On December 4, 2025, a shadow hearing on Capitol Hill cast a stark light on the conditions endured by immigrants in U.S. detention centers, focusing especially on the plight of pregnant and postpartum women. The hearing, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), came amid a record surge in detentions and mounting allegations of abuse, neglect, and systemic failures that have left families shattered and communities outraged.
“The world needs to know what is happening to people like Rodney,” declared Mildred Pierre, whose husband, Rodney Taylor, is a double amputee currently detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. According to Pierre’s testimony, Taylor has been forced to sleep in his prosthetics out of fear they’ll be stolen, causing painful boils. He’s lost 20 pounds because walking is too agonizing, and staff “often won’t allow other inmates to go to the cafeteria for him and bring his meals back to his cell,” as reported by The Nation and echoed at the hearing. Pierre recounted that her husband went nearly two weeks without a shower because there was nowhere safe to remove his prosthetics. When he finally received a shower stool, the area “was covered in mold, feces, urine, and human bodily fluids. Rodney had to crawl on his hand and his limbs through those conditions just to take a shower. Again, no dignity for detained immigrants like Rodney,” she said.
Such stories are far from isolated. Attorney Sarah Owings, representing 54 Korean workers detained after a raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia, testified that “the ‘detain everyone’ policy that is pushed by the Trump administration has exacerbated a range of already serious problems within the immigration detention system.” Overcrowding, unsanitary facilities, and inedible food—described by some detainees as “dripping with blood”—have become the norm. Pregnant women have been shackled, placed in solitary confinement, and, in multiple cases, have suffered miscarriages due to mistreatment, according to testimony and corroborating reports from America’s Voice and Slate.
The number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention has soared to an all-time high of 65,135 individuals, even as oversight agencies have been gutted and private prison operators rake in profits from lucrative federal contracts. According to Rep. Jayapal, “ICE has been arresting people at courthouses when they’re trying to follow the legal process. They are profiling immigrants around the country, picking people up for the language they speak or the street corner they hang out on.” She added, “So immigration detention centers are full of mothers and fathers and beloved community members while those who pose a threat are free.”
This rapid expansion has come at a steep human cost. In July, Senator Jon Ossoff released the findings of a Senate investigation titled “The Abuse of Pregnant Women & Children in U.S. Immigration Detention.” The report documented more than 500 credible allegations of violations, including 14 involving pregnant women. Among the harrowing accounts: a woman who bled for days before being taken to a hospital, only to be left alone for over 24 hours to miscarry without water or medical assistance. Others were told to “just drink water” instead of receiving necessary medical exams, and some waited weeks for appointments that were ultimately canceled.
ICE’s own policies—specifically Directive 11032.4—state that pregnant and postpartum people are not supposed to be detained at all, except in “exceptional circumstances” such as posing a national security threat. Yet, as advocacy groups like the ACLU, the National Immigration Project, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights have documented in a joint letter presented to ICE in October, these guidelines are routinely ignored. The letter, based on interviews with women detained while pregnant, described shackling, solitary confinement, denial of prenatal vitamins, and even medical procedures performed without informed consent or translation services. Most disturbingly, women actively miscarrying were often ignored by facility staff, leading to serious infections and lifelong trauma.
ICE dismissed these findings as “anonymous, unsubstantiated and unverifiable claims,” according to Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. DHS further asserted that detainees receive “regular prenatal visits, mental-health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care.” But the consistency and detail of the testimonies, as reported by Slate and The Nation, cast doubt on these official statements.
Oversight of these facilities has become nearly impossible. The Women’s Refugee Commission notes that access has been curtailed and a congressional mandate requiring ICE to regularly report the number of pregnant detainees has lapsed. Kate Voigt, Senior Policy Counsel at the ACLU, warned, “ICE is turbocharging $45 billion in taxpayer dollars to rapidly expand ICE detention capacity across the country. Without the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties—and other oversight agencies that were also eliminated in March—there is no effective internal oversight mechanism while immigration detention is exploding in scale.”
The impact on children and families has been devastating. In June, four American citizen children were taken into care after their mother was detained at Washington’s Peace Arch Historical State Park. The children, all U.S. citizens, were threatened with foster care, separated from each other, and interrogated without their mother present. Their mother, Jackie Merlos, was not reunited with them for four months. “They were threatened constantly with foster care, separated—even from each other,” testified Oregon resident Mimi Lettunich, who took the children in. “Agents interrogated the children without Jackie. They were asked ‘where did they live? Did they have any money? Did they have relatives? Did they have a father?’ Shortly thereafter, ICE took their dad. The children believe that was their fault.”
2025 has become the deadliest year for immigrants in federal detention in two decades, with deaths ranging from 27-year-old Brayan Garzón-Rayo, who died by suicide after not receiving a mental health evaluation, to 75-year-old Isidro Pérez, who spent six decades in the U.S. before dying in custody. The overwhelming majority of those detained—73 percent, according to ICE’s own statistics—have no criminal conviction at all, and most of the rest are held for minor offenses like traffic violations. “Thousands of people now face months, if not years, in detention if they fight their case without any review by a judge to determine whether their detention is fair, just, or necessary,” said Laura St. John, Legal Director at the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project.
Meanwhile, as resources are funneled into mass detentions, the Trump administration has diverted law enforcement away from pursuing serious criminals. Weapons seizures are down 73 percent, and narcotics arrests have dropped 11 percent, according to data shared by Rep. Jayapal. “He is not at all going after the ‘worst of the worst,’” she said. “Our immigrant neighbors have also been targeted for masked kidnappings as the administration has been ‘diverting resources and letting the real criminals run free.’”
Despite the existence of clear rules and constitutional protections—affirmed by the Supreme Court to cover all persons within U.S. borders, regardless of status—ICE’s ongoing practices have been described by advocates as not only violations of policy, but as breaches of fundamental rights. “When the United States takes a pregnant woman into custody, it assumes full responsibility for her safety. Denying medical care is not a policy choice—it is a constitutional violation,” stated the ACLU in its coalition letter. “These are not bureaucratic errors or ‘oversights’ that can be fixed with tighter procedures. They are acts of cruelty that meet the moral threshold of crimes against humanity.”
The question now confronting the nation is whether these revelations will spur action—or whether, as advocates fear, they will be met with more indifference, leaving the most vulnerable to suffer in silence.
