The Guardian reported on September 15, 2026, based on records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and a lawsuit with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, that at least 18 women miscarried in ICE custody from January through September 2025, and that the agency has no data on miscarriages after October 3, 2025. The Guardian said the 18 is likely an undercount.
The records show ICE held more pregnant women in detention in the fall and winter of 2025 than at any time over the previous year of released data: at least 87 pregnant women and adolescents in October and 101 in November. The data ICE released begins in October 2024.
The gap in miscarriage records followed a change in how ICE pays for detainee medical care. ICE ended its billing arrangement with the VA Financial Services Center, and the contractor that took over in October 2025 is months behind on claims. DHS at first told the Guardian that miscarriages were tracked in monthly reports, then confirmed it “does not have data on miscarriages from October 2025 through June 2026.” DHS spokesperson Chandler Rebel said a 2021 directive on detaining pregnant women “is still in place.”
Separately, DHS data provided to Sen. Patty Murray, reported in March by The 19th and Human Rights Watch, showed 363 pregnant, postpartum or nursing immigrants deported between January 1, 2025, and February 16, 2026, and 16 recorded miscarriages in detention. Human Rights Watch said that count ran through late September 2025, two fewer than the 18 in the records the Guardian obtained for the same months; the difference has not been explained.
The Guardian described women who said they miscarried or were denied specialist care in detention, including a woman who said that, while shackled to a hospital bed under the watch of three immigration officers, she was told she was no longer pregnant. Faisal Al-Juburi of the immigrant legal services group Raíces said, “When you don't track something of that magnitude, then you don't have to be confronted with the reality of what your policies have yielded.” Dr. Deborah Ottenheimer of Physicians for Human Rights said detained women “are not getting the prenatal visits that they're supposed to get.”
Update (October 31, 2026): Democratic Reps. Brittany Pettersen, Joyce Beatty and Robin Kelly, joined by 64 other representatives, wrote this month to ICE acting director David Venturella asking how many detainees have had miscarriages, stillbirths and pregnancy-related hospitalizations, what steps ICE has taken to recover the missing data, on what grounds it is detaining pregnant immigrants given the 2021 directive, and when “ICE leadership first became aware of concerns regarding miscarriage reporting and deficiencies in agency tracking systems,” the Guardian reported. They asked for answers by November 6. “ICE's inability to follow agency directives, provide adequate medical care and maintain accurate records of pregnancy-related medical outcomes is unacceptable,” they wrote. DHS did not confirm to the Guardian that it had received the letter; a spokesperson said, “Claims that any pregnant detainees are receiving subprime care are FALSE.”