US moving pregnant immigrant girls to Texas to avoid providing abortions, critics say

All unaccompanied immigrant children who are pregnant, many by rape, are being moved to a single facility in Texas in order to avoid providing abortion services in a significant human rights violation, critics say.

As detainees are frequently moved across state lines quickly, often to red states like Texas, pregnant people are facing challenges accessing reproductive health care in detention centers.

Unaccompanied minors who lack immigration documentation are at high risk for trafficking and other forms of harm, so they fall under the care of the office of refugee resettlement (ORR), which previously had facilities across the country capable of caring for children under the age of 18 who are pregnant.

Since July, more than a dozen pregnant children have been moved to a single facility in the small town of San Benito, along the south Texas border. The children kept in Texas are as young as 13, and about half are pregnant because of rape, according to a joint investigation by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom. In Texas, abortion is banned in nearly all circumstances, including rape and incest.

“It’s a choice to ensure zero abortions,” said Jonathan White, a former top official working with children’s programs in the ORR under the Obama and Trump administrations. When a pregnant child is moved to Texas, “as long as she is in Texas, she can’t access an abortion – without a federal official needing to deny her an abortion”, he said.

The move amplifies existing concerns about reproductive healthcare in immigration detention centers, including allegations over the lack of appropriate healthcare for pregnant people, separation of nursing parents and infants, and forced sterilization in immigration facilities.

The “total disregard” for the rights of pregnant and nursing detainees is a “dramatic violation” of international law and public health practices ensuring consensual medical treatment, said Diana Romero, professor and director of the Center on Immigrant, Refugee and Global Health at the CUNY graduate school of public health.

Forcing any individual to carry a pregnancy to term is an “egregious” violation of rights, and relocation from other locations around the country to states with more restrictive abortion laws “adds a whole other layer of concern”, Romero said.

White added that “making the decision for these girls whether they will give birth to their rapist’s baby” is “an extraordinary human rights problem.”

“Everyone attempts to write their politics on the bodies of these children,” he said.

The typical age of pregnant unaccompanied minors is 15 or 16, though they can be even younger, White said. “They’re not grown women. They’re little girls,” he said. Because of their young age, “many of them will be comparatively high-risk pregnancies” who need specialized care – yet it’s not clear whether the south Texas facility, which is hours away from major cities, is equipped to offer that care.

The government does not track the prevalence of sexual assault experienced by unaccompanied girls under the age of 18, but other organizations estimate the rate to be between 80% and 90%, White said. “When I was in the program, about half of the pregnant girls related that their pregnancy was a result of sexual abuse or sexual assault, either in home country or in transit,” White said. Many girls don’t learn they are pregnant until they undergo an exam under ORR’s care.

The office of refugee resettlement is housed within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), but it is now directed by a career immigration official.

When asked whether the pregnant girls were receiving appropriate care, whether other pregnant detainees were also being moved to states with restrictive abortion laws, and the extent to which ORR is now controlled by immigration officials, HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said: “These claims are completely inaccurate,” adding that ORR “remains committed to ensuring the safety, well-being, and appropriate care” for the children in its custody.

The Flores settlement agreement, reached in 1997, dictates how children must be treated in US detention, including the right to access comprehensive reproductive health services. Under the first Trump administration in 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union won a case against HHS, compelling officials to connect pregnant unaccompanied children to reproductive health services if they wished to get an abortion.

“At the time in the United States, there was a constitutional right to access abortion services,” White said. But now, after the Dobbs decision reversed that precedent, patients’ abilities to access abortion care depends on where they live – and in this case, where they are kept in detention. “You’re placing a child in the most difficult place to get that abortion,” White said.

Accessing abortion in these states is already difficult for citizens, and “presumed immigrants” – people who are being targeted under the sweeping federal crackdown on immigrants because of their race or ethnicity – face additional challenges, creating a greater risk of human rights violations, Romero said. There’s a long history of people of color, particularly Black, Latina and Native American women, having their reproductive rights violated by the US government, she said.

Reproductive justice ensures not just the right to terminate a pregnancy but also to remain pregnant if a patient so chooses – and to “do so under safe conditions for the pregnant person, as well as for the fetus and subsequently the child”, Romero said. Several of the girls have given birth and are being detained in the Texas facility with their infants, though unnamed sources told the Texas and California newsrooms that the facility has a history of inadequate care.

The detained children are high school sophomores and juniors, alone in a foreign country and pregnant, frequently, from sexual assault.

“That has to inform how protective we are of them,” White said. “Surely, a 16-year-old who has been abused and wants to terminate that pregnancy should not be prevented by the federal government from doing so. Because she can’t get to it. They’ll literally holding her prisoner.”