ICE raids impact breastfeeding moms
Some in Mississippi separated from children despite agency’s denial
CARTHAGE, Miss. – Every morning, 9-month-old Elizabeth wakes up and reaches across the bed to breastfeed, but her mother isn’t there. Her father, Romeo Ramirez, has tried his best to mimic the process, cradling his wideeyed girl while slipping her a bottle of formula.
For the first three days, Elizabeth refused, wailing each time as she pushed him away. On the fourth day, when hunger overwhelmed her, she finally accepted the bottle. “I didn’t know what to do,” Ramirez said. “She kept crying and crying. She was so hungry but she wouldn’t take the bottle. I thought she was going to die.”
Her mother, Norma Cardona Ramirez, was among the 680 people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Aug. 7 during raids at food processing plants in central Mississippi. She and other parents identified by the USA TODAY Network remain in custody more than two weeks later, despite claims from federal officials that the agency released more than 300 people on humanitarian grounds, including breastfeeding mothers and single parents with children at home.
In all, the USA TODAY Network found at least three cases where a breastfeeding mother is being held in custody. And it has identified two cases where single mothers – each with three minor children – are still detained, their children being cared for by a friend and a sister-in-law.
The detentions raise questions about the way ICE agents screened the people they arrested, including how many parents with tender-age children remain in custody. They pose broader questions about the Trump administration’s treatment of families caught up in the president’s escalating efforts to crack down on illegal immigration.
ICE spokesman Bryan Cox said that each woman arrested in the Mississippi raids was asked if she was breastfeeding or had minor children that ICE “needed to account for in processing.”
But it’s unclear how ICE determines whom to release on humanitarian grounds, and the agency refused to answer questions about who qualifies for such a release.
Mothers separated from children
Last week, the Clarion Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, reported a 4month-old breastfeeding baby was separated from her mom after the ICE raids. ICE said the woman had responded “no” when asked if she was breastfeeding. The agency said it had a nurse examine the mother after the story was published – 12 days after her arrest – and that the exam showed she was not lactating.
The woman’s attorneys and her husband maintain that the woman was lactating and had not been asked by agents whether she was.
Ramirez said his wife also was not asked whether she had children or was breastfeeding.
Ramirez said his wife told him during a phone call that when she was first apprehended in Canton, she was asked only for her full name, her date of birth, her country of origin and her parents’ names. As she continued through the process, officials again asked her only those four questions, Ramirez said. At no point was she asked whether she had a child that she was breastfeeding, and she repeatedly tried to tell the agents.
“She told them ‘I have children. I have four children. I have one whom I’m breastfeeding,’ ” Ramirez said. “The official either didn’t hear her or didn’t care.”
Asked whether ICE had any women in custody who said they were breastfeeding, Cox replied: “No person of which I am aware who claimed breastfeeding upon their Aug. 7 arrest.”
‘Hard-working, family people’
Community and business leaders in the affected Mississippi towns said the ICE raids have turned the communities upside-down and will affect them for years. Store owners are worried about loss of business, bankers about mortgages and pastors about the loss of many parishioners. Chicken plants, an economic anchor for some of these small communities, are closed or running at reduced capacity and had been struggling to find enough workers before the raids.
Canton Police Chief Otha Brown recently questioned the raids and their long-term impact on his town, and said of those arrested: “We don’t have any problems with them. Most of those folks are hard-working, family people.”
When immigration officials encountered two alleged undocumented immigrants with minor children at home, they released one of the parents, U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst said in a statement. They did the same thing for single parents with minor children at home, Hurst’s office said.
At least one woman says that’s a lie. Ingrid, who asked only to be identified by her first name because she is an undocumented immigrant and fears reprisal, was already facing a daunting challenge when her husband was arrested. That left Ingrid to care for her six children alone. But her sister-in-law was also arrested, leaving Ingrid to care for her three children, ages 4, 6 and 10.
Alan Gomez and Rebecca Morin are reporters for USA TODAY. Alissa Zhu and Giacomo Bologna are reporters for the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss.