Rios is director of the American Friends Service Committee’s U.S.-Mexico Border Program. He lives in Chula Vista.
On this Mother’s Day, Customs and Border Protection should develop a clear policy to protect migrants who are pregnant, postpartum and/or nursing. It should prioritize their access to medical care by minimizing the amount of time they and their families are under CBP custody.
That’s what Jewish Family Service of San Diego, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, the American Civil Liberties Union and over 175 advocacy organizations, medical professionals and individuals are calling for in a letter submitted on April 25 to CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller.
Advocates recognized the urgency of this matter when in February 2020, a woman delivered her baby while standing beside a trash can at a Chula Vista Border Patrol station. After a brief hospitalization, the woman and her newborn were returned by Border Patrol agents to the Border Patrol station to continue to be detained. She alleged that Border Patrol agents didn’t provide the newborn with a blanket or give her an opportunity to bathe for the time they remained at the Border Patrol facility.
This sparked an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General that concluded, “Border Patrol needs reliable practices to expedite releases because holding U.S. citizen newborns at Border Patrol stations poses health, safety and legal concerns.”
Monika Langarica, a staff attorney with UCLA’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy and a lead lawyer advocating for the policy change, told me via email, “We continue encountering people whose horror stories elucidate why a change in policy to ensure their prompt release is urgent, but rather than heed to the alarm bells, CBP has continued to look the other way.”
The problem is that Border Patrol short-term holding facilities are woefully inadequate in observing basic human rights and notoriously known for egregious and degrading conditions. The hieleras, or iceboxes, as they are known colloquially because they are kept cold, are where at least six children died while detained in Border Patrol facilities from December 2018 to May 2019. In the case of Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16-year-old from Guatemala who died at the Border Patrol’s Weslaco Station in Texas in May 2019, the Office of the Inspector General found that Border Patrol agents falsified records to make it seem that agents were caring for Hernandez Vasquez while he was lying on the ground dying.
Even when Congress responded in 2019 with a $4.59 billion supplemental bill to address increased detentions of families and unaccompanied minors, a government audit found that Border Patrol misused those funds to buy dog food and dirt bikes instead of buying food and medical care for asylum seekers, as it was mandated to do.
In contrast, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, charged with interior enforcement, established a policy in July 2021 that ICE “should not detain, arrest or take into custody for an istrative violation of the immigration laws individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum or nursing unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.” It is confounding that by this time, CBP hasn’t issued a similar policy.
In the letter to CBP Acting Commissioner Miller, the advocates listed several other cases that illustrate why clear policy on limiting the detention of pregnant, postpartum and/or nursing people is urgent. The cases address an instance where Border Patrol denied a woman a pregnancy test, threatened another woman hospitalized because of contractions with separating her from her young daughter, and detained a pregnant woman at a Border Patrol station for eight days, beyond a 72-hour limit established by national standards, without proper medical care, and then deported her.
With more migrants anticipated to present themselves at ports or to be apprehended by Border Patrol agents as the government’s use of a policy known as Title 42 to restrict immigration ends Thursday, it’s pressing that CBP provide guidance that protects migrants who are pregnant, postpartum and/or nursing.
A shift in policy could minimize the time that such migrants and their families are in CBP custody to only the time necessary to process them for release. The policy could also ensure that if and when these migrants who are pregnant, postpartum and/or nursing are hospitalized, they are not then to be returned to CBP detention.
This change is urgently needed. As attorney Langarica has said, “It’s past time for CBP to adopt a formal policy of expediting the release of people who are pregnant, postpartum and nursing to their networks of care in the U.S. This change is just, it’s within the agency’s reach, and it’s the only way to protect against the dangers of border confinement for this vulnerable population.”
