Trump administration's 'worst of the worst' includes pregnant, postpartum women

Absorbing the news about the brutal treatment of detainees, to say nothing of the outright murder of "suspected" drug runners in the Caribbean, I think back to a conversation I had in February of this year. My interlocutor was a Donald Trump voter who had just had a friendly encounter with an African immigrant striver — the kind who came from poverty and had started a successful business here.

I recall saying, "I hope he has his documents in order."

The Trump voter scoffed: "They're not going after people like him. They're only going after the criminals."

Eleven months later, that naive faith has been smashed. Not his — mine. I have no idea how that person feels about the Trump administration now, but when I advised in February that they were going to cast a wide net for deportations, I had no idea how bad it would be. This is not just a matter of aggressive deportation. The things that are being done by our government to our fellow human beings are monstrous.

The testimony of the Venezuelans who were deported to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, prison in El Salvador is harrowing. Snatched from workplaces or homes on mere suspicion of being criminals — supposedly members of the Tren de Aragua gang — 252 men were bundled onto planes and flown to a prison known for torture. There, courtesy of a heinous bargain between Trump and Nayib Bukele, the dictator of El Salvador, they were "trampled, kicked ... forced to kneel for hours," as well as waterboarded, forced to sleep on mesh metal bunks, shot with rubber bullets, forced into stress positions (including the "crane" in which their wrists were handcuffed behind their backs and then lifted to put pressure on the shoulders and back) and sexually assaulted. At least one attempted suicide. Their accounts are available now only because El Salvador arranged a prisoner exchange with Venezuela in July.

Copious reporting has since demonstrated that only a fraction of those deported had criminal records in the United States and most of those were for relatively minor offenses such as shoplifting, possession of drug paraphernalia or traffic violations. Only six had convictions for violent crimes.

Again and again, Trump administration goons have insisted that they are deporting only the "worst of the worst ... rapists, savages, monsters." They have even — and this is one of the most vile aspects of this government —encouraged their base to revel in the misery of their victims by releasing videos lovingly dwelling on images of people being bound and frog-marched toward the planes. The videos are titled "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight."

Those enjoying what they imagine is righteous pleasure at the abuse of the "worst of the worst" might want to consider the testimony of Physicians for Human Rights or the Women's Refugee Commission, both of which have reported on the treatment of a group that the Trump administration apparently considers a dire threat: pregnant, nursing and postpartum women.

Melanie Nezer, vice president for advocacy and external relations at the Women's Refugee Commission, described the conditions that hundreds of these women are facing in U.S. detention centers. Pregnant women and nursing mothers are grabbed from their cars or workplaces by masked agents, hustled into buses or cars and whisked to overcrowded centers. In one Louisiana facility, according to a Senate report, at least 14 pregnant women were visible during the staff's visit. A woman who was four months pregnant and experiencing bleeding had not been seen by a doctor for months. Another had a miscarriage and was deported while still bleeding.

Nezer described pregnant women being forced into overcrowded detention facilities with inadequate sanitary facilities, only frozen burritos or potato chips to eat, lack of clean drinking water (except by purchase) and no medical care or medicines. Some pregnant women were sleeping on concrete floors. The Women's Refugee Commission spoke to mothers who had been deported to Honduras. Several nursing mothers had seen their milk dry up due to poor nutrition while they were held in detention in the U.S. A woman who was four months pregnant was denied medication for gestational diabetes.

Among these dangerous criminals that the Trump administration is devoting huge resources to detaining and deporting were a mother arrested as she was on her way to pick up her special-needs child from school, a mother separated from her 2-month-old baby, the mother of a 5-year-old whose husband is a U.S. citizen and hundreds of others (though exact numbers are impossible to obtain due to government noncooperation). Among those Nezer interviewed in Honduras were house cleaners, restaurant workers and stay-at-home moms. All of them were working, and quite a few had open asylum cases pending. Many were frantic about the children they'd been forced to leave behind in the U.S. While they had phones with them, many did not have chargers and had no way of contacting their families, far less lawyers. As Nezer told me: "Before this year, detaining pregnant women was the rare exception, and there were safeguards. Now it happens all the time and conditions are beyond inhumane!"

Do you feel safer now? I feel deeply ashamed.

Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark, host of the “Beg to Differ” podcast and author of “Hard Right: The GOP’s Drift Toward Extremism.”