Nursing mother of two and asylum-seeker detained by ICE in Tennessee

A nursing mother and Guatemalan asylum-seeker who was preparing to take her two young children to the doctor was arrested by ICE in Tennessee and is now being detained nearly 700 miles away from her family, according to advocacy groups that filed a civil rights complaint on her behalf.

The woman, who is referred to by the pseudonym Maria Pérez, fled “extreme domestic violence” in Guatemala and was seeking asylum in the U.S. when she was arrested in Nashville in May, said Katie Blankenship, the founder and managing attorney of Sanctuary of the South, an immigration and LGBTQ civil rights cooperative. Pérez is using a pseudonym out of fear of immigration retaliation.

Pérez has a 10-month-old baby, whom she had been nursing when she was arrested, and a 2-year-old with Down syndrome. She does not have a criminal history, advocates said.

“A mother getting her children into car seats to go to a doctor’s appointment is just ripped away from her children,” she said. “It’s just living an absolute nightmare. It’s a mother’s worst fear.”

The advocacy group, along with the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, filed a complaint calling for Pérez’s immediate release with the Depart of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General and other agencies Wednesday. The complaint is supported by the ACLU of Louisiana, the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center and Amnesty International.

Since pe’s detention, “her daughters have been in the care of a neighbor, as the family has no other support network in the area,” according to the complaint.

The civil rights complaint said Pérez was detained in violation of a policy directive that says ICE should not detain or arrest people who are known to be pregnant, postpartum or nursing unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as that they are national security risks or pose a danger.

“ICE and DHS continue to show blatant disregard not just for their own policies but for basic humanity,” Spring Miller, the senior director of legal strategy at the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, said in a statement.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday evening that “pregnant and nursing women in ICE detention are exceedingly rare.”

“When this occurs, the women receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations aligned with community standards of care,” a DHS spokesperson said. The spokesperson did not say why Pérez detained.

The Trump administration has not revoked the policy, but advocates have said that as arrests and detention have surged overall, they have seen an increase in the number of pregnant , nursing and postpartum women in detention facilities.

On May 19, ICE agents arrived at Pérez’s home seeking the father of her children, who is separately facing federal charges, according to the complaint.

Pérez “was not named in any warrant and was not the subject of the enforcement action, but was nonetheless taken into ICE custody while putting her daughters in the car and preparing to go to a medical appointment,” the complaint said.

She was taken into custody in Tennessee, before being transferred days later to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana, a jurisdiction that does not allow bond for people who entered the country illegally, Blankenship said.

DHS said in its statement that Pérez was detained while ICE was serving a federal warrant at her residence in Nashville and that she previously faced charges for falsely claiming U.S. citizenship. The agency said Pérez “chose to leave her two children with an adult at the home.”

Pérez’s attorneys have also filed a request for humanitarian parole and a federal habeas petition calling for her release, she said.

“Why would ICE violate its own rules just to target a nursing mother who has followed all the legal steps of the immigration system?” Nora Ahmed, legal director for the ACLU of Louisiana, said in a statement. “ICE has destroyed a family in the process and is directly responsible for putting children’s lives at risk.”