A 21-year-old woman who is eight months pregnant and in a state of medical distress is being deported from Atlanta on Wednesday afternoon, a human rights attorney said, pleading for emergency assistance for his client.
“We are trying to get her the medical attention she needs immediately,” said Anthony Enriquez, vice-president of US advocacy and litigation at the Kennedy Human Rights Center, whose client, Zharick Daniela Buitrago Ortiz, is on the verge of being sent to Colombia.
“We are immediately moving to file a lawsuit just to preserve the status quo and to ensure that our client gets the medical care she needs,” he said.
When the human rights center contacted the Guardian, it said Buitrago Ortiz was currently in Atlanta international airport, scheduled for an imminent removal flight to Colombia.
A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Atlanta verified that the deportation was imminent and the woman was at the airport, and referred a request for comment to the agency’s El Paso office. The Guardian has reached out for details.
Ortiz and her mother crossed the border in Texas in November, seeking asylum, Enriquez said. They told an immigration judge in a “credible fear” hearing that is part of an official asylum application that Ortiz’s father had been killed after publicly confronting corruption.
“The mother was deemed to have a credible fear interview and permitted to file an asylum application,” Enriquez said. “Our client was not and was given an order of expedited removal.”
ICE under the Trump administration regularly detains and deports pregnant women, he said. A child born on US soil is automatically a US citizen by law, even though Donald Trump in his second term in the White House is trying to change that right and it is an issue before the US supreme court. Such birthright citizenship rights complicate deportation processes.
“There is an existing policy that pregnant women normally shouldn’t be detained by ICE,” Enriquez said. “That policy, although it exists on paper still, it’s not being applied, and so we think generally speaking this aligns with a policy to detain and deport pregnant women as soon as possible.”
Ortiz’s mother told Enriquez that her client had shooting pain in her abdomen and her back, and is suffering nausea and vomiting. “She has asked for medical care and has been denied it. So she is not currently receiving the medical care that she requires.”
Questions have been raised about the quality of medical care for pregnant detainees since the Trump administration took over. Civil rights leaders say pregnant women have reported bleeding, miscarriages, being shackled and other instances of medical neglect while in US immigration custody.
