Pregnant Women Are Being Denied Food in ICE Custody
Reports from detainees paint a troubling picture of detention conditions
Our work at The Preamble is meant to help our readers better understand the systems and institutions shaping life in the US, and our immigration system is a big part of that. In recent months, there have been growing reports of mistreatment of people in immigrant detention at facilities around the country, but official reports have been scarce. We wanted to dig deeply into what’s happening so that we can keep you informed. This piece focuses specifically on how pregnant and postpartum women are being treated in detention. Given the sensitivity of the reporting and the subject matter, we’re publishing this piece anonymously.
—Sharon
Komalpreet Kaur was 23 years old and pregnant when she was arrested by ICE at a routine check-in in California last October. Kaur, who had been granted a five-year work permit by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, was detained for two and a half months at the California City Detention Facility, where she experienced issues like severe weight loss that put her pregnancy at risk and required urgent medical attention. Yet, according to the court filings, she received neither the care she needed nor a hearing about her case until she took ICE to court and a judge ordered her release last December.
In her petition, Kaur, who is an Indian national, described the conditions inside the California City facility as “abysmal” and reported frigid temperatures and lack of adequate nutrition, which caused her weight to drop to 90 pounds. Kaur also described experiencing pregnancy complications like regular nosebleeds, elevated bilirubin levels, insomnia, and other physical and mental health issues. In her court filing, she said that water to her tasted like bleach or detergent. Although Kaur’s detention lasted only a few months and she was eventually released as a result of her petition, the courts described the conditions inside California City as causing “irreparable harm” to her pregnancy and well-being.
Under the Biden administration, ICE had declared that it would stop arresting and detaining most pregnant, postpartum or nursing detainees, unless under “very limited circumstances.” The current and ongoing detention of pregnant women by ICE appears to violate the agency’s own words, and its unrescinded 2021 policy that bars detention of pregnant and nursing immigrants in most cases.
If they are detained, ICE supposedly monitors them “for general health and well-being, including regular custody and medical reevaluation, to ensure appropriate pre- and/or post-natal and other medical and mental health care,” according to a February response from DHS to an oversight letter sent by Sen. Patty Murray and 26 other senators last September.
A growing black box
According to DHS, as of Feb. 16, 2026, 86 ICE detainees were “identified as pregnant,” with nine women in their third trimester. But it’s unclear how many pregnant women might be suffering from poor conditions and inadequate health care while in detention, because Congress allowed a DHS requirement for ICE to report the number of pregnant detainees to lapse in March of last year. As a result, there is very little public data on the treatment of pregnant detainees in migrant centers across the country.
An ICE spokesperson has said that the agency provides “the best healthcare many of these individuals have received in their entire lives,” but in October of last year the Trump administration abruptly stopped paying the third-parties for detainee medical care, which has had a significant impact on those who are pregnant, postpartum or nursing and rely on these services for care while under detention.
And the lawsuits brought by detainees paint a different and much grimmer picture than what ICE has claimed.
Earlier this month, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) released a report on rarely available public data on ICE’s detention of pregnant, postpartum and lactating women. According to Zain Lakhani, Director of Migrant Rights and Justice at WRC, the organization recorded an alarming number of 16 miscarriages, and she described that at least 10% of pregnant women detained were in their third trimester of pregnancy. Lakhani went on to explain that the gutting of federal oversight bodies like the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties by DHS has left migrants with no agencies to which they can submit complaints about the violations they experience under detention. “ICE detention centers have become a black box,” Lakhani told The Preamble.
Given the lack of public data, the Women’s Refugee Commission launched a Detention Pregnancy Tracker to collect confidential reports from pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women who have been in immigration detention. It spoke to detainees at reception centers in Mexico and Central America who described being shackled and put in restraints during visits to ob-gyn offices — something that violates ICE’s 2025 detention standards — with ICE officers present during medical examinations and even inside bathrooms for urine tests. “They took me to the hospital to see a gynecologist, but they took me in handcuffs, like I was a criminal,” said a woman who had been deported to Honduras. “It was really awful.” The report also describes multiple instances of pregnant women in their second and third trimesters being transported on long bus rides and flights.
What we do know
The California City detention center where Kaur spent time was owned by the for-profit company CoreCivic. Privately owned detention centers house a large majority of immigrants detained by ICE — almost 86% at the end of the Biden administration, according to data from the nonprofit research group TRAC. These for-profit centers are not subject to open record laws or civil service requirements that would apply to detention centers operated directly by ICE or the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
At the Delaney Hall detention facility in New Jersey, operated by private-prison giant GEO Group, immigrant detainees waged a labor and hunger strike over receiving expired, worm-infested food, being denied medical care, and having no access to basic hygiene products such as toilet paper, menstrual products, or toothpaste. Sen. Andy Kim and Rep. Rob Menendez, both of New Jersey, visited the facility and reported meeting a pregnant woman who said “she is not receiving full obstetrics and gynecological care,” and another “who had a miscarriage but received no care and was left to manage the miscarriage on her own.” New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport sued GEO Group on June 2 to gain full access to the facility after inspectors from the state’s department of health were barred from its medical unit, sleeping areas, and bathing and toileting areas.
The contracts corporations sign with ICE require them to comply with its national detention standards, but according to data from National Immigration Law Center, they often obtain waivers. CoreCivic was the subject of about 100 lawsuits last summer when news of the rampant abuse in its facilities came to light. Earlier this year, its Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas made the news when reports emerged about the inhumane conditions of detainees there, including medical neglect, moldy food, and verbal abuse of the children housed there.
Other detention centers include temporary holding facilities like one in Baltimore that was under the spotlight in January. Such facilities typically do not provide sleeping accommodations, and immigrants are meant to be there only for short periods of time. But migrants in Baltimore were housed for days in crowded rooms and had to sleep on the floor using emergency thermal blankets.
The conditions encountered by pregnant detainees like Kaur are known to be widespread in ICE detention centers and have led to serious consequences, including miscarriages. The California City detention center where Kaur was held was sued by a group of detainees last November who alleged dismal conditions such as dirty housing units, inadequate food and water, extremely cold temperatures, restrictions on family visits, denial of medical care for detainees with serious medical conditions such as cancer or diabetes, lack of accommodations for disabled persons, infringement of religious liberty, and denial of access to legal counsel.
One plaintiff said detainees were losing weight because they “don’t have enough to eat,” and a November report from the Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights describes testimony from medical workers who attended to migrants deported from the US to Honduras. In one case, a 25-year-old woman who arrived 13 weeks pregnant began to bleed while in custody. She reported her condition to guards over several days but received no medical care before being deported. Once she was back in Honduras, she had to receive emergency medical treatment at a hospital.
Another case involved a 40-year-old woman who suffered a missed miscarriage — meaning that the fetus remained inside her — while in detention. This kind of miscarriage comes with a high risk of infection and can lead to life-threatening complications such as sepsis. But the woman was denied medical care for almost two weeks before being deported to Honduras, where she arrived in acute medical distress and was hospitalized.
A court filing in one suit, brought in September of last year by six female asylum-seekers who had been detained and were seeking release, describes a 24-year-old migrant from Peru who was held at Mesa Verde, an immigrant detention center in Bakersfield, CA, while two months pregnant. She reported receiving no prenatal care in detention. At the same center — owned by GEO Group — a 32-year-old nursing mother from Nicaragua, who was also pregnant, received no access to a breast pump, causing “the painful condition of having her milk ducts clog.” She too was denied prenatal care.
The pattern of negligence toward pregnant detainees at Mesa Verde also came to light in a separate federal lawsuit filed against ICE last September. In this case, a 24-year-old Colombian migrant, Angie Rodriguez, suffered a miscarriage in the facility. Upon discovering her pregnancy while in detention, she was provided no medical care or prenatal vitamins. Her diet was also inadequate, forcing her to supplement provided meals with instant ramen, chips, and candy, often purchased at a high cost from the commissary.
According to a recently released report from California’s Department of Justice, detainees at Mesa Verde received insufficient portions of food (some described it as “dog food”), poor drinking water, and delayed medical care.
One woman described having to sleep on the floor during the intake process and being forced to eat and relieve herself in the same room as other members of her group. Others said the mattresses and pillows they were given smelled of urine. Female health care for the 99 detainees was provided by only one medical doctor, according to the report. One detainee with a gynecological concern waited three and a half weeks to be seen, while another had to wait about two months for an intake gynecological exam and PAP smear.
Lakhani told The Preamble that she has heard similar reports. “We’ve been hearing instances of really egregious lack of access to food,” Lakhani said. She elaborated that detainees have described receiving raw or frozen chicken as part of their pregnancy diet but being given no place to cook it. Sometimes they receive one burrito a day, which is frozen and inedible for hours, or one meal at 10 or 11 p.m.
Worsening conditions
There have been efforts to gather and publicize information about what’s happening to pregnant detainees. In July last year, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) published a significant report on the abuse of pregnant women and children in ICE detention. It found 12 credible instances of physical and sexual abuse, mistreatment of pregnant women, and mistreatment of children at California’s Adelanto Detention Facility.
Apart from Ossoff’s report, much of the available information comes from lawsuits and legal advocacy groups. For example, a report from the ACLU described a woman with a high-risk pregnancy placed under solitary confinement after being made to travel thousands of miles between the US-Canada border and the Basile Detention Center in Louisiana. She also did not receive medical attention until other female detainees advocated for her.
Despite the relative lack of data, what we do know makes clear that ICE detains pregnant, nursing, and postpartum women in conditions that amount to severe mistreatment. And the number of women subject to this mistreatment is growing: While in 2022 and 2023, 375 and 374 such detainees were taken into ICE custody, the number of detained pregnant, postpartum and nursing mothers rose to 498 between Jan 2025 and February 2026. In past years, most such detainees were eventually released and paroled, but now more are either being left in ICE detention or deported.
Given the government’s lack of transparency, the full story of how these women are being treated may be even worse than we currently understand.