Between January 2025 and February 2026, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed that 363 pregnant, postpartum, or nursing immigrants were deported. Sixteen miscarriages were recorded in detention during that same period. As of February, 86 pregnant people remained in ICE custody — nine of them in their third trimester. [ GovExec]
These aren’t abstractions. These are mothers. These are babies.
This data was reported to Congress twice a year since at least 2019 — then stopped in 2025. Senators demanded answers, and in March, DHS finally responded. Their own policy states that ICE “generally does not detain, arrest, or take into custody” pregnant, postpartum, or nursing individuals except in exceptional circumstances. [HRW] The numbers say otherwise.
Meet Laura
Laura is 24 years old, from Honduras, with a pending asylum application. She stopped leaving her apartment weeks before she gave birth — her community outside Minneapolis had been swept by immigration raids, her boyfriend’s father detained, her own father deported years before. When her labor began in the middle of the night, her boyfriend was too afraid to drive her. She went to the hospital with her doula — without her partner
She came home to an apartment where, as she told The 19th, “I was all alone with the baby, and no one could come see me because of immigration.” [The 19th News] Her boyfriend has visited his daughter three times — only at night, when it feels less dangerous. Laura has made contingency plans for who will care for her daughter if she is deported. Most days, she waits.
Laura’s story is not singular. We’ve been documenting this crisis since it began — read our previous reporting here and here.
This is what postpartum looks like without a village
The fourth trimester is already one of the highest-risk periods of a person’s life. One-third of all maternal deaths occur in the first year postpartum — most preventable, most the result of severe postpartum depression or untreated physical complications. The postpartum period demands more than survival, it requires sustained care, community, and safety. Fear of deportation has made all three impossible for thousands of mothers right now. Latinas are already twice as likely as white women to develop postpartum depression — and less likely to get treatment. [The 19th News] Isolation compounds every risk. It allows complications to go undetected, depression to deepen, and emergencies to become tragedies. This is maternal weathering happening in real time, by policy.
At 4th Trimester, we believe postpartum safety is not a privilege. It is a human right, and it is not conditional on citizenship. The village every new mother deserves shouldn’t disappear the moment she comes home from the hospital.
We are here. We are building that village — for every mother, regardless of where she was born.
