ICE is Shutting Pregnant Girls in a Facility With Inadequate Care, in an Abortion-Banned State
“These girls are experiencing high-risk pregnancies and are some of the most medically vulnerable people in detention,” Zain Lakhani, the director of migrant rights and justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, told Jezebel.
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Since the summer, Trump’s cruel deportation campaign has been apparently stuffing more than a dozen pregnant girls—some who are as young as 13, and at least half of whom got pregnant because they were raped—into a facility in San Benito, Texas, in accordance with a senior directive. And not only are employees concerned that the shelter is medically inadequate for the girls’ needs, but the move seems to be a deliberately malicious plan to place them in Texas, home the country’s strictest abortion ban.
“Per the direction of Chief of Staff, Matt O’Neill Levine, as of [July 22, 2025] we should be placing any pregnant children into the San Benito program moving forward,” reads an email sent by Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Acting Director Angie Salazar, which was obtained by the Texas Tribune. According to seven ORR sources who also spoke to the outlet—and remained anonymous out of fear of retribution—various ORR staff members are also worried that the shelter is only “one-high risk pregnancy away from catastrophe.” At the time of writing, several of the girls who have been detained have given birth, and are imprisoned with their infants.
“This is 100% and exclusively about abortion,” Jonathan White, a former ORR official—who has opposed the administration’s family separation policies since Trump’s first term—told the outlet. (White also worked with Scott Lloyd, or the ORR’s anti-abortion freak who once tried and failed to send a pregnant girl seeking an abortion to Texas, where it would have been too late for her to terminate her pregnancy.) “I’ve been expecting this since Trump returned to office,” White continued, emphasizing that it’s been a long-term goal of the president’s to roll back abortion access from unaccompanied minors, beginning in 2017. “Now they casually roll out what they brutally fought to accomplish last time and didn’t.”
According to the ORR sources who spoke to the Tribune, many internal concerns are brewing: young, pregnant girls are among the most vulnerable target demographic of their work, and workers are “losing sleep” over the cruelty and “wondering if kids are going to be placed in programs where they’re not going to have access to the care they need.” Though there are dozens of ORR shelters or foster homes around the country designed to treat pregnant, unaccompanied minors—12 of which are actually in the Lone Star State—sending them to San Benito, owned by a for-profit prison, is particularly unusual.
Several shelter employees also said it’s been difficult to arrange timely medical appointments for the detainees, or inform the federal agency of critical health information in a timely manner. This is made much worse by the lack of knowing any details on pregnant immigrants in facilities. While Congress issued a twice-a-year report on such data from 2019 to 2025, the requirement lapsed in March. (On top of that, technically, the Department of Homeland Security mandates that ICE cannot detain anyone who’s pregnant, postpartum, or breastfeeding, except for in exceptional circumstances.) But ICE has been no stranger to mistreating its pregnant detainees, and since last year, there have been reports of the agency rushing to deport pregnant people; shackling women who are miscarrying; and denied exams and medical treatment.
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