US lawmakers are urgently demanding that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) disclose how many pregnant immigrants have experienced miscarriages, stillbirths and pregnancy-related hospitalizations while in the its custody, after the agency admitted it lost count last year.
US representatives sent the request following a recent Guardian investigation revealing that the Trump administration is detaining a record number of pregnant women and teens, and at the same has lost track of how many suffered miscarriages.
In a letter sent this month to ICE’s acting director, David Venturella, Democratic representatives Brittany Pettersen, Joyce Beatty and Robin Kelly also asked the immigration enforcement agency to explain what – if any – steps have been taken to recover any missing data about these cases.
Government documents obtained by the Guardian found that ICE had placed more pregnant immigrants in detention last fall and winter than at any time over the previous year. The agency recorded ۱۸ miscarriages during the first nine months of the Trump administration, the documents found, but the agency has no data on miscarriages after ۳ October ۲۰۲۵.
Detained pregnant women said that they were struggling to access routine and emergency medical care. Medical experts told the Guardian that lapses in care both during pregnancy and during and after miscarriage could escalate treatable conditions into life-threatening emergencies.
In their letter, the representatives also cite a ۲۰۲۱ directive instructing ICE to wholly avoid detaining pregnant, postpartum and nursing immigrants “unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist” – and ask the agency to clarify on what grounds it is detaining pregnant immigrants. The directive also requires ICE to closely monitor and document the health of all pregnant people in its custody, and continuously evaluate whether it is medically advisable to keep them detained.
“ICE’s inability to follow agency directives, provide adequate medical care and maintain accurate records of pregnancy-related medical outcomes is unacceptable,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter, which was cosigned by ۶۴ other representatives.
In an interview, Pettersen said it was “deeply concerning” that ICE had failed to account for a full year of pregnancy outcomes. “I’m just devastated for the people who have gone through this, who’ve lost pregnancies unnecessarily, who have been left without the medical care that they need after miscarrying,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine how we are ever going to right these wrongs.”
In internal agency documents, ICE said it had no data on miscarriages because the agency changed medical billing providers in October. The agency’s medical claims processing has been delayed for months. Immigration attorneys and former government officials told said it was odd, but plausible, that ICE was keeping track of miscarriages solely via its medical billing provider.
In response to follow-up questions about its tracking practices after ۳ October ۲۰۲۵, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, first said that the agency was tracking miscarriages in monthly reports. But later, the spokesperson confirmed what was in the ICE internal documents – the agency does not have data on miscarriages between October ۲۰۲۵ through June ۲۰۲۶.
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The DHS did not confirm to the Guardian whether it had received the letter from Congress members. “Claims that any pregnant detainees are receiving subprime care are FALSE,” an agency spokesperson said.
In their letter, lawmakers asked ICE’s acting director to detail when “ICE leadership first became aware of concerns regarding miscarriage reporting and deficiencies in agency tracking systems”. They gave the agency until ۶ November to respond.
Prior to the Guardian’s reporting, the agency had never acknowledged that it had lost count of miscarriages – not even when US senators asked the agency for the data.
The Guardian filed a Freedom of Information Act request and then filed suit in collaboration with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to obtain data on the number of pregnant people in ICE detention, and the health outcomes for this population.
