Eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and experiencing contractions, a Salvadoran woman who had crossed the Rio Grande and was apprehended by the Border Patrol was compelled to return to Mexico.
Agents took her to the hospital, the place medical doctors gave her treatment to cease the contractions. And then, in accordance to the woman and her lawyer, she was virtually instantly despatched again to Mexico.
There, she joined the greater than 38,000 folks compelled to wait throughout the border for immigration court docket hearings beneath a quickly increasing Trump administration coverage. And her plight highlights the well being dangers and perils offered by the “Remain in Mexico” program.
The woman was ready Thursday along with her 3-year-old daughter in a makeshift tent camp in Matamoros, Mexico, subsequent to a world bridge, due to give delivery any day, mentioned her legal professional, Jodi Goodwin.
“She’s concerned about having the baby in the street or having to have the baby in a shelter,” Goodwin mentioned.
Pregnant ladies face particular hazards in Mexico as a result of locations the place migrants wait to enter the U.S. typically don’t have entry to common meals, clear water, and medical care.
Many shelters on the Mexico border are at or above capability already, and a few households have been sleeping in tents or on blankets in the blistering summer season warmth. Reports have abounded of migrants being attacked or kidnapped in Mexican border cities, particularly in Tamaulipas state throughout from South Texas, the place the Salvadoran mom is ready for a November court docket date.