‘Where are all the kids?’: questions arise over treatment of pregnant minors in Texas immigration facility

Migrant teens line up for a class at a ‘tender-age’ facility for babies, children and teens, in San Benito, Texas, on 29 August 2019. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

Representative Maxine Dexter has a lot of questions. Why were all of the pregnant, unaccompanied minors in the US rounded up and sent to San Benito, a tiny town on the Texas border with Mexico? Are they given appropriate medical care, given their high-risk conditions and Texas’s abortion ban? And most importantly: where are the girls – and their infants – now?

Dexter, a Democratic congresswoman from Oregon and a former critical care physician – one of the few doctors now serving in Congress – detailed these questions in an 8 May letter to refugee and health officials after visiting the San Benito facility and, she said, being blocked from speaking with any of the children. She still hasn’t gotten answers.