Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not recorded a single miscarriage in its detention facilities since October 3, 2025. Not because miscarriages stopped happening — but because the agency switched medical billing providers and apparently had no backup system for tracking pregnancy outcomes. Sixty-seven Democratic members of Congress are now demanding answers. Representatives Brittany Pettersen, Joyce Beatty, and Robin Kelly sent a letter to ICE acting director David Venturella requesting a full accounting: how many pregnant detainees experienced miscarriages, stillbirths, or pregnancy-related hospitalizations during the eight-month blackout period. The letter, cosigned by 64 additional representatives, also demands ICE explain when leadership first became aware of the reporting breakdown and what steps have been taken to recover the missing data. ICE has until November 6 to respond. The request follows a Guardian investigation that revealed two converging facts: the Trump administration detained more pregnant women in fall and winter 2025 than at any point in the prior year, and simultaneously lost the ability to track what happened to their pregnancies. ICE recorded 18 miscarriages during the first nine months of the administration. After October 3, the number drops to zero — not because conditions improved, but because the count stopped. The mechanism of the data loss is telling. ICE told internal documents it tracked miscarriages through its medical billing provider. When that provider changed, the tracking vanished. No redundant system existed. Immigration attorneys and former government officials described this as odd but plausible — which is itself an indictment of how the agency values this data. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson initially claimed the agency was tracking miscarriages in monthly reports, then reversed course and confirmed the gap. Detained pregnant women have reported difficulty accessing both routine and emergency medical care. Medical experts told the Guardian that lapses in prenatal care and post-miscarriage treatment can escalate treatable conditions into life-threatening emergencies. The lawmakers' letter pointedly cites a 2021 ICE directive that instructs the agency to avoid detaining pregnant, postpartum, and nursing immigrants entirely unless release is legally prohibited or exceptional circumstances exist — and to closely monitor and document the health of any pregnant person who is detained. DHS's public response has been denial without evidence. A spokesperson called claims of substandard care "FALSE" in all caps but did not address the data gap, did not confirm receipt of the congressional letter, and did not explain how the agency can assert care quality when it cannot produce outcomes data. The Guardian obtained its underlying documents through a FOIA lawsuit filed in collaboration with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — the data was not voluntarily disclosed even when senators requested it. The structural picture is clear: a federal agency expanded the population most vulnerable to its care failures while simultaneously losing the ability to measure those failures. Whether the data loss was incompetence or convenient neglect, the effect is identical — no records means no accountability. The congressional deadline of November 6 will test whether ICE can reconstitute data it claims to have never collected, or whether eight months of pregnancy outcomes in federal custody are simply gone.
