Oscarina spent the first week of her son’s life moving between his bassinet in the neonatal intensive care unit and her small apartment to care for her 6-year-old daughter.
She is sore. She is tired. And she is alone.
Oscarina and her husband escaped violence in Venezuela and moved 2,000 miles north to Missouri in 2023, seeking more stable housing and a better future for their daughter. Neither have permanent legal status in the United States, and when she learned she had a second child on the way, Oscarina wondered how they could afford to raise another baby.
Eight weeks into the pregnancy, her husband was detained while delivering a DoorDash order. He was deported back to Venezuela a short time later.
“All my pregnancy, I cried every single day,” Oscarina, who lives in Kansas City and asked not to use her full name out of fear of deportation, told The Independent through an interpreter.
When she went into labor prematurely earlier this month, her husband cried as he called in over video from Venezuela.
When their daughter was born, he helped with night feedings. This time, there is no help. And what little money her family had saved up quickly disappeared during the deportation process.
Now she lives in constant fear about what would happen if she gets detained.
There are days her oldest child doesn’t attend school because Oscarina worries she could be taken while walking her to the bus stop.
She wonders what the point of the “American Dream” is. Her family suffered under Venezuela’s dictatorship, and in America she suffers, too.
“I would like to go back to my country,” Oscarina said. “But my husband is saying that things are very bad there right now, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring both of the kids right now.”
So they will remain separated.
“I live in fear every day,” Oscarina said. “ … It’s too heavy to carry being by myself with my daughter and my little boy and not having my husband because he will always care for us. The fact that he doesn’t get to be with us, everything changed for us.”
Oscarina’s story is one of many shared with The Independent over the past month as women who are undocumented in Missouri navigate pregnancy, birth and postpartum without legal paperwork.
Several community health care workers, doulas and nonprofits that work with immigrants and expectant mothers shared the struggles the families face. Few were willing to speak on the record, fearful that federal agents could target their offices or the federal government could restrict funding if they spoke out about their work with undocumented immigrants.
The organizations located across Missouri shared stories of pregnant and postpartum women who’ve shuttered themselves in their homes. Many are facing labor or postpartum in isolation, their husbands deported and the fear of the same fate keeping them housebound, at times too afraid to seek medical care.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been increasingly visible on America’s streets, including in Missouri, sparking protests across the state and nation. Arrests have made headlines as videos circulate of ICE agents detaining parents at school drop-offs and arresting teachers, including inside a preschool.
In rare cases, ICE has reportedly posted up outside maternity wards.
Under previous administrations, schools, hospitals and churches were considered sanctuary spaces where ICE was not allowed under almost any circumstances. That changed this year, raising new fears for families with young children like Oscarina.
“This is the worst that I’ve seen in many, many years,” said Eunice Cho, senior counsel at the ACLU National Prison Project.
Under former President Joe Biden’s administration, pregnant women were protected from ICE detention. While that policy remains in place, the ACLU earlier this year uncovered several examples of women who were either pregnant or miscarried while in federal detention centers.
“The trauma it has on children and parents and families is heartbreaking,” Cho said. “And it’s completely unnecessary. These are families that have been living and working and contributing to our communities, often for years or decades.”
ICE threats send mothers, children into hiding in Missouri
Neysha Reyes Cruz is one of a handful of bilingual doulas in Missouri.
Through her company, Olas de Amor Doula Services, she has advocated for almost 90 women through pregnancy, birth and postpartum over the past three years. Of those 90, about 70 were undocumented, she said. This year, she estimates she’s stood in as the support person for about half a dozen women who gave birth after a close family member was deported.
Reyes Cruz, who is from Puerto Rico and moved to Missouri in 2016, often serves as an interpreter as well as a doula for her clients, the majority of whom give birth in hospitals. But in recent months, as the threat of ICE raids permeates her Kansas City community, she said her job has increasingly expanded into helping families with more than birth.
The messages she gets from moms are often desperate. One recently asked Reyes Cruz if she could get her formula from the store after the mother said she saw ICE agents out on her street that day.
Many of her clients skip non-crucial doctor’s appointments. Others miss WIC appointments or have been cut off from food stamps. She has a donation closet to help with clothing and baby supplies.
Instead of going to the pediatrician, many new moms instead call Reyes Cruz to ask if their baby is sick enough to warrant risking leaving the house. The child birth class she used to host in-person is now virtual because too many families feared driving to her.
“I have had moms that have withdrawn their kids from school and have just left the country so those kids never ended their school year. Mamas that were in situations where their partners became so depressed and anxious they started becoming abusive, and from there, having to find refuge for them,” she said. “This is the hardest thing, finding a refuge for a mama that is single, is pregnant or with maybe older kids, does not speak English and doesn’t have a prior family here.”
She encourages her clients to designate someone who is a citizen to get custody of their baby if they’re deported. One mom requested that Reyes Cruz be that person for her baby girl.
“As a doula, I’m being pushed to support this community because they don’t feel safe with anyone else,” she said.
She fears the elevated stress thrust on these families is affecting their babies. Of the past 10 births she’s attended, five were babies born prematurely.
Reyes Cruz’s experiences aren’t unique.
A health care provider in the Ozarks who was too afraid to speak on the record said she has Hispanic patients who fear coming into the clinic amid increasingly visible ICE raids around the country.
Other nonprofit workers shared the difficulties of helping parents obtain birth certificates for their newborn children so they could self-deport back to their home country. Legal aid groups help parents establish custody plans in case they are detained and their children are left alone.
Community health workers in urban centers of the state said they are doing more home health visits for pregnant and postpartum women who fear leaving the house, or who are waiting until later in pregnancy to see their doctors. Others help arrange Uber rides to get the women to their appointments.
“I’m heartbroken for any woman who feels fearful to leave her home, especially to try to receive prenatal care,” said Laura Brandt, director of Pregnancy Help Center of South County in St. Louis.
She said her nonprofit serves anyone who walks through the door and doesn’t question their status.
“This is such a polarizing topic and people have a lot of really strong opinions going either way on the matter,” Brandt said. “Regardless of what your opinions are on a policy level, on a personal level, every human being is deserving of dignity and compassion and care.”
Some families turn to self-deportation
In just a couple days, Monica is self-deporting. She purchased a one-way flight from Kansas City back to Chile, where she is from. Her 6-month-old son will be on her lap.
Monica, who asked not to use her full name because she is undocumented, moved to the United States on Mother’s Day last year, seeking better education opportunities for her son, who is 8.
She learned she was pregnant a couple months later. She was sad to be experiencing a new life without her friends and family by her side.
When she was less than two weeks postpartum, Monica said her husband became violent during an argument. She called her therapist, who reported the abuse to the police. He was arrested and deported back to his home country of Venezuela.
Now alone, Monica can no longer afford to care for her two children on her own. She delivers for DoorDash, and on each trip she fears being caught by immigration agents. Her fear is amplified now that she has a second child. What happens to them if she’s detained?
“Life got more difficult for me,” she said through an interpreter as her son babbled from his perch on her hip.
Tim Rudolph, a St. Louis-based immigration attorney for Hacking Immigration Law, said it’s not uncommon for people to self-deport in today’s political climate.
He encouraged anyone considering self-deportation to talk with a lawyer first, noting that if someone has a child who is a U.S. citizen, they may have some legal paths to staying in the country if they want to stay.
“Even though the government is saying ‘if you leave you can come back the right way, we’ll let you do it,’ that’s not often the case,” Rudolph said. “That tends to be what they say to get people out of the country, and a lot of times you’ll be barred from returning.”
While Monica doesn’t yet know if she’ll ever try returning to the U.S., her current vision of her children’s future has been shattered. While she still believes the move to America was worthwhile to attempt to give her children a more promising future, she feels some relief to return home to her parents and to leave the constant fear of deportation behind.
“People need to be strong emotionally to come over to the United States,” Monica said. “Because even though the United States is a very great country full of opportunities, it can be very emotionally draining to be here with this situation.”
