ICE's Missing Miscarriage Data Leave Questions About Pregnancy Care in Detention
The Trump administration has reached record-breaking levels of immigration arrests amid accusations of medical neglect, including among pregnant women.
As the number of immigration arrests continues to break records under President Donald Trump, accusations of medical neglect and inhumane conditions within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities continue to rise. This includes the care, or lack thereof, of pregnant immigrants in ICE custody.
In a report published by The Guardian on Tuesday, three women spoke out about their experiences of being pregnant while in ICE detention. One woman, Anabell, said she didn't even know she was pregnant until ICE arrested her.
A 35-year-old mother of three children, Anabell, is an asylum seeker from Nicaragua who attended her ICE-mandated check-in appointment on February 25, according to The Guardian. But at the end of the otherwise normal appointment, she was told she couldn't leave. And after she was taken to a detention center in Newport, Kentucky, a medical evaluation revealed she was pregnant. "It was a surprise," she told The Guardian. "All I could do was cry."
While in ICE detention, Anabell said that she received special meals for pregnant detainees, but wasn't given any blood tests to confirm the health of her baby and was never scheduled for an ultrasound, she explained to The Guardian. After a month in ICE custody, she began to experience bleeding.
"I told them I need to see a doctor," she told The Guardian, and other detainees noticed how pale she had become. After repeated pleas that this was an urgent medical matter and she feared for her baby, she was eventually rushed to a ER day later. Anabell said she was shackled to a hospital bed when a Spanish interpreter told her she'd had a miscarriage and was no longer pregnant.
But her plight hasn't ended there. Nearly six months later, Anabell remains in ICE custody and "has continued to bleed, vomit and lose her hair in chunks," reports The Guardian. But despite these and other symptoms, such as significant weight loss and rashes, she has not received any follow-up care since her miscarriage.
Anabell is not alone. Another woman, 26-year-old Angie, told The Guardian that she similarly found out she was pregnant while in ICE custody in California only to miscarry weeks later. And there's Laura, a 21-year-old mother with a history of miscarriages, currently near her third trimester of a high-risk pregnancy while held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Laura stated in a legal declaration shared with The Guardian that although a physician at the facility said she needs to see a specialist for her condition, "facility administration has failed to approve or schedule the consultation."
But just how many pregnant detainees are experiencing miscarriages while in ICE facilities isn't clear, potentially putting women's health at risk.
During the first nine months of the second Trump administration, ICE recorded 18 miscarriages, according to The Guardian's reporting, but ICE data tracking miscarriages abruptly end on October 3, 2025. Follow-up questions from the news outlet confirmed ICE does not have data on miscarriages from October 2025 to June 2026.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), however, has denied that the agency has lost count of miscarriages. "ICE tracks miscarriage data and reports the information on a monthly basis" and "continues to track and report miscarriage data according to ICE Directive 11032.4, Identification and Monitoring of Pregnant, Postpartum, and Nursing Individuals," a DHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reason. The spokesperson asserted that pregnant detainees receive "the best healthcare many of these individuals have received in their entire lives."
"Being in detention is a choice," the spokesperson continued.
Under ICE Directive 11032.4, in place since July 2021, "ICE should not detain, arrest, or take into custody…pregnant, postpartum, or nursing" immigrants for civil infractions "unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist." "Exceptional circumstances" are defined as posing a national security concern or "an imminent risk of death, violence, or physical harm." If detained, ICE must provide ongoing health monitoring.
But even with this directive still in place, the Trump administration has reached new levels of pregnant detainees. Between January 2025 and February 2026, at least 498 pregnant, postpartum, and nursing detainees were booked and then released from ICE custody, compared to "just 158 pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women detained in the first half of Fiscal Year 2024," according to Forbes.
Stories like Anabell's raise serious questions about whether ICE is fulfilling its requirements to protect the health and safety of pregnant detainees and highlight the need for increased transparency and accountability for the country's highest-funded federal agency.
