Jesus wept

“Border Patrol Agents Rescue Woman in Labor,” the release from Customs and Border Protection read on Friday.

What border officials didn’t mention was that, just hours after their purported rescue, they separated the Honduran immigrant from her newborn and detained her pending possible removal, according to lawyers and advocates.

Border agents responding to a 911 call Wednesday night found the woman shortly after she’d delivered her baby alone in a field in Eagle Pass, Texas. The officials first transported mother and child to a nearby hospital, then the child was airlifted to a neonatal intensive care unit in San Antonio, hours from where they held her mother in custody.

(The Customs and Border Protection release incorrectly said the call came Thursday, as appeared in earlier reporting, and agents apparently provided the hospital with the wrong date of birth.)

“They told her she was going to be sent back to Mexico without her baby,” said Amy Maldonado, who is legally representing the mother.

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After The Times story published, Customs and Border Protection released the mother, who Saturday morning reunited with her newborn in the San Antonio neonatal unit, lawyers and advocates confirmed.

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Hours later, Austin Skero, chief patrol agent for the Del Rio sector, responded in a tweet to The Times, saying that agents had to separate the mother and baby due to the San Antonio hospital’s COVID-19 policy for the neonatal unit, which the hospital immediately disputed.

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“That is definitely not the hospital policy,” [Leni Kirkman, spokesperson for University Hospital in San Antonio,] said. “We do not separate babies and parents.”

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“To ensure a safe care environment, University Hospital is currently permitting one visitor per day between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. with the exception of individuals deemed necessary to the patient’s care. Visitors deemed necessary to the patient’s care include:

1-2 parents or guardians for pediatric and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients
1 support person for labor & delivery/postpartum patients”

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Amy Cohen, a child psychiatrist and executive of nonprofit Every Last One, who first learned about the case from a friend of the family, said the hospital informed her that the baby has to be in the hospital for another seven to 10 days and was “in distress” when born. The mother has since received medical care at the San Antonio hospital as well; Customs and Border Protection “had her sleep on the floor at the detention center,” Cohen said.

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Almost exactly three weeks ago, Cohen responded to a similar case of a mother who had an emergency birth for a ruptured uterus, and Customs and Border Protection kept her apart from her baby for roughly four days, Cohen said. She’s since been released from detention.

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The Honduran mother, whose name was not released, had sought asylum at the border in south Texas earlier this year with her older child, who is 6 years old, but border officials put them into the controversial “Remain in Mexico” program.

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The mother, like hundreds of other parents waiting in refugee camps along the border, sent her 6-year-old child across alone to seek asylum three weeks ago, according to Maldonado and Cohen. The mother and her child had been kidnapped and held at gunpoint for two weeks in Nuevo Laredo, Cohen said. Advocates and experts have documented more than 1,000 cases of asylum seekers put into Migrant Protection Protocols who then have been kidnapped, raped and assaulted in Mexico while waiting for hearings in the U.S.

That child was released this week from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Health and Human Services agency tasked with the care of unaccompanied children, and is with the cousin in Sacramento, Cohen said. The mother and newborn, once medically cleared, are expected to join her other child and family in California.

“She was desperate,” Maldonado said of the mother’s decision to cross later herself.

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The Homeland Security inspector general has [...] opened an investigation into the department’s treatment of pregnant women.

  LA Times