Illegal immigrants forced to give birth while shackled and in police custody

Juana Villegas gave birth shackled to a hospital bed in the sheriff’s custody, after she was stopped by police in Tennessee while driving without a valid license.

According to Elliott Ozment, Villegas’s lawyer, driving without a license is generally handled with a citation, not an arrest. He believes she was only brought in because she was an undocumented immigrant.

Two other undocumented  women, Alma Chacon, and Miriam Mendiola-Martinez also gave birth in the United States shackled to their hospital beds, without their husbands, and in the presence of a prison guard.

They were charged with an immigration-related offense in Sheriff Arpaio’s jurisdiction of Maricopa County, Arizona.

Cases such as these have reaped outrage from immigrant rights advocates.

Critics take aim at both the legal classification of immigration-related offenses and the standards of prioritizing undocumented mothers’ rights at the state and federal level.

Shackling during childbirth is illegal in 14 states and is against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy.

But women being held for immigration-related offenses classified as “criminal offenses” can still legally be handcuffed to their hospital beds by authorities in the 36 other states.

Those women can also be denied the right to have a family member in the birthing room, or to hold their newborns for longer than 24 hours.

For Juana Villegas, going into labour while in prison meant that her ankles were cuffed together on the ride to the hospital, and that she was denied a breast pump by local authorities after she was given one by medical professionals.

Her attorney Ozment said that, without a breast pump, “she was in great pain” after she gave birth and had trouble sleeping in prison.

Villegas has since been awarded $200,000 for her mistreatment by local authorities.

In an interview with the Nashville Tennessean in August, 2008, she said: “I don’t know that much about the law or any policy, but this … it does not seem right.”

Source Summary of story from Huffington Post

Posted in birth , Giving Birth In Handcuffs , Juana Villegas , police custody , salsacircuit , Sheriff Arpaios , undocumented immigrant