‘It’s hell’: migrant women suffer constant abuse in ICE centers

One day in April, Diana Mogollón arrived at a place of which she knew almost nothing. She felt frustrated, sad, and did not want anyone to come near her to talk. At that point she was the newcomer among all the detained migrant women, until at night she saw a young woman come in, looking very young and quiet, with a protruding belly that her clothes could not hide. “She came in and sat to one side; the room was very full.” There were about 70 women inside, sleeping on mats with barely any space, under unsettling lights that stayed on 24 hours a day. Mogollón felt sorry for the young woman. “I told her: girl, if you want, sit on this side because they won’t trample you there.” They began to get to know each other, to tell each other their lives.

María José Carpio, 20, was seven months pregnant and suffering from nausea, headaches, dizziness, and a hunger that the center’s food—an egg sandwich in the mornings, or cold burritos and apples at lunch—could not satisfy. They were also not allowed to receive money from family members to supplement their diet. “We felt bad seeing her go hungry,” says Mogollón, 36.

Carpio had arrived in the United States on a visa six years earlier with her parents and two sisters from Cuenca, Ecuador. They settled in Queens. Carpio attended school and worked in a gift shop. “I had my own money, my things,” she says. But by 2025, undocumented people in New York began to live under a shadow of fear, as did millions elsewhere in the country: the immigration apparatus of President Donald Trump had been ordered to carry out the largest deportation campaign of all time.

“I got quite scared,” the young woman admits. She couldn’t take it, and returned to the place where she had been born. But in April 2026, Carpio wanted to come back to New York. She made a journey that took her to Mexico, and on April 11 of that month she set out to cross the border from Juárez. Once she was on the other side, agents showed up behind her. They detained her, realized she was pregnant, took her to a hospital to check her health, and later brought her to the facility where she met Mogollón, and which also held other women who had recently tried to enter U.S. territory, as well as some who had been held in other U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) centers and were already facing deportation.

Back in Queens, her father, José Carpio, a 45-year-old construction worker, was desperate. They knew almost nothing about “his girl,” where she was, or what would happen to her. The family tried to locate her at ICE centers, but her name did not show up. The young woman was also given very little information and was allowed only three to five minutes to call her family. “She would say to me: ‘Daddy, my stomach hurts a lot,’” the father recalls.

The 17 days Carpio spent in detention were “a nightmare.” She had severe hip pain from having to sleep on mattresses on the floor. “When I complained, they said it was normal. They only told me that if I was bleeding I should go see them; if not, I should not go,” she says. Mogollón recalls the day they called officers to take Carpio to the doctor. Her belly was hurting. “They were giving her pills that she couldn’t take while pregnant, and they stopped them.” Even though Carpio suffered from anemia, she was only given iron during her final days in custody; the rest of the time they only provided prenatal vitamins.

In detention centers, the needs of pregnant women are ignored. Insufficient and poor-quality food, lack of access to medication and necessary medical care, and overcrowding are common complaints. In February, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said there were 86 pregnant women in custody.

Life in the center became unbearable—not only for Carpio, who says she got lice there, and for the other pregnant woman who had gestational diabetes, but for all the women in detention. There were no showers in the room; they were only allowed to bathe every five days, and the worst was when they had their menstrual period. “You have to fight to be taken out, to say your underwear is stained. It’s very uncomfortable,” Mogollón says.

In May, Mogollón said goodbye to Carpio. She was going to be deported to Colombia. Carpio had been taken to the airport on three occasions already but was not allowed onto a deportation flight to Ecuador. No one wanted to assume the risk of her pregnancy. “The airline people didn’t want to be responsible if something happened to me,” she says. But on May 18, her father received a call from Guayaquil at his Queens home: it was Carpio, who had finally been deported at 31 weeks pregnant.

Neglected pregnancies and miscarriages

Carpio’s case is not isolated. The detention machinery imposed by Trump disproportionately affects women, who—along with children—are the most vulnerable victims of the Trump deportation campaign. Women have been separated from breastfeeding infants, abandoned during pregnancies, neglected after suffering miscarriages, assaulted and abused by officials, and unable to report violence for fear of reprisals.

“No period in our history has been more disruptive or more destructive for immigrant women, girls and families than what we have witnessed over the past 16 months,” Zain Lakhani, director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), told the Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC) this week. Lakhani was part of a delegation of women advocates for migrants who met with congresswomen this week to request legislative measures to stop the mistreatment of detainees.

Participants echoed cases of violence they had learned about through their work as lawyers or doctors for migrants and painted a bleak picture. “A survey we studied revealed that one in five pregnant women says ICE activity has prevented them from seeking prenatal care. And, judging by what we have heard from those who have been detained, there are grounds for fear,” said Lupe M. Rodríguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice.

One of her colleagues, who identified herself as Midi, was detained at an ICE center in Rio Grande, Texas. Midi witnessed the moment a woman who was breastfeeding was separated from her baby; because she was not provided a breast pump, she developed mastitis, a serious breast infection. She also saw a pregnant woman go into labor inside the center and be kept alone for hours until she was finally taken to a hospital. Like many other detainees, Midi suffered mental health problems—including depression and panic attacks—but instead of receiving treatment she was isolated with other women in the same condition and a single mattress to share. As medication, they were given Benadryl, an antihistamine. “In their own words: ‘It’s hell,’” she says. Another detained woman who contacted the institute for help said she was in the third trimester of a high-risk pregnancy but had gone four months without seeing an obstetrician. She had been forced to sleep on the floor, went hungry and was transported across the country with only one stop to use the restroom.

“The chronic stress of being detained, of separation from family and friends, and of lack of attention to medical needs produces such a level of anguish in the pregnant person that it can cause a miscarriage or trigger catastrophic pregnancy complications such as preterm labor, preeclampsia and even fetal death,” says Dr. Josephine Urbina, an obstetrician-gynecologist with Physicians for Reproductive Health. The use of restraints that ICE employs during detentions and lack of movement can cause blood clots with fatal consequences. ICE agents are prohibited from using restraint devices on pregnant women or those in the postpartum recovery period.

Lack of medical assistance also affects women who have had miscarriages. Between January and September 2025 there were 16 miscarriages among women in ICE custody, according to DHS data. Faced with a lack of official information, WRC members traveled to Mexico and several Central American countries to hear testimony from deported women. One 25-year-old pregnant woman who bled for several days in a detention center did not receive medical care despite repeated requests and arrived in Honduras in a state of emergency. Another, diagnosed with a miscarriage, was deported without receiving any treatment and required immediate hospitalization upon arrival in the Central American country. Nearly 400 women who were pregnant, postpartum or breastfeeding were deported between January 2025 and February 2026.

The Orlin Act

Migrants’ attorneys say ICE is failing to follow its own directives, which require agents to ask women whether they want their children deported with them and thus avoid family separation. According to a recent Brookings Institution report, since Trump returned to the White House about 145,000 minors have had at least one parent detained. This month, news emerged of the case of Orlin Hernández Reyes, age three, who died in March from blows inflicted by his uncle—who had been given custody after the mother was deported to Honduras. The mother, Wendy Hernández, says she repeatedly begged for her son to be handed to her and deported with her, but her requests were ignored. Representative Jayapal plans to propose the Orlin Act, in honor of the child, to ban family separations.

Other legislative initiatives seek to protect migrant women from assaults they suffer in custody, such as rapes they are afraid to report. “It was always terrifying to step forward and report abuse, and current circumstances make that even more difficult, if not impossible,” says Erin Argueta, an attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. The Trump administration has eliminated tools that previously enabled reporting of abuse, such as the Office of the Ombudsman for Immigration Detention and ODO, the Office for Detention Oversight, which was created to investigate deaths, medical abuses and employee misconduct in ICE facilities.

After her arrest, Carpio was not even told where she had been held or under what authority. She remained at a U.S. Border Patrol station in El Paso, Texas, but she, Mogollón and the other women only learned that when they were transferred for deportation and saw the sign outside the site. In a neighbor’s house, far from her parents and sisters and without a place to live in her home country, Carpio answers the phone. “Thank God the baby is fine,” she says. She is now waiting for the urine and blood tests taken at a health center. The child is 31 weeks old, and it is a boy. She has not yet had time to choose a name.

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