Migrant Women In ICE Detention Report Miscarriages And Abuse. GOP Is Still Allegedly “Pro-Life.”
Vice President Mike Pence, right, shakes hands with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, next to Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Ronald Vitiello, as Pence arrives to speak at ICE headquarters, Friday, July 6, 2018, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
As the country waited to hear President Trump announce his Supreme Court nominee, picked from a list of names known to advocate a conservative, “pro-life” stance, Buzzfeed dropped a bombshell report, revealing the horror faced by some pregnant women in immigration detention centers. The report detailed depraved abuse and denials of medical care at the hands of detention center staff and Border Patrol officers, some of which resulted in traumatic miscarriages. Here’s an excerpt:
…women in immigration detention are often denied adequate medical care, even when in dire need of it, are shackled around the stomach while being transported between facilities, and have been physically and psychologically mistreated.
…
“Morales said when she was first taken into custody by the Border Patrol in December 2017, CBP officers pushed her to the ground and “threw [her] around.” She told them again that she was pregnant, she said. “They didn’t believe me, they said it wasn’t important, that it wasn’t their problem.”
“They said I didn’t have any rights there and I told them I was asking for asylum because it was dangerous in my country,” Morales told BuzzFeed News, “but they said lies, lies, lies, that El Salvador was fine to live in.”
After that, she started feeling sick, “vomiting horribly, like all day,” and asked to see a doctor but was denied. She was held in the CBP facility for four days before she was transferred to Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.”
Following a new Trump policy, pregnant ICE detainees told @nidhiprakash and I that they are being shackled around the stomach, denied medical care, and abused. https://t.co/vJhxNdROU1
— Ema O’Connor (@o_ema) July 9, 2018
The three women we talked to all had a miscarriages while in detention. They said they bled for hours to days before receiving medical attention.
— Ema O’Connor (@o_ema) July 9, 2018
This news comes on the heels of further revelations detailing the lack of consideration for human rights displayed by the President’s policy towards immigrants at the southern border. Last Friday, a federal judge rejected the administration’s request for an extension for the deadline to reunite the nearly 3,000 separated migrant children with their families. The extension request made clear that a plan to reunite separated families never existed, as we learned of some parents being deported or lost entirely without their children. Additionally, The New York Times reported more difficulties with reunification because “[r]ecords linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed.”
When migrant families were separated per Trump administration policy, CBP destroyed hundreds of records in which the children were listed w their parents under family ID #s. So now they can’t find & reunify the families @itscaitlinhd https://t.co/AdU5xmYA9J
— Julie Davis (@juliehdavis) July 6, 2018
Each stone of this story that is unturned reveals more depravity and horrors committed by the Trump administration upon immigrant families. It is clear that the GOP can, in no way, continue to call themselves the “party of family values” while demonstrating sheer moral disregard towards the lives of families that do not fit within their political agenda.
Beyond abject horror, these new allegations expose the true beliefs of those in this administration that call themselves pro-life. For a party that was so forceful in trying to prevent an unaccompanied immigrant minor from receiving an abortion, it seems odd that they would deny medical care to migrant women facing health concerns from high-risk pregnancies.
When one also takes into consideration the fact that President Trump’s 2019 budget proposal included language that could further hinder undocumented people from accessing abortion, it becomes remarkably clear that these policies are not about valuing the sanctity of life. They are about policing and controlling women’s bodies. The Republican party has spent decades trying to enact legislation which would further limit the bodily autonomy women possess (with policies disproportionately impacting vulnerable populations like undocumented women of color).
Denying medical care to pregnant migrant women and shackling them in ways known to be detrimental to pregnancies prove that the officials behind these policies are not, in anyway pro-life. Not only have they enacted policies which fail to consider the lives of children beyond the womb, but they have directly promoted rhetoric which has led to the horrors detailed in the Buzzfeed report.
With revelations about the President’s immigration policies shedding light on the true depravity of this administration, the only question remains is what the American people are going to do about it come November.
My god. This is what evil regimes do, not democracies in the 21st century.
This is beyond inhumane. The indecency is beyond comprehension.
How can you sleep at night @realDonaldTrump @SecNielsen @jeffsessions @GOP? https://t.co/LuOb5vPq83
— Ahmed Baba (@AhmedBaba_) July 9, 2018
