Beatriz Pastrana Candela was pregnant when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested her last November. Days after being processed at the Eloy Detention Center in Central Arizona, they said she was lying. 

Medical and corrections staff repeatedly told her she wasn’t pregnant, she said. And then she had a miscarriage. Five months later, she’s still locked up.

“I’m depressed, sad,” Pastrana recently said of her current emotional state. She said she often thinks about the child she lost, daydreaming about holding the child. For now, she is trying to stay strong and get back to her three children on the outside.

Interviews with Pastrana and her family — including her sister, partner and her 14-year-old child — as well as medical records shared with LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times showed that she was almost three months pregnant when she was detained by ICE and confirmed that she had a miscarriage at the Eloy facility. 

But ICE has been notably silent on her case. Pastrana claims that she told medical staff, the arresting agents and detention staff multiple times that she was pregnant and in pain. She said they dismissed her pain, said she was lying or told her to drink more water. 

Pastrana’s case is not unique, but rather one in a pattern of multiple pregnant individuals who have been tracked as being given inadequate care while held in ICE detention facilities, according to a report from Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, whose office looked into the mistreatment of pregnant individuals held in immigration facilities since January 2025. 

Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva called Patrana’s treatment “a shocking failure of basic humanity.” 

Saying that she has repeatedly raised concerns about conditions at Eloy, in an emailed statement, Grijalva told LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times that Pastrana’s “experience reflects a broader and deeply troubling reality: more pregnant women are being held in detention, where too many are facing neglect instead of care.”

‘It’s a total lie’

Federal immigration agents pulled over Pastrana at a hotel she worked at last November in Tempe. In her car were two other women — one of them, allegedly, was someone immigration agents were tracking. 

Pastrana is undocumented. She first fled violence in the Mexican state of Guerrero and came to the U.S. in 2019, and she is currently applying for protective relief. Her partner is a recipient of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. 

Guns drawn and slowly approaching the car, ICE agents told the women to get out of the vehicle and then arrested them. Pastrana said no warrant was shown to her. LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times requested copies of the warrant and arresting documents for the women; ICE responded that they do not provide such documents, and instead confirmed that “ICE officers followed standard procedures during the arrest, using only the necessary force required to safely place Pastrana into custody.”

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“Right when they grabbed me, I told them I was pregnant,” Pastrana said. She says that a female ICE agent didn’t believe her. “She said a lot of people say that so they won’t arrest them.”

But it was true — she was pregnant, according to medical records.   

Another ICE agent shackled Beatriz’s hands, waist and feet. She says they weren’t violent but were still rough with her. 

Again, she said, she told the officers she was pregnant. 

“They were acting like I was some criminal,” she says. She was kept shackled for about five hours.

Agents took her to a small holding cell with the two other women from the car. 

It was in the holding cell when she started feeling a pain in her stomach. She was thirsty, and the corrections officers refused to give her any water beyond the small drinking fountain, which she said was warm and tasted bad. The pain in her stomach increased, and she was eventually transferred to Florence, and then later Eloy Detention Center in Central Arizona. 

At the time, Pastrana was shy of twelve weeks pregnant, according to the medical documentation shared with LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times. 

She says that was confirmed again when she arrived at the detention center and received a pregnancy test.

Just a few days into her stay in Eloy, she said the pain in her stomach became severe.  She told medical staff she needed to see a doctor. That was when the confusion began, she says: Despite previously testing positive on a pregnancy test, staff told her she was not pregnant.

“It’s a total lie,” she said a member of the medical staff said to her when she complained again about the pain. 

Another time, she was prescribed to drink water, and a corrections officer told her that a doctor didn’t want to see her, she said. 

Not until she made further complaints, and her own insistence that she was bleeding, did medical staff finally offer her an exam. ICE transported her to a medical facility outside of the detention center, where a doctor confirmed her fear: She miscarried.

In a statement to LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times, ICE said that, “Claims that Ms. Pastrana was denied care, or that her requests for help were ignored, are categorically false. … ICE detention standards are among the highest in the nation.”

The loss was confirmed through medical paperwork obtained by her sister and shared with LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times. Almost five months later, Pastrana remains at Eloy, still detained, still processing what happened to her. 

Pastrana was planning on surprising her partner, Carlos Medina, with the news of the pregnancy on Christmas. 

Medina said he and Pastrana had been trying to have a child, and that the double blow of her arrest and the miscarriage is extremely hard. 

Medina added that it’s been even harder on Pastrana’s three other children. He said that Pastrana has repeatedly told both him and her kids, “I’ll stay here until the last hope,” even if it means remaining, for now, behind bars. 

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“I just want them to know how hard it is,” said Pastrana’s 14-year-old son. He spoke to people who support immigration arrests and mass deportation: “I want them to know what it’s like to be separated from your mom who loves you, to not be able to be with her.”

An 8th grader at a Phoenix-area school, her son says he’s trying to focus on his studies and graduate from middle school, but he feels a sadness and a burden. “I need to start to work to support the family,” he said. “I just hope my mom gets out soon.”

Pregnant and Detained

Since January 2025, ICE has detained and deported at least 363 people who were pregnant, postpartum or nursing. At least 16 miscarriages in ICE detention were recorded in roughly the same period. Since no documents were filed in her case, that number does not include Pastrana. 

Pregnant people generally were not held in ICE detention until six months ago, though there were exceptions, including some that ended in tragedy. Rubia Morales-Alfaro had a miscarriage in a detention center in 2017, as the Phoenix New Times reported last year.  A July 2021 ICE Directive provides guidance on how to deal with pregnant, postpartum and lactating individuals. 

An expert with the Women’s Refugee Commission, however, said that since the Obama administration, there has been a presumption against detention, meaning that pregnant women should generally not be detained unless there is an exigent circumstance or some compelling legal reason. 

“ICE’s own standards are unambiguous on the detention, monitoring, and treatment of pregnant, postpartum, and nursing women in detention,” according to a September 2025 letter from 29 U.S. Senators sent to former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. The letter, expressing “grave concerns” over the practice, adds that ICE should not detain pregnant individuals “except under very limited circumstances.”

“Medical research links ICE detention to high rates of pregnancy complications, with physicians finding serious risks to both fetal and maternal health,” according to the same letter. “These already serious risks are heightened by the deteriorating conditions inside detention facilities, including severe overcrowding, reports of inadequate food and water, and lack of emergency medical care.”

The 2021 ICE directive did more than counsel against detaining pregnant people: It also contained numerous restrictions and requirements on ICE facilities that do detain pregnant individuals, including requiring access to certain forms of medical care and prohibiting most uses of restraints. It also directed ICE to produce semi-annual reports on the number and treatment of pregnant people in immigration detention. That reporting to Congress has now ceased.

While the directive hasn’t officially been rescinded, under the second Trump administration, pregnant detainees are increasing, and multiple reports reveal they are not receiving the medical care or basic nutrition they need. One woman was transported to a gynecologist and was kept shackled the whole time, according to a recent report. 

Pregnancy can be a dangerous time in general, said Zain Lakhani, Director of Migrant Rights and Justice of the Women’s Refugee Commission: “Even under the best of circumstances, women when pregnant are vulnerable to a wide variety of complications that can be hazardous to the fetus or to them.”

Lakhani explained there was a rangelarge set of requirements:, and "if you're going to detain these women, you have to be keeping regular eyes on them to make sure it's still OK and safe for their pregnancies,” she said. “When you have these women who are really vulnerable to life-threatening pregnancy complications and you're putting large numbers of them in detention, the risk that something is going to go catastrophically wrong is high.”