Women Are Miscarrying in ICE Detention Centers—And the Numbers Are Lost

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers have long been criticised for cramped cells, inadequate nutrition, and limited medical care. But a disturbing new layer has emerged: a rising tide of pregnancy losses that the agency can’t even count.

Investigative work by The Guardian has pulled back the curtain on how pregnant women are treated—or, more accurately, mistreated—while in federal custody. In the first nine months after former President Trump returned to the White House, ICE documented 18 miscarriages. That figure sounds shocking on its own, yet the agency’s official logs stop at October 2025, leaving any later losses unrecorded and effectively invisible.

One story that illustrates the horror is that of Anabell, a Nicaraguan asylum‑seeker. After a routine check‑in she was detained, given two positive pregnancy tests, and then sent back to her holding cell without the basic follow‑up blood work, prenatal vitamins, or even a proper protein plan. A month later she began bleeding. “I told them I need to see a doctor,” she says, but ICE officers brushed her aside.

It took fellow detainees urging the guards for Anabell to finally be taken to an emergency room—handcuffed to a hospital bed while three ICE agents stood watch. The translator delivered the crushing news: she had lost the baby. Since then, she has endured ongoing complications—persistent bleeding, vomiting, rashes, hair loss, and weight loss—yet she reports receiving no additional medical attention.

Legal experts argue this isn’t an isolated oversight. Sarah Decker, a senior attorney at the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center, told the newspaper that women at the Basile processing center in South Louisiana repeatedly told ICE officers about their pregnancies, fought for prenatal care, and begged for emergency assistance when complications arose. “ICE is clearly aware,” Decker said, adding that the agency’s reluctance to release data appears designed to mask a pattern of life‑threatening neglect.

The lack of transparency is especially troubling because federal law obliges ICE to provide adequate medical care to anyone in its custody, regardless of immigration status. Yet the combination of understaffed clinics, language barriers, and a culture that treats detainees as security threats often leaves pregnant women without the care they desperately need.

Advocates are now demanding three concrete actions: an independent audit of all pregnancy‑related health outcomes in detention, immediate access to obstetric services for every pregnant detainee, and a public database that tracks miscarriages, stillbirths, and other complications. Without such measures, the tragedy continues to unfold behind barred doors, uncounted and unaddressed.

For those watching from the outside, the picture is grim but not hopeless. Increased media scrutiny, legal pressure, and public outcry have forced ICE to acknowledge some of its shortcomings in the past. The hope now is that the momentum built around these new revelations will translate into policy changes that protect the most vulnerable—women carrying new lives while locked up in a system that often feels designed to strip them of both freedom and health.