I’ve spent the last four months or so investigating what happens to reproductive rights in ICE detention. And not in the way most people think of them (whether or not a woman has access to birth control or abortions), but from the perspective of: who has the right to reproduce in America? And how does our understanding of that right change for immigrants under Trump’s second term.

That story will run on Rewire News Group this month. But in the meantime, I thought I’d share some of the perspectives I’ve heard from with The Ravenna Report.

It was a hot summer day in Hawthorne, Calif. when Cary, U.S. citizen one week away from her due date, arrived after hearing that immigration agents had confronted her boyfriend and cousin — also a U.S. citizen — at a job site.

“My voice was trembling because I was scared,” Cary López Alvarado told me. “The whole time I was just trying to see if there was a good reason without any tactics or other violence, but I was scared. My hands were trembling. My voice was trembling. All my thoughts were to protect my family.”

Cary — noticeably very pregnant — was pushed, yelled at and threatened with deportation despite asserting her citizenship. “They would yell at me, slam the door in my face,” Cary said. “Tell me that my baby would be born here, but that I was gonna be sent back to Mexico.”

Of course Cary wasn’t from Mexico. Not in the way that mattered, at least. But she was detained away. And for hours, she was restrained with a chain — tied around her feet and baby-bearing abdomen — and denied basic decency when it came time to use a restroom.

“They told me that there is no restroom nearby, so I had to hold it,” Cary said. “But I told them that I can’t hold it in ‘cause I’m pregnant, and that it’s bad for me.”

As her state grew in desperation, her pleas grew in frequency.

“Eventually they told me that I have to, um, crouch down in a corner of a bush and pee there,” Cary said.

And when I asked if they looked away — some of them did, she told me.

“I just said, ‘Are they gonna look away?’ And they’re like, ‘They should look away.’ And I was like, ‘Well, they’re not.’” she recalled with a quivering voice. “And so I just had to crouch as close to the bush so that I couldn’t feel seen.”

Her attorney, Luis Carrillo, refused to grant the Trump administration and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) legitimacy — only referring to them with terms reminiscent of Nazi Germany.

“These people are not taught basic human rights and they’re not taught reverence for human life,” Luis told me. “In other words, every time a fucking Nazi kills one person in this country, that means they were never trained to have reverence for human life.”

Luis’s emphasis on a law — or in this case, immigration — enforcement agency’s respect for humanity is a reference to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) police manual, which tells its officers “You must have reference for human life.”

“Obviously, the Nazis of mother-fucking Adolf Hitler- er, Trump, do not have reverence for human life,” Luis said. “In my opinion.”

Luis, speaking from within the walls of his firm, calls President Trump, “Adolf Hilter,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, “his Heinrich,” and ICE agents- well, you get the picture.

Cary was released after 11 hours of detention. But her cousin, was not so lucky. Despite being a US citizen, she was held in a jail for two weeks because of alleged charges.

The night she was detained, Cary felt a sharp stabbing to her abdomen and checked herself into the hospital where she gave birth days later — the same day her boyfriend and father’s child, Brayan Barrera, was deported. Cary phoned him and told him about the arrival of his daughter.

“Because it was only a five-minute call, he couldn’t really process it,” she said. “But he knew that was his baby girl. And he asked, ‘Is she beautiful?’ And I told him, ‘Yeah, she’s beautiful. She got it from you.”

One week after she came into the world, Cary’s cousin was released and rushed to the hospital to meet her.

And her daughter, now 15 months old, has still not met her father. And while those first days were scary for Cary, “it was also the most blessed time.”

To read the transcripts of these conversations in totality, visit the links below:

Interviews with immigration attorney Luis Carrillo, and his client, Cary López Alvarado

If you or someone you know has been detained by ICE as a U.S. citizen or as a pregnant migrant. Or you have an otherwise important story, please respond to this email. I’d love to hear it.

Until next time,

— Isabel Ravenna

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