Two months after Iris Dayana Monterroso Lemus lost her son to a stillbirth last year while detained by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration issued a public response to her allegations that she did not receive prenatal care.
“This reporting is absolutely FALSE,” said Tricia McLaughlin, then a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, in a statement. “Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus had FULL medical, prenatal care.”
The statement, labeled as a “Fact Check,” said the Guatemalan-born Monterroso Lemus had “received prenatal care, including an ultrasound and OB-GYN visit.”
Neither side of the disputed account provided evidence to back up their claims.
Now, federal government documents obtained by The Intercept appear to undermine the Trump administration’s version of events. The documents show a lack of basic care needed for a healthy pregnancy, according to expert analysis. One document from an outside healthcare center made after the stillbirth describes a “pregnancy complicated by lack of PNC” — meaning prenatal care.
“The administration was engaged in CYA — cover your ass,” said Dr. Andrea Schecter, an OB-GYN physician with a decade’s experience working with high-risk pregnancies, including those of immigrants. “They know that what they provided is probably not sufficient care.”
“Flouting the Directive”
The new records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, include documents from Monterroso Lemus’s visit to Ochsner LSU Center, a healthcare facility in Shreveport, Louisiana, after she complained for days about not feeling fetal movement. It was the only recorded instance of her leaving Richwood Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility run by the family-owned private prison giant LaSalle Corrections.
The Ochsner LSU documents, produced after the stillbirth, say that Monterroso Lemus had told medical staff at Richwood that “this pregnancy didn’t feel right a couple days ago but nothing was done.”
Other new records include timelines produced by ICE that show a referral for an OB-GYN appointment but don’t indicate that any visit was scheduled or took place, or that Monterroso Lemus ever received an ultrasound.
Asked about the new documents, a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security simply repeated the previous claims that Monterroso Lemus received regular, timely prenatal care without responding to queries.
On May 9, ten days after losing her son, Monterroso Lemus was shackled, put on a plane, and deported to Guatemala, causing her postpartum visit to be canceled.
“Everyone knows that ICE and DHS lie on a daily basis — and Americans have witnessed the deadly consequences of this administration’s reckless actions for nearly two years,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., when asked about the case. “The Trump administration’s barbaric treatment of pregnant women in immigration custody is unconscionable.”
In fact, the Trump administration is detaining many more pregnant women than before. During the Biden administration, for example, ICE would detain about a dozen pregnant women nationally during a year, said Eunice Cho, an immigration attorney with expertise in detention conditions. During a congressional visit to Louisiana’s Basile detention center last April, however, there were 14 in that one facility.
According to a 2021 ICE directive, “Generally, ICE should not detain, arrest, or take into custody for an administrative violation of the immigration laws individuals known to be pregnant, postpartum, or nursing unless release is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.”
Cho said, “The Trump administration is flouting the directive.”
Murray introduced legislation last year to codify in federal law the notion that pregnant women should not be detained, as well as other standards. The bill remains in committee.
“This case stands out as an example of the enormity of the tragedy pregnant women and families are facing because of the Trump administration,” Cho said, of Monterroso Lemus’s experience. “The bottom line is: No one deserves to be treated like this.”
The Timeline
Monterroso Lemus, now 38 years old, met her neighbor Gary Bivens in Lenoir City, Tennessee, about six years ago. The pair began to grow close about four years ago, after Bivens lost his wife to a heart condition.
Monterroso Lemus became pregnant, and the couple had an OB-GYN visit in February. They had plans to get married when ICE detained her in mid-March.
After ICE transferred Monterroso Lemus multiple times, on April 2, she arrived at Richwood Correctional Center, in Monroe, Louisiana.
Most of the documents obtained by The Intercept are emails between officials with ICE and at its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, where officials sought to rebut Monterroso Lemus’s statements to the media by compiling information on her medical care while detained.
The timeline included in the documents, annotated and labeled as a “[f]ull overview of her care,” begins on April 2. Versions of the timeline are included in several other places in the documents.
The timeline has nine entries under what is called a “List of medical visits.” Four of them are visits to a nurse. Two others are labeled “Mental Health Visit.”
On April 17, according to the timeline, she visited the on-site medical provider for what is labeled “prenatal care non–compliance.”
Monterroso Lemus told The Intercept that visit was due to her unwillingness to continue taking 12 pills daily, including what she said may have been vitamins and others for constipation and headaches. She had been taking them for three days.
“I felt that they made me sick,” she said. Also, “other people told me to watch out for the medicine they give you.”
On April 29, after several days of not feeling any fetal movement, Monterroso Lemus was transferred to Ochsner LSU. In the presence of several federal guards, she delivered a stillborn fetus at about 23 weeks of pregnancy.
Monterroso Lemus said she had tried to get medical attention during the days before the tragedy.
“The worst part is, I told them I felt bad — and they didn’t pay attention to me,” she said.
What’s missing from the timeline — any indication of having an OB-GYN visit before she stopped feeling fetal movement or of receiving any ultrasound — makes it difficult to understand what caused the stillbirth.
“There are some reasons this could’ve happened that would have been identified by comprehensive prenatal care,” Schecter, the OB-GYN expert, said. “At some level, they know this.”
No Ultrasound?
A separate timeline in the documents refers to medical care Monterroso Lemus received during the several days in late March that she was detained at Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama. There, it says, she got a “fetal doppler,” which measures fetal heartbeat, but is not the same as an ultrasound.
Nonetheless, the “Fact Check” DHS published months later read, “she received prenatal care including a fetal doppler ultrasound.”
Schecter told the Intercept, “A fetal doppler is just audio, but it is not the same as an ultrasound, which is visual.”
“That is not an adequate assessment of the health and well-being of the pregnancy. It absolutely is not full prenatal care,” she said.
Amy Zeidan, a professor of emergency medicine at Atlanta’s Emory University who researches health care in immigration detention, said, “Full prenatal care would include an ultrasound and an anatomy scan.”
“We already know that doesn’t generally happen in immigration detention,” said Zeidan.
Of the DHS “Fact Check,” Zeidan said, “They’re not being truthful about what happened.”
The experience Monterroso Lemus faced in ICE detention is not unique, according to several experts consulted by the Intercept.
“Unfortunately, this story is consistent with reports made by pregnant women in ICE detention,” said Cho, the immigration attorney. “There’s a lack of prenatal care, indifference to very serious symptoms, and a lack of treatment.”
“Waiting for My Baby”
By the end of May, the Nashville Banner had published an article in which Monterroso Lemus said, “They didn’t give me medical attention.”
The remark touched off a flurry of activity within ICE and DHS.
On June 25, at 4:41 p.m., McLaughlin, then a DHS spokesperson, wrote to another official whose name is redacted: “Wow so this is all garbage claims. This is FALSE. She had FULL medical, prenatal care. We have documentation to show it.”
The following day, DHS published its “Fact Check” — the same document the agency sent The Intercept when confronted with discrepancies.
Meanwhile, Monterroso Lemus and Bevins haven’t seen each other for 15 months. They communicate by WhatsApp regularly, using a translation app. On separate calls with The Intercept, both described suffering depression.
Bivens drives 100 miles every day to and from his $26-an-hour job as an iron worker. He regularly sends part of his paycheck to Monterroso Lemus. He says he’s bought a plane ticket to Guatemala for December and has created a GoFundMe to help pay for the cost of moving his tools and other things needed for the couple to start a new life in the Central American country.
The GoFundMe includes a photo of her holding her baby, taken in Ochsner.
He has also engaged attorneys and sued the federal government.
“I don’t consider the way they treated her the American way,” he said. “My family goes back a long way in Tennessee. I have a great-grandfather who fought for the Confederates.”
He added, “I just want someone to be held accountable.”
Monterroso Lemus said she doesn’t think much about the officials who set in motion the events leading to the loss of her son and deportation.
“God will take care of all of them,” she said.
Bivens said he keeps the ashes of his son on a table by his bed in Lenoir City. It took him a while to figure out, but he’s obtained the paperwork needed to take the ashes with him to Guatemala in December.
“I’m waiting for my baby,” said Monterroso Lemus. “That would give me some peace.”
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We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
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