Hi Rulers, happy February. We made it to month two. Amidst a lot of immigration-related news this week, we take a look at how these changes are playing out for women. Let’s get into it: On Tuesday, the Trump administration sent the first flight of deported migrants to Guantánamo Bay, after directing the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security last week to prepare the American naval base in Cuba to hold up to 30,000 immigrants. (The facility is currently equipped to hold 130.) President Donald Trump has enacted a slew of immigration policy changes, including permitting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests at sensitive locations like schools, churches, courthouses and hospitals and eliminating birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants — although two judges have blocked the birthright order. Trump has so far not deported more people than the Biden or Obama administrations did, but the PR blitz around his deportations is distinct. As a result, immigrants across the country are changing their routines, keeping children home from school and skipping doctor’s appointments. There is a specific subset of those immigrants who could be uniquely impacted by these policies: pregnant people, who, under the current birthright citizenship laws, will be parents to American newborns. “These executive orders would make this group of women, in particular the pregnant women who are unauthorized, or even those who have semi-legal status, very, very insecure,” says Valerie Lacarte, Senior Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “I would be very worried if I was an immigrant woman in the last few months of the pregnancy.” Although birthright citizenship is in place, for now, Lacarte says pregnant immigrants, many of whom fled danger in their home countries, still face uncertainty around the implications of their child’s citizenship status. New mothers may face especially difficult decisions on how to best care for their children. Jessica Vaughan, Director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank which favors restricting immigration, says the only way to address this problem is to prevent it from happening in the first place. That means “by not having immigration policies that entice people to come here and put themselves at risk and make choices that are going to potentially put them in these difficult situations.” Vaughan adds, “if our concern as a nation is healthy moms with healthy kids, including people outside of this country, then we can help a lot more people in their own country than tempting them to come here illegally.” The fear around mass deportations is already affecting mothers in real time, says Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, executive director and CEO of MomsRising, an on-the-ground organization of women with members across all 50 states. “We're hearing about pregnant and postpartum women being especially harmed by this kind of toxic stress, having to miss important medical appointments,” Rowe-Finkbeiner says. “We're hearing of pregnant immigrant women having to skip prenatal exams, afraid to go to church or to the store to pick up healthy foods, vitamins and prescription medicines.” Drishti Pillai, director of immigrant health policy at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, adds that data from Trump’s first administration demonstrates his immigration policies “led to growing reluctance among some families from participating in programs such as Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP or social service programs, either for themselves or for their children, most of whom are U.S.-born citizens, because they didn't want to draw attention to their immigration status.” However, as Vaughan sees it, the fear is overblown and unwarranted. “If moms are refraining from accessing these programs, that is out of a fear that someone has given them. That's not what the government is doing.” Rather, she says, immigration advocacy groups are “whipping up fear in immigrant communities.” Vaughan argues that undocumented mothers seeking care for their newborns are putting a financial strain on federal welfare programs. This is “an exact illustration of why illegal immigration is so costly to Americans,” she says. “This is a difficult situation for the migrants. It's also difficult for taxpayers who have less funding available to help Americans who need assistance.” Noncitizens are generally ineligible for federally-funded public benefits like Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, particularly if they are undocumented. Pillai cites a March 2024 report from the Florida state Agency for Health Care Administration that found that in the second half of 2023, immigrants without legal status accounted for just 0.82 percent of hospital visits and 0.83 percent of emergency department visits. “People foregoing primary and preventive health care out of immigration-related fears can lead to conditions getting worse and becoming more complex and expensive to treat later on,” Pillai says.
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