn’t run because I was pregnant,” she said. “I robbed them with my hands on my back, they put me in the car and took me away.”

He arrived at the South Louisiana Ice Processing Center on June 24. Pinera said there were medical staff on site, but none equipped to perform sonograms or any of the routine care he was used to. To see a doctor, he was booked for about three hours each way to a medical center in Monroe, LA.

In the first month, he said, he could not call his family.

Separated from his daughter and son by 1,500 miles and walls and fences, he had to get out.

“It was hard for him,” said his daughter. “Every time he talked to me, he cried.”

He had a group of seven women. To pass the time, they weave bracelets and bangles from plastic bags and talk about their country. He saw women fighting their crimes.

After more than three months, the guards told him he was set to see a judge.

“I told them I didn’t want to,” she said. I was “signing my papers” to make myself in El Salvador.

The judge set his departure date for Oct. 3 and was told to arrange a flight to Los Angeles.

His family skipped paying the rent and bought it with a ticket. It was September 29. Security dropped him off at the airport.

Days later, he met with immigration officials in Los Angeles. With her almost full-term pregnancy, officials extended her departure date to March.

The day carries him.

“My husband said he won’t let me go alone,” she said. So he’s trying to figure out how to pay for four tickets home. And how they will put food on the table in El Salvador.

His mother still has a country house in the country where she grows fruit trees. There are mangoes, guayabas, jocotes and peaches.

And there are women who love friends.

“Estan Esperandome“He said. They are waiting for me.