Pregnant at the US-Mexico Border during COVID-19: The Trump Administration’s Intersecting Anti-Migrant and Anti-Woman Policy
Brynn Hopper, Operations Manager
January 13, 2020
A pregnant migrant waits to be taken into custody by U.S Border Patrol agents in Roma, Texas
Photo courtesy of John Moore, Getty Images
Since March of 2020, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has used a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order to block and expel more than 109,000 migrants and those seeking asylum. Pregnant migrants, among the most marginalized within the population, are disproportionately impacted by this order. Burdened by the Trump administration’s compounded anti-migrant and anti-woman agendas, the group is subjected to heightened vulnerability amongst the backdrop of a global pandemic.
To provide a brief context of the situation, the former “presumptive release policy” which intended to avoid prolonged periods of pregnant migrants’ detention in ICE facilities was eliminated by the Trump administration. As of 2018 there was a reported 52% increase in detention of pregnant women. The length of detention sentences had also increased comparably, with 13% of detentions lasting more than 30 days. According to the UN Special Report on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the detention of pregnant women and those with young children must be reduced and only considered when other alternatives are unsuitable.
Since the start of the pandemic, immigrant rights organizations have documented horrific accounts of pregnant women being mistreated in DHS custody, denied medical treatment while in labor, and forcibly expelled to dangerous areas just days after giving birth. In one instance among a multitude of other reports of abuse, a pregnant woman fleeing Honduras after the murder of her partner was expelled under CDC order. Eight-months pregnant and without the opportunity to request asylum, U.S officers forced her to walk alone into the dangerous border city of Ciudad Juárez at 4:56 am without any means to find assistance. Moreover, pregnant women in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention report being subjected to excessive force, verbal abuse from agents, forced separation from their partner or newborn and deplorable conditions.
An investigation conducted by Human Rights Watch observed conditions inside detention centers to be uncomfortably cold, without adequate sleeping mats or bedding, limited showers, basic hygiene materials, nutritious food and limited to no trained medical staff. All of which have the capacity to inflict adverse long-term health outcomes on both mother and child. Pregnant women in ICE and CBP custody confront an increased risk of poor maternal health outcomes due to sustained levels of stress and trauma. For the mother, this stress causes increased risk of infection or illness during pregnancy, postnatal depression, and in extreme cases, maternal mortality.
To better illustrate the true severity of this multileveled threat for pregnant migrants, Freedom for Immigrants (2020), reported approximately 171 COVID-19 outbreaks across a total of 200 detention centers. Thus, making the contraction of the virus due to unsatisfactory and overcrowded conditions an impending threat to health and safety for all. Displaced and stateless women are at higher risk for contracting COVID-19 as they are likely responsible for family caretaking in unsanitary conditions, making social distancing measures impossible. Recent evidence published by the CDC found that pregnant women who tested positive for COVID-19 were significantly more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit and receive mechanical ventilation compared to nonpregnant women with COVID-19. Even so, this demographic is least likely to receive adequate healthcare and, in many regions, female cases are vastly underreported due to gender-based discrimination.
Alternatives to detention also endanger the maternal health of migrant women. Under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), individuals seeking asylum and other migrants are returned to Mexico to await U.S. immigration court hearings, often after having already suffered long wait times and exhaustive journeys to the border. Forced to wait up to a year in Mexico, those migrants fleeing violence, environmental disasters, or economic insecurity, are pushed back into the precarious and life-threatening situations they were escaping from. And for this particular group, DHS officials have stated that pregnancy “… may not in and of itself disqualify an individual from participating in the Program”. In turn, humanitarian protections for pregnant women at the US-Mexico border are effectively eliminated by the United States’ violation of international legal obligation. Return to Mexico, drives pregnant asylum seekers into harms way as they reside in makeshift and overcrowded conditions for extended periods of time; adversely impacted by a lack of access to basic hygiene, healthcare, risk of sexual violence, kidnapping, assault, and now an increased risk of contracting COVID-19.
To intensify the direness of the situation, the pandemic’s global restrictions on travel and lockdowns has triggered rising reports of sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls. According to the Global Girlhood Report, the most dangerous place for women to live are countries in conflict; sexual violence being a common weapon used to control and terrorize populations. Correspondingly, in interviews with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), refugee women from Central America report being threatened, targeted, raped, and assaulted by criminal armed groups that exercise control over large swathes of territory in their home countries; making return to those regions a matter of endangerment. Despite the obvious threat, this past summer, the Trump administration proposed new asylum regulation to drastically narrow the eligibility for individuals seeking protection on the basis of “gender” could qualify for asylum among other classifications. In turn, making it increasingly more difficult for women to seek refuge when the persecution is carried about by means of nongovernmental persecutor, as present in cases of gender-based violence.
The facts are difficult to ignore. This is deliberate policy aimed to deter the most vulnerable from seeking safety. It is an exploitation of already tragic circumstances misinformed by the notion that those in power generally did not come from a lineage of migrants who risked their lives for the betterment of succeeding generations. Instead of safeguarding the health and rights of pregnant women, the Trump administration has completely dehumanized and degraded this group. Notorious for intolerant action and discriminatory charged policy over the darkness of the last four years, this specific instance as an attack on the defenceless somehow hits yet another low. Where is the humanity in a time of such widespread suffering?