{"id":318979,"date":"2026-06-02T10:11:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/318979\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T10:11:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:11:21","slug":"where-are-all-the-kids-questions-arise-over-treatment-of-pregnant-minors-in-texas-immigration-facility-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/318979\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Where are all the kids?\u2019: questions arise over treatment of pregnant minors in Texas immigration facility | Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Representative Maxine Dexter has a lot of questions. Why were all of the pregnant, unaccompanied minors in the US rounded up and sent to San Benito, a tiny town on the Texas<\/a> border with Mexico? Are they given appropriate medical care, given their high-risk conditions and Texas\u2019s abortion ban? And most importantly: where are the girls \u2013 and their infants \u2013 now?<\/p>\n

Dexter, a Democratic congresswoman from Oregon and a former critical care physician \u2013 one of the few doctors now serving in Congress \u2013 detailed these questions in an 8 May letter<\/a> to refugee and health officials after visiting the San Benito facility and, she said, being blocked from speaking with any of the children. She still hasn\u2019t gotten answers.<\/p>\n

In the US, the treatment of immigration detainees has raised concern over rights violations, overcrowding and a lack of medical care \u2013 situations that are not transparent even to members of Congress. Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, says he was sprayed with pepper balls on Monday outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE<\/a>) Delaney Hall facility, where detainees have spent days on a hunger strike over poor conditions. Health inspectors with the state of New Jersey were denied full access to the facility on Thursday, Mikie Sherrill, the state\u2019s governor, said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Detainees across the US have said they don\u2019t have safe, nutritious food or adequate medical care, while outbreaks of infectious diseases have plagued facilities, which are often converted warehouses, storefronts or churches that were never meant to house people and frequently lack ventilation.<\/p>\n

Detention centers have grappled with \u201cone gross contagion after another\u201d, Nancy Zanello, an ICE assistant field office director in New York, wrote in a 2025 email. One detainee with tuberculosis was reportedly held in the overcrowded facility for six days, \u201cand we have a guy with monkeypox\u201d, Zanello wrote<\/a> in a text message, referring to mpox.<\/p>\n

\u2018They face detention without support\u2019<\/p>\n

Unaccompanied minors, who are kept through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), are \u201cuniquely vulnerable\u201d, Rosalind Rogers, a psychologist specializing in the mental health of immigrants and refugees, said at a recent event<\/a> with Duke University on the health vulnerabilities of children and families in immigration facilities. \u201cThey face detention without the support, nurturing, and protection of a caregiver.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the unaccompanied children at the San Benito facility, there is the added stress and confusion of being pregnant and alone. The facility has housed pregnant children as young as 13; about half of the pregnancies are the result of rape.<\/p>\n

Following reporting from the Guardian<\/a> and others<\/a>, Dexter notified the facility in San Benito that she would visit in late April.<\/p>\n

When she arrived, she was blocked from speaking with or even seeing any children throughout her entire visit, she said.<\/p>\n

Local immigration attorneys arranged interviews with two girls being held at the facility, but on the morning Dexter was set to visit, \u201capparently those girls were spoken to harshly by ORR staff, and they were scared to talk to me after that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There are also questions about how many children are being held at the facility. One of the attorneys receiving a daily census said there were 11 children that day, but officials told Dexter there were only seven children. When Joaquin Castro, a Democratic Texas<\/a> congressman, visited a few weeks before, there were 17.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere have all of these kids gone? Because there used to be many, many more,\u201d Dexter asked.<\/p>\n

The staff responded \u201cit\u2019s case by case\u201d and offered no other details, Dexter said, adding: \u201cWhether they\u2019re in foster care, or in other facilities, or they\u2019ve been returned to other countries, we don\u2019t know.\u201d Dexter says she kept asking, trying new ways to find answers. A representative from ORR\u2019s Washington office was there, but she didn\u2019t answer the questions, Dexter said. \u201cOur experience has been, we\u2019ll keep asking, and no one answers \u2026 They had a lot of girls in custody. Where did they all go?\u201d<\/p>\n

The ORR case management system can \u201cdefinitively answer\u201d where each of the unaccompanied children at the San Benito site went, said Jonathan White, a former top official working with children\u2019s programs in the ORR under the Obama and Trump administrations.<\/p>\n

The most likely answer is that the girls were moved back to their countries of origin or a third country, White said. That would mean their infants, who are US citizens, are being deported, he added: \u201cI suspect that in effect in this one narrow case the president\u2019s executive order on birthright citizenship is already being in some ways enforced.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before this administration, departures like these \u201calmost never happened\u201d because the children had to formally request an immigration court judge, he said. When Dexter visited the Harlingen immigration court, more than half the children, all from ORR facilities, had no legal representation.<\/p>\n

Dexter and others have expressed concerns about whether the children are receiving appropriate medical care.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are high-risk pregnancies, by definition, simply by the age of the girls,\u201d Dexter said. It\u2019s not clear what happens if pregnancy or birth complications occur. \u201cIf they have an ectopic pregnancy, if they have a partial loss of pregnancy, will they get the healthcare they need to save their lives?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018What are they hiding?\u2019<\/p>\n

The Trump administration previously tried to block unaccompanied minors from accessing abortion, and White believes officials moved the girls to Texas because of its restrictions on abortion. Texas law has also limited access to appropriate healthcare in general, Dexter said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a lack of OB-GYNs in the community in no small part because of the changes to these laws around reproductive healthcare,\u201d Dexter said. \u201cI\u2019m very concerned about whether there is sufficient high-risk fair access, especially with these most marginalized children who don\u2019t have the advocates and don\u2019t have rights in the same way that others do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services, said: \u201cPregnant girls have access to gynecologists and maternal-fetal medicine specialists who provide care for high-risk adolescent pregnancies, ensuring that children with complex medical needs can receive appropriate evaluation and treatment when necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, detentions in the San Benito facility were reportedly halted because of insufficient access to healthcare.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked about that and I asked what had changed, and they just said they went from 15 days or more between being able to get an appointment to five days. So we know that it was hard in the past to get appropriate healthcare,\u201d Dexter said. \u201cThey did not have glucometers, they didn\u2019t have Dopplers. They didn\u2019t have basic things that pregnant people often have, especially high-risk pregnancies.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are no lactation specialists to help with breastfeeding, which can be challenging even for adults. \u201cThey\u2019re sent back to class, it sounds like, as early as two weeks after giving birth,\u201d Dexter said.<\/p>\n

Staff told her the children receive medical meals to meet their nutritional needs, but immigration attorneys say that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have heard from other folks who directly work with people who\u2019ve been in this detention facility, and what we heard from the people giving the tour, was very different,\u201d Dexter said. \u201cThe fact that there appears to have been some coercion or intimidation from talking with me just makes you wonder: \u2018What are they hiding? Why do they not want transparency and accountability for what\u2019s going on?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only are these questions going unanswered, but there is also no state-level accountability after Greg Abbott, Texas\u2019s governor, rescinded the oversight from the state over facilities like these, she said. \u201cORR is overseeing ORR, which is a recipe for disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Representative Maxine Dexter has a lot of questions. Why were all of the pregnant, unaccompanied minors in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318980,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-318979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}