On May 5, 2025, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a memo revoking protections for pregnant women, infants, elderly individuals, and individuals with serious medical conditions. CBP had policies in place for these most vulnerable members of our society to ensure their safety and dignity.

The policies included commonsense provisions for providing these vulnerable persons with water to drink. Along with drinking water CBP rescinded its policies to stock diapers and baby formula (which was usually expired) for the infants/newborns and making arrangements to ensure their mothers can breastfeed them. expediting the release of those in medically dangerous situations who should not be held in custody.

The Department of Homeland Security has long struggled to provide adequate medical care to the immigrants in its custody, which has resulted in hundreds of deaths of young, previously healthy men and women, and even children. A Senate Judiciary Report from 2024 revealed widespread dysfunction In 2018 Mariee Juarez was in ICE custody in Dilley, Texas where she began running a 104 degree fever and developed cough, according to an article in the Guardian who interviewed the mother.

In addition to the cough, the 21-month-old toddler was suffering from congestion, diarrhea and vomiting a week after entering Dilley. But the symptoms were not mentioned by medical staff on discharge forms, according to the lawsuit. She was released from the ICE detention center and spent six weeks in the hospital before she succumb to a collapsed lung from the respiratory infection she developed in the detention center where she received no medical treatment. She was one of the seven children who died shortly after release from immigration custody that year.

The detention centers have been found to be unsanitary and dangerous in reports from organizations that inspected them during Trump’s first term in the White House when he previously suspended similar policies regarding the treatment of pregnant women and children in immigration custody. The Chair of the House Oversight Committee that year, Elijah Cummings, called the treatment of migrant children at the facility “government-sponsored child abuse on a grand scale.” Between October 2016 and August 2018, twenty-eight women in ICE custody “may have experienced a miscarriage just prior to, or while in ICE custody” according to an ICE spokeswoman. In 2018 there was also an eight-year-old Guatemalan boy, Felipe Gómez Alonso, who died on Christmas Eve while in ICE custody, and three weeks earlier, a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl, Jakelin Caal Maquin, died in Border Patrol custody according to the New York Times that reported on it at the time.

The memo that rescinds the existing policies did not implement any new policies to replace them other than “All CBP personnel are expected to treat those in Agency custody in a professional and respectful manner.” There will now be no special considerations for pregnant women, babies, elderly, or migrants who are severely ill. The same day the memo was issued a pregnant woman was found lost in the Arizona desert where she had been trying to find her way for two days according to the reports. She was taken to the hospital where she gave birth to a six pound premature baby “under supervision” of ICE officers according to a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security.

It not clear why this would be necessary and the spokesperson did not explain. Was the Trump administration concerned that the severely dehydrated woman had to give birth in front of officers because the Trump administration was concerned she might attempt to flee the hospital while in active labor?

These new policies, or the lack of policies, seems to indicate that the administration intends to be even more ruthless this second time around. Critics say the change could further endanger individuals already at risk in immigration detention facilities.

We are only six months into this nightmare and I am afraid the suffering has only just begun.