This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. acebook. The woman looked down at her lunch and, as hungry as she was, knew she couldn’t eat it. The chicken at the ICE immigrant camp was pink, cold and watery, the vegetables overcooked and falling apart.
She placed a hand on her expanding belly and worried, as she did every day — would she be able to nourish her baby inside? Maria had been in ICE detention in Texas for six months. When agents arrested her in October 2025 at a check-in in Dallas, she said she told them she was pregnant, but they handcuffed her anyway and bussed her to the Bluebonnet Detention Center north of Abilene.
For months, she tried to do what she could for her baby, but her options were limited. The camp’s commissary sold mostly junk food. Her prenatal vitamins were refilled inconsistently, she said.
She felt her stress and anxiety wearing on her body, spiking her blood pressure, but could not stop worrying about what would happen when she went into labor — no one would tell her the plan for her baby’s arrival. As weeks turned into months, Maria’s anxiety grew along with her belly. Maria, who asked to be identified only by her first name and speaks Spanish, said through an interpreter that her life became “like a nightmare” at Bluebonnet.
Her stress and malnutrition were evident in her medical records. The documents show she developed high blood pressure, gestational diabetes and gained only half the amount of weight that a pregnant person should by their third trimester. In April, at eight months pregnant, ICE abruptly released Maria without explanation.
She returned to her home in North Texas, but her ordeal has not ended. That is what has bothered me most,” Maria said. Maria’s story is but one example of the troubling conditions for pregnant people in ICE custody amid President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign, according to experts, attorneys and immigrant advocacy groups.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
