The Trump administration is detaining pregnant immigrants, despite guidelines prohibiting this practice, and subjecting them to mistreatment and a lack of access to basic medical care, several human rights organizations denounced on Thursday.

Authorities are also sending underage pregnant immigrants, many to as a result of rapes, to shelters in Texas, where abortion is prohibited in most cases, according to activists.

The allegations come at a time when the current administration is maintaining a record number of migrants in detention, with nearly 70,000 people in these centers in February, according to data from the TRAC center at Syracuse University.

Jesus Gonzalez, a social worker with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Project in Arizona, told reporters in a call that pregnant women detained at the Eloy Detention Center outside Tucson are not receiving the necessary medical care at his organization.

Gonzalez also recounted the case of Esther, an immigrant from Central Africa, who became pregnant after being raped following a kidnapping while waiting in Mexico for an appointment to request asylum in the U.S.

Once in the United States, she was taken into custody by immigration authorities and during that time did not receive “No medical care of any kind, except for prenatal vitamins.”

Lupe Rodriguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Freedom, said that earlier this year, her organization received a complaint from a detained immigrant who, despite having a high-risk pregnancy, did not receive medical care for four months and was forced to “sleep on the floor and go hungry.”

According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) guidelines, the government should not “detain or arrest” pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding individuals, except in exceptional circumstances.

However,Between January 2025 and February of this year, authorities detained 498 people in these conditions in migrant detention centers, according to data provided by the Department of Homeland Security to Senator Patty Murray.

Preventing Abortions

Yvonne Rodriguez, director of the organization Reproductive Justice For All, echoed a report published in the local newspaper The Texas Newsroom, which denounces that the government transferred more than a dozen pregnant migrant minors to a shelter in South Texas, where abortion is prohibited.

Half of the minors, the local media outlet highlighted, became pregnant after sexual abuse.

This practice, explained Brigitte Amiri, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), represents a change from the practices adopted by the previous administration, which, to comply with a court order, sought to place pregnant minors in shelters where abortion was legal.

“Young women who come to the U.S. seeking safety should be treated with respect and dignity, and the Trump administration should not politicize their healthcare,” Amiri said in the call.