On Wednesday, the Guardian broke the harrowing story of Zharick Daniela Buitrago Ortiz, a 21-year-old woman who is eight months pregnant, in need of emergency assistance, and—at the time of writing—was being held in Atlanta and facing deportation to Colombia.
After her father was killed for speaking out about corruption in their home country, Ortiz and her mother escaped to Texas in November, where they sought asylum. During a “credible fear” hearing, they explained they could face persecution and torture in their home country. According to Ortiz’s lawyer, Anthony Enriquez—who also serves as vice president of US advocacy and litigation at the Kennedy Human Rights Center—not only were the two rejected, but they were also issued an order for an “expedited removal.”
According to Ortiz’s mother, who is in contact with Enriquez, the 21-year-old is experiencing sharp pains in her abdomen and back, and is suffering from nausea and vomiting. “She has asked for medical care and has been denied it,” Enriquez told the outlet. “We are immediately moving to file a lawsuit just to preserve the status quo and to ensure that our client gets the medical care she needs.”
But speaking to the Guardian, a spokesperson for ICE confirmed Ortiz’s deportation is imminent and that, currently, she and her mother are at the airport.
“Putting a pregnant woman on a flight when she is in medical distress risks both her life and the life of her baby,” Zain Lakhani, Director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), told Jezebel in a statement. “This case exemplifies ICE’s inhumane approach to prioritizing detention and rapid deportation over the safety of pregnant individuals and their unborn children.”
Per ICE’s own guidelines (which were enshrined in a Biden-era policy), agents technically aren’t even allowed to detain immigrants who are pregnant, postpartum, or nursing, except in extreme circumstances. As of 2019, Congress is meant to issue a biannual report on how many pregnant immigrants are being held in facilities, along with detailed reasons on why they’re being held. But lawmakers let that requirement lapse in March, and it’s since been impossible to know how many pregnant women are suffering in ICE facilities.
In August, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) published a report following a months-long investigation that identified 510 credible instances of human rights abuses across ICE detention centers, 14 of which involved the mistreatment of pregnant women. A few months later, in October, the ACLU, Kennedy Human Rights Center, and other organizations wrote a letter to ICE demanding the release of pregnant detainees, citing findings that women were shackled during miscarriages; miscarried in housing unit bathrooms; were refused medical treatment; and were suffering postpartum depression without support from detention staff. (WRC also has a Detention Pregnancy Tracker, which collects reports of similar abuses.) In September, after one woman spoke to the media about experiencing a miscarriage in custody, the Department of Homeland Security falsely claimed she was a murderer.
“The decision to endanger the life of a woman in the late stage of her pregnancy represents an extreme example of [ICE’s] abuses,” Lakhani said. “Given ICE is operating as a black box of impunity, what’s being reported is likely only scratching the surfaces of mistreatment.”
