ICE separated nursing mom from infant, toddler in Nashville, against its own rules, advocates say

A group of human rights organizations are seeking the immediate release of a breastfeeding mother with a pending asylum claim, who was detained in May by immigration agents at her home in Nashville as she was putting her two young children into a car to get to a doctor’s appointment.

In a complaint filed Wednesday with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, the organizations allege that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is violating its own policies against detaining pregnant, postpartum and nursing parents and requiring ICE to facilitate visits between children and parents.

The woman, whose name is redacted in the five-page complaint, is being held in a Louisiana facility 700 miles from Nashville and has not seen her children since her May 19 arrest, the complaint said. She has no criminal record. 

The woman has had a pending asylum claim after clearing a “credible fear” interview with immigration officials after she entered the United States from Guatemala in 2022 — the initial threshold necessary to establish an asylum case, according to the complaint filed by organizations including Amnesty International, the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center and the Tennessee Immigration & Refugee Rights Coalition.

At the time of her arrest, she was breastfeeding both of her daughters, a then-8-month-old infant and a 2-year-old toddler who has Down Syndrome and multiple medical conditions. 

“The separation of an infant from a nursing mother, and of a medically fragile toddler from her primary caregiver, causes significant and ongoing harm to all three family members,” the complaint said.

“We implore DHS to act immediately. Every day of delay increases the risk of irreversible harm to (the woman) and her two U.S. citizen children,” the complaint said. 

Other organizations signing onto the complaint are Sanctuary of the South, Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU of Louisiana, where the woman is entering her third month of detention.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the woman “chose to leave her two children with an adult at the home” when she was detained.

“On May 19, ICE detained a criminal illegal alien from Guatemala while serving a federal warrant at her residence in Nashville. The illegal alien, with previous charges for falsely claiming US citizenship, chose to leave her two children with an adult at the home,” an email from the spokesperson said.  The warrant was for the father of the woman’s children, who was not there, according to the complaint.

The spokesperson did not respond to a request for data on the number of nursing mothers currently being held in immigration detention facilities, but said it was “exceedingly rare.”

“Pregnant and nursing women in ICE detention are exceedingly rare. When this occurs, the women receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care.” the emailed response said. The care also includes medical, dental and mental health screenings within 12 hours of arrival at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days and access to medical appointments and emergency care,” the spokesperson said.

“This is the best healthcare many of these individuals have received in their entire lives,” the spokesperson said.

ICE guidelines generally bar detaining nursing mothers

ICE’s rules say that the agency may only detain nursing parents under narrow “exceptional circumstances” such as risks to national security or an imminent threat to others.

“Generally, ICE should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws, individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist,” the policy says.

Advocates say the agency is routinely flouting those rules, which were reinstated  during the Biden administration in 2021 after the first Trump administration vacated similar rules barring the detention of pregnant, postpartum and nursing parents in 2017.

Anthony Enriquez, vice president of U.S. advocacy and litigation for the Robert and Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center represents two people challenging their detention under the rules for pregnant, postpartum and nursing women. The organization does not represent the mother from Nashville but joined the complaint in support.

There are likely many more pregnant, postpartum and nursing mothers being detained, but ICE is failing to follow rules that require it to keep data on the number, Enriquez said.

“How many is a question that only DHS is going to be able to answer, but I suspect it doesn’t know the answer because it’s not tracking that,” he said. “We’re just seeing flagrant violations of that directive.”

‘Punishing not just the woman but the child as well’

In February, in response to a demand for data by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington State, ICE provided snapshot data that showed, as of Feb. 16, there were 86 pregnant women, 35 postpartum women and 15 nursing women in ICE detention.

The data includes only women in the 23 detention centers served by the ICE Health Services Corps, a medical provider that serves a fraction of ICE facilities. It does not include pregnant, postpartum and nursing detainees at more than 200 other immigration detention centers whose medical care is provided by private contractors.

Enriquez said he believes there are now many more, citing litigation brought across the nation, media reports and a high volume of calls from potential clients to his organization.

He also cited a Government Accounting Office report from 2020 that tracked a steep increase in the detention of pregnant women after the first Trump administration repealed rules against it.

In 2016, before the Trump administration repealed those rules, ICE had detained 1,380 pregnant women in that year. After its repeal, it reported detaining 2,097 pregnant women in 2018.

“The reason this is important is we’ve seen women who have reported waiting weeks for prenatal appointments. Women have reported bleeding for days before being hospitalized or received medical follow-up up to two weeks after a miscarriage,” he said. 

“We’ve heard reports of women being shackled at their ankles, wrists and waists during medical exams. There are reports of women not receiving adequate prenatal nutrition. And we’ve seen nursing mothers taken from their breastfeeding infants. Lactation is, by definition, the infant’s food source, so it’s punishing not just the woman but the child as well,” Enriquez said.

The advocacy organizations’ complaint demands that ICE confirm in writing whether the Nashville mother meets any of the criteria of the “exceptional circumstances” required for her continued detention. It also demands her immediate release to resume nursing her children.

They have not been able to see their mother since her detention, they noted. A neighbor is caring for them both.

After more than two months in detention, the woman is “experiencing the physical effects of the abrupt cessation of breastfeeding,” compounded by diabetes, the complaint said. Her oldest daughter with Down Syndrome has a history of medical complications and has missed ongoing weekly therapies since her mother’s detention, it said.

The complaint