A 22-year-old woman was five months pregnant when she arrived on a deportation flight to Honduras. She said she never had a chance to tell Immigration and Customs Enforcement about her two-year-old daughter she was forced to leave behind.
“They didn’t ask me anything,” she said, according to a new report from the Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights. “They didn’t talk to me, only to yell at me, to humiliate.”
Immigration officers also never asked a 27-year-old woman arrested at a traffic light about her children, let alone whether she could bring her 11-year-old son with her when she was deported, she said.
ICE has failed to follow its own policies requiring officers to ask people they arrest about their children to ensure they have an opportunity to decide what happens to them when they’re deported, according to the report.
The “devastating” human cost of those alleged policy failures has left children left behind without warning, while pregnant women and postpartum mothers are denied adequate medical care, according to Zain Lakhani, director of migrant rights and justice for the Women’s Refugee Commission.
Donald Trump’s administration revised Biden-era guidelines for detained parents last summer, making one critical change that has radically shifted how ICE handles families.
Deported parents previously could decide whether they wanted their children to join them. Now, ICE will only support those arrangements if they are “operationally feasible.”
But ICE is still required to ask anyone they arrest if they have children and “must allow those parents to decide what happens to their children if they are deported, even if they are not required to help facilitate choice,” according to the report.
As ICE arrests a growing number of immigrant families, advocates say the administration is relying on apparent threats of family separation to force them to drop their immigration cases and leave the country voluntarily.
The Women’s Refugee Commission and Physicians for Human Rights interviewed newly deported parents in Honduras over five days in November, as well as physicians and staff at a reception center that has cared for hundreds of recent deportees.
Across dozens of interviews, parents said they were arrested without being asked if they had children or if their children were safe. More than half of the parents said ICE never asked about their children at any point during their arrest, detention or removal.
Some parents said they weren’t allowed to speak when they tried to volunteer that information, or were ignored entirely.
Parents are then left to scramble to make short-term care arrangements for their children, exposing them to potentially vulnerable or dangerous situations.
One mother of four, whose husband had also been deported, reported that her children were left on their own until their grandmother could travel to another state to get them.
A father who was arrested while leaving his house told the arresting agents that his three-year-old daughter was in the house with a babysitter.
“They just kept yelling at me to get on the ground,” he reported. “I tried to get away but they threw me to the ground and wouldn’t let me say anything. They beat me really badly.”
The babysitter stayed with his daughter for 11 days, he said.
Others were forced out of the country with their U.S. children who they had hoped to stay behind to continue receiving life-saving medical care that they could not get in their home countries.
Physicians reported one child who was deported midway through a series of surgeries for a severe form of spina bifida and another child who was receiving essential post-operative care after having a kidney removed due to cancer.
“It is unconscionable that the U.S. government is inflicting these abuses once again on families, even after the well-documented harms caused by separations under the first Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy,” according to Dr. Michele Heisler, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights and professor of internal medicine and public health at University of Michigan.
The Trump administration’s alleged policy failures have also been devastating to pregnant and postpartum immigrants, who have been detained and deported without adequate medical care and separated from their infants, according to the report.
There were 121 pregnant, postpartum and nursing women in ICE detention as of February 16, according to information from Homeland Security provided to Democratic Sen. Patty Murray.
ICE has deported 363 pregnant, postpartum or nursing women between January 1, 2025 and February 16.
Researchers in Honduras encountered three women who were visibly pregnant and four women with children less than one year old. All four postpartum women had been separated from their babies, including one infant as young as two months old.
Many women arrived in “acute emotional distress, including uncontrollable crying and visible panic,” according to the report. “Many had had no contact with their children or their caregivers for days or weeks.”
One medical worker described a 25 year-old woman who was approximately 13 weeks pregnant who began bleeding after her arrest.
She did not receive any medical attention from ICE and was deported while still actively bleeding, according to the report. She arrived in Honduras in an emergency condition and had to be transferred immediately to hospital care.
In another case reported by medical workers, a 40 year-old woman was deported without receiving medical care for almost two weeks after experiencing a missed miscarriage, in which a fetus remains inside the uterus over a miscarriage, carrying a high risk of infection and potentially life-threatening complications.
She was deported 10 days after her diagnosis and received no care while in custody, according to the report.She was immediately hospitalized when she arrived in Honduras.
One woman said she was handcuffed by ICE while seeing a gynecologist, “like I was a criminal,” she told researchers.
Pregnant and postpartum women frequently arrived in Honduras without any clinical records or other medical information, making it difficult to determine what care, if any, they received while in custody.
“The main problem is the lack of information received about pregnant patients,” one doctor in Honduras told researchers. “There is no clarity about examinations, check-ups, or medical history. The authorities only provide a sheet with general information.”
A spokesperson from Homeland Security noted that pregnancy in ICE detention is “exceedingly rare.”
“There have been no births in ICE custody under the Trump administration. Pregnant women receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care,” a spokesperson told The Independent.
DHS has repeatedly defended the level of care provided to immigrants in custody, calling it “the best healthcare many of these individuals have received in their entire lives.”
“In addition to medical, mental health, and dental services provided to all detained women as required by ICE detention standards, facilities provide women with pregnancy services such as pregnancy testing, routine or specialized prenatal care, postpartum follow-up, and nursing services,” the spokesperson said.
Pregnant deportees “are evaluated and medically cleared for travel before removal,” and ICE will provide them with medical record upon request, according to the spokesperson.
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