(WASHINGTON) — A 21-year-old pregnant mother has been detained, along with her infant son, for more than a month at the family immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, her family and an advocacy group told ABC News.
Laura Rojas Ortiz was in the process of applying for a U visa — which is for victims or witnesses of crimes — when she was detained during a check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas, her mother said.
“She was called to appear [at an ICE office] in Dallas,” her mother, Paola, said in Spanish. “She showed up like she always does, and they detained her.”
Paola told ABC News that her daughter turned herself in at the southern border over a year ago with her infant son and partner. The mother claims Rojas Ortiz later began the process of applying for a U visa after there was a shooting in her neighborhood and a bullet went through the walls, allegedly grazing her son.
According to Paola and a friend of Rojas Ortiz, the 21-year-old had been wearing an ankle monitor and regularly checking in with ICE before she was detained with her son as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.
Rojas Ortiz, who is five months pregnant, has been detained for more than 40 days, her family said. Her mother says Rojas Ortiz has a high-risk pregnancy and has not been seen by medical staff at Dilley.
“To this day, she hasn’t gotten an ultrasound or been seen by a specialist,” Paola told ABC News. “They haven’t done blood tests or anything.”
Immigrant advocacy groups have said that arrests and detentions of pregnant women violate an ICE directive stating that the agency should not “detain, arrest, or continue to detain individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing” except under exceptional circumstances.
Paola said her grandson, who had been drinking only lactose-free milk, has been given whole milk at Dilley.
Paola also told ABC News that when lawmakers recently visited the facility, ICE staff moved her daughter to a “medical room,” where she was told she was going to be checked by a doctor.
“And when they left — so that the politicians wouldn’t see her pregnant — that’s when they let her out of that medical room,” Paola said.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Last week, Rep. Joaquin Castro, along with a group of Democratic lawmakers, visited the Dilley facility, where he said more than 500 people are currently detained. Castro said he was only allowed by staff to meet with one minor.
“There are now more children there than there were before,” Castro said at a press conference last week. “I believe that is the result of the ICE surge that we’ve seen over the last month or so. We’ve seen these raids on the street. We’ve seen families that have been torn apart on the street, brutality on the street.”
Casey Revkin, the executive director of Each Step Home, an organization that supports immigrant detainees, told ABC News that her group has been providing Rojas Ortiz with financial assistance.
“We’ve been filling Laura’s commissary account and the accounts of the families at Dilley every week. These deposits are a lifeline to families in detention,” Revkin said. “It’s heartbreaking to think of a child not eating, and we’re always so relieved when we hear that a mom was able to use the commissary support to buy her children food they can enjoy.”
Immigrant advocates, medical professionals, and lawmakers have previously raised concerns about conditions at the South Texas facility.
The top medical official at the Department of Homeland Security, which operates the nation’s migrant detention centers, has disputed any suggestion that detainees are being denied proper care.
“These allegations of illegal aliens being denied proper medical care in ICE custody are FALSE,” DHS Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sean Conley previously told ABC News in a statement. “It is both policy and longstanding practice for aliens to receive timely and appropriate medical care from the moment they enter ICE custody. This includes medical, dental, women’s health, mental health services, any needed follow-up medical appointments, as well as 24-hour emergency care.”
“This is better, more responsive healthcare than many aliens have ever received in their entire lives,” Conley’s statement said.
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