“Their goal is really just to detain as many people as possible wherever they find them,” the woman’s lawyer said.
A pregnant Massachusetts woman was hospitalized earlier this month after her condition worsened while being held at an ICE facility in Burlington, according to her lawyer and testimony from a doctor who treated her.
Djeniffer Benvinda Ribeiro Semedo, a 22-year-old woman from Cape Verde, was approximately 24 weeks pregnant when she was picked up by ICE agents at Brockton District Court on Feb. 11. Ribeiro Semedo’s physical condition “deteriorated rapidly” at the ICE field office in Burlington, a facility not designed for long-term detentions. After being admitted to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a doctor who cared for her determined that her detention put her at a higher risk of dangerous pregnancy complications, according to court documents.
Ribeiro Semedo was eventually released from ICE custody last week after her hospitalization, when her lawyer filed a habeas petition challenging the legality of her detention.
Carl Hurvich, the immigration lawyer representing Ribeiro Semedo, called her detention one of the “more extreme” examples of the Trump administration’s policies he has seen.
“Even in comparison with the past Trump administration, their goal is really just to detain as many people as possible wherever they find them. There’s really no type of judgment being made as to whether there’s a public interest in keeping someone in a facility,” he told Boston.com.
Ribeiro Semedo came to the U.S. in 2015 as a beneficiary of her mother’s