As Long as Women Are Detained at the Border, Their Pregnancies Are at Risk
“Women’s Refugee Commission has tracked the detention of pregnant women in ICE custody for many years,” says Katharina Obser, a Senior Policy Adviser of the Women’s Refugee Commission. “In 2016, ICE issued a new policy that included a presumption of release for many pregnant women, called for regular review of their custody if they were detained, and also included stricter oversight of their care. But by the summer of 2017, we increasingly heard of more cases of pregnant women who were not only detained, but also receiving inadequate care, practices counter to ICE’s own policy.”