According to documents obtained by The Guardian through a freedom of information request, ICE stopped recording miscarriages among detained women after October 3, 2025. From January to September 2025, the agency noted at least 18 such cases, and it explained the end of the accounting by a change in the medical reporting system: the contract with the Veterans Affairs Financial Services Center, which handled medical billing, was terminated, and from October these functions were transferred to Acentra Health.
At the same time, in the fall and winter of last year, ICE held a record number of pregnant women in custody for the past year: at least 87 in October and 101 in November. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Chandler Rebel, told The Guardian that the 2021 directive requiring ICE to avoid detaining pregnant women and to regularly monitor their health is still in effect, but did not answer questions about complaints regarding the lack of prenatal care.
35-year-old Anabel, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, learned about her pregnancy only after her arrest in Campbell County, Kentucky. A month later, she began to bleed heavily; at the hospital, where she was brought chained to the bed, they said the pregnancy had ended, and ICE, according to her, refused to provide medical records.
21-year-old Laura, in the late stage of a high-risk pregnancy, is still being held at the Dilley center in Texas, and, according to her, she cannot get an appointment with a gynecologist despite constant pain and bleeding. 26-year-old Angie suffered a miscarriage at the Mesa Verde center in California shortly after learning she was pregnant, and obstetrician-gynecologist Deborah Ottenheimer of Physicians for Human Rights said the real number of miscarriages among detainees is likely underreported.
The directive also requires monthly reporting on the health of detained pregnant women to the executive director for enforcement and removal operations, but immigration lawyers and former DHS employees say that in practice ICE systematically ignores these requirements. Faisal al-Jubouri, executive director of the Texas human rights organization Raices, said that the lack of miscarriage tracking benefits the Trump administration: “When you don’t track something of this scale, you don’t have to face the real consequences of your policy”.
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