A nation reveals itself in how it treats the most vulnerable. Judges across the country are now raising alarms about the detention of pregnant women and nursing mothers in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Federal courts, not advocacy groups, not pundits, are describing what they see as harrowing: women separated from breastfeeding infants, women in medical distress held in temporary facilities for days, women whose pregnancies have been placed at risk. These are not abstractions. These are human beings.
One judge called it “particularly craven” to transfer a nursing refugee mother out of state. Another wrote that the harm of separating a nursing mother from her child is self-evident. Yet the administration has offered conflicting answers about whether its own policy restricting detention of pregnant and nursing women even remains in force.
Policies can change. Executive orders can be signed. Bureaucratic guidance can be revised. But moral clarity should not fluctuate with a memo.
This is not a debate about immigration enforcement in the abstract. This is about whether pregnant women should be held in conditions that courts describe as threatening to their health. This is about whether nursing infants should lose irreplaceable bonding time because their mothers are transferred across state lines. This is about whether a civilized society recognizes limits.
The Department of Homeland Security says pregnancy in detention is rare and that adequate medical care is provided. Perhaps. But judges, reviewing actual cases, are ordering emergency releases. They are expressing concern. They are finding irreparable harm. That should give all of us pause.
We can enforce immigration law without discarding basic decency. We can secure borders without severing mothers from babies. We can uphold the rule of law while still honoring the values that define us. Right from wrong is not complicated here.
A country that prides itself on family values should not separate nursing mothers from their children unless there is no alternative. A country that claims to respect life should not expose pregnant women to preventable medical risk. A country that believes in equal justice should not rely on confusion and bureaucratic ambiguity when human health is at stake.
We are better than this.
History will not remember the footnotes of executive policy. It will remember whether we treated vulnerable people with dignity when we had the power to do otherwise. The question is not whether detention is legal in every instance. The question is who we choose to be. And we know the answer.