Sexually Assaulted Female Immigrants Denied Reproductive Rights

Current U.S. immigration detention policy includes locking up women who have been raped and then denying them access to abortion services. Kevin Sieff writes in the Texas Observer:

In 2008, 10,653 women were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to agency spokeswoman Cori Bassett, 965 of those women — nearly 10 percent — were pregnant. Many of them, were raped on their way to the United States—a journey known to be dangerous for any willing to take it, but especially so for women. For pregnant women in immigration detention facilities, it is virtually impossible to obtain an abortion. “Preliminary records indicated that during fiscal year ’08 and ’09 to date, no detainee has had a pregnancy terminated while in ICE custody.” Not a single one.

With the prevalence of rape among immigrants and the government’s increasingly stringent immigration enforcement policies, ICE’s treatment of pregnant detainees has become particularly relevant in recent years.

Medical services within ICE detention facilities, including requests for abortions, are handled by the Division of Immigration Health Services, a subagency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The division has sometimes scrambled to fulfill its growing responsibilities, since ICE was created out of the now-defunct Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services.

The joint policy of the division and ICE is to not fund elective procedures, including abortions. On its “Detainee Covered Service Package,” the division lists abortion as an example of commonly requested procedures that are “not covered but can be requested in the event of an emergency situation.” “ICE must pay for the termination of a pregnancy if a physician determines that the continuation of a pregnancy is life-threatening for the mother.”

ICE’s policy on abortion is markedly different than that of its sister organization, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which requires that each pregnant inmate receive counseling to help her decide “whether to carry the pregnancy to full term or to have an elective abortion,” according to federal regulations. If a detainee asks for an abortion, the prison’s clinical director “shall arrange for an abortion to take place.”