By Nick Valencia | November 10, 2025
WASHINGTON D.C.— The U.S. government is breaking its own rules written to protect the most vulnerable: pregnant women, and mothers who have just given birth.
Under President Trump’s second administration, federal immigration authorities are detaining them anyway — quietly, in violation of clear federal policy, and in ways that advocates warn could once again leave behind a generation of lost children.
What’s happening now is a quieter, more insidious version of what shocked the world six years ago: family separation. Advocates call it Family Separation 2.0 — an invisible crisis unfolding in local jails and rural detention centers across America.
“They are not supposed to be detaining pregnant, postpartum, or lactating women at all,” said Zain Lakhani, director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “And yet we’re receiving significant reports that this is happening in really substantial numbers — and in absolutely egregious conditions.”
The Forgotten Women
Lakhani oversees the Women’s Refugee Commission’s new Detention Pregnancy Tracker, the nation’s first effort to systematically document the detention of pregnant and postpartum women. Her team has been flooded with reports — women transferred “like luggage” from facility to facility, often without access to prenatal care, lactation support, or even a real bed.
“These women are suffering,” Lakhani said. “They’re being kept in places not meant for long-term detention, and it’s impacting their health — and their families.”
Many ICE facilities were never built for women at all. When enforcement sweeps capture mothers and daughters, they are often shipped to county jails or temporary Border Patrol sites that lack even basic medical infrastructure. Some, Lakhani said, have spent weeks on cots or concrete benches, their infants hundreds of miles away.
“By definition, if you detain a nursing mother, you are creating a family separation,” Lakhani said.
Invisible Cruelty
Advocates describe this new wave as pernicious precisely because it’s invisible.
No viral photos of children in cages. No congressional tours. No public reckoning. Just deported mothers arriving at Central American reception centers — alone, inconsolable, and unsure where their children are.
“We’ve seen parents show up at these centers devastated,” Lakhani said. “They were detained, deported, and have no idea what happened to their kids.”
She fears “a lot of lost kids again.”
Without proper tracking and monitoring, she warns, these separations could become permanent.
That fear echoes 2018, when federal officials admitted they had no system to reunify thousands of families torn apart under Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy. Hundreds remain separated even today. But the new separations are harder to see — scattered across jurisdictions, buried in bureaucracy, and hidden from public view.
A System in the Dark
Transparency has vanished. Oversight visits have been curtailed. Legal access restricted. Humanitarian groups often can’t even confirm who’s inside.
“Immigration detention has become a black box,” Lakhani said. “We can’t get in. We can’t do ‘know your rights’ work. We can’t see what’s happening.”
Government watchdogs such as the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties have quietly scaled back.
“They’re not engaging in the kind of monitoring needed to ensure these facilities are safe,” she said.
The result is devastating — and expensive. Detaining pregnant women, Lakhani noted, is “extremely costly.” Recent appropriations channel so much money into immigration detention that ICE’s budget now exceeds that of the entire Federal Bureau of Prisons by 62%, she estimated.
“If we’re spending that kind of money,” she said, “we should at least be meeting basic human-rights standards.”
Rules, Ignored
There is no ambiguity about the rules or about which ones are being broken.
At the center of these violations is ICE Directive 11032.4, the official federal policy governing the treatment of pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women in immigration custody. It states, quote:
“Generally, ICE should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of immigration laws, individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing.”
That directive — first issued in 2021 and reaffirmed under federal detention standards — was designed to safeguard the health of women whose pregnancies or postpartum recovery make detention especially dangerous.
From the National Detention Standards, published on ICE.gov, another line is equally explicit:
“A pregnant woman or woman in post-delivery recuperation shall not be restrained.”
And the Detained Parents Directive, also publicly available on ICE.gov, extends that protection to families. It states:
“Absent indications of abuse or neglect, ICE personnel should accommodate a covered individual’s efforts to make alternative care arrangements for the minor child(ren), prior to detention.”
Each of these policies was created to ensure humane treatment and prevent exactly the kind of separations now being reported. All remain on the books. And all, advocates say, are being ignored.
“These protections were created for a reason,” Lakhani said. “They were put in place to protect children and women — the most vulnerable among us. To see them violated so blatantly is terrifying.”
A Call for Accountability
To pierce the silence, the Women’s Refugee Commission launched the Detention Pregnancy Tracker — a confidential, bilingual form that lets lawyers, doctors, and family members report when a pregnant or postpartum woman disappears into custody.
“We won’t allow this to happen in the dark,” Lakhani said. “We’re working with members of Congress to demand accountability, increase transparency and oversight, and make sure these stories are not forgotten.”
Her appeal is urgent: help document what’s happening.
“If you know someone who’s stopped showing up to appointments — who’s pregnant, who might have been caught up in enforcement — please use the tracker,” she said. “Help us understand the scope of this problem.”
Asked why she continues this work, Lakhani’s voice softened.
“Anyone who’s ever been pregnant or tried to nurse a child knows how vulnerable that time is,” she said. “Even under the best circumstances, it’s terrifying. And now imagine doing that in detention — hungry, sick, alone.”
“Detention is no place for a pregnant woman,” she continued. “Families belong together. Parents need to be with their children. Every child deserves to be nurtured — regardless of who they are or where they were born.”
“We are all humans,” Lakhani said. “There’s a fundamental sense of humanity that’s being violated. These are people whose lives are being ripped apart.”
If you know someone affected or wish to report a case, visit DetentionPregnancyTracker.com (https://detentionpregnancytracker.com/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) or WRC.org.
Submissions are confidential and reviewed by the Women’s Refugee Commission.
