US Customs and Border Protection Quietly Revokes Protections for Pregnant Women and Infants
May 8, 2025 6:00 PM CBP's acting commissioner has rescinded four Biden-era policies that aimed to protect vulnerable people in the agency's custody, including mothers, infants, and the elderly. A mother and child pause on the bank of the Rio Grande after a smuggler rowed them across the U.S.-Mexico border in Roma, Texas, on April 9, 2021. Photograph:US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has quietly rescinded several internal policies that were designed to protect some of the most vulnerable people in its custody—including pregnant women, infants, the elderly, and those with serious medical conditions.
The decision, outlined in a memo dated May 5 and signed by Acting Commissioner Pete Flores, eliminates four Biden era policies enacted over the last three years. These policies were intended to address CBP's long-standing failures to provide adequate care for detainees who are most at risk—failures that have, in some cases, proved fatal.
The May 5 memo was distributed internally to top agency leadership but was not announced publicly.
CBP justified the rollback by stating in the memo–titled Rescission of Legacy Policies Related to Care and Custody–that the policies were 'obsolete' and 'misaligned' with the agency's current enforcement priorities.
Together, the now-rescinded policies laid out standards for detainees with heightened medical needs—requiring, for instance, access to water and food for pregnant people, ensuring privacy for breastfeeding mothers, and mandating diapers and unexpired formula be stocked in holding facilities. They also instructed agents to process at-risk individuals as quickly as possible to limit time in custody.
'It's appalling and it's just an extension of the culture of cruelty that the administration is trying to perpetrate,' says Sarah Mehta, deputy director of Government Affairs for the ACLU's Equality Division. Rescinding the policies, she says, 'is a damning statement about the way that this administration thinks and cares about people with young children.'
CBP did not immediately respond to WIRED's request for comment.
One of the world's largest law enforcement agencies, CBP is primarily responsible for apprehending and detaining individuals who cross the US border without authorization. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) oversees longer-term detention and deportation proceedings, CBP handles the earliest stages of custody, when migrants are held and processed in short-term facilities that have repeatedly drawn criticism for poor medical care and overcrowding
In January the Senate Judiciary Committee issued a damning report revealing dysfunction in CBP's medical operations. The investigation revealed chronic understaffing, improper use of medical records systems, and vague or nonexistent guidance for treating children, pregnant individuals, and others with complex medical needs.
The report was prompted by the death of 8-year-old Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, who died in May 2023 at a CBP facility in Harlingen, Texas. The Panamanian girl, who had a known history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia, reportedly pleaded for help along with her mother. Both were ignored. She died in custody, her final hours spent in a facility whose staff were unequipped—and seemingly unwilling—to provide critical care.
Policy reversals have come to define the Trump administration's immigration tactics, from attempts to revoke the status of 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela living legally in the US to purging student visas. In January, a day after President Donald Trump's inauguration, the Department of Homeland security reversed a Biden-era policy that forbade ICE and CBP officers from arresting people in "protected areas," including schools, places of worship, and hospitals.
As the number of people held in ICE detention has climbed–reaching roughly 47,928 in April, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse–apprehensions at the southern US border have fallen sharply, dropping to levels not seen in decades.
CBP says that its personnel will continue to follow broader standards under the National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS), and remain bound by the Flores agreement, which requires that children be given safe and sanitary quarters. The Trump administration has previously argued that the original settlement does not require that children be allowed to sleep or wash themselves with soap.
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Washington Post
17 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Live updates: Nationwide protests planned ahead of Trump military parade for Army's birthday
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CBS News
18 minutes ago
- CBS News
Trump's military parade today isn't the first in the U.S. — but they're rare. Here's a look back.
Washington — President Trump is hosting a parade celebrating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army today, bringing tanks and soldiers to the streets of Washington, D.C., for the capital's first major military parade in more than three decades. The event — which is expected to cost between $25 million and $45 million — follows a years-long push by Mr. Trump to host a parade, dating back to his first term. The festivities coincide with Mr. Trump's 79th birthday, which the president says is unrelated. The U.S. has held military parades throughout history, but they're not especially common, and they're typically held to celebrate the victorious end of a war or the return of military personnel from fighting. "There are historical comparisons to be made, but size and scale is tremendously different," Arizona State University history professor Brooks Simpson told CBS News. Here's a look back at past military parades: When was the last U.S. military parade? The U.S. marked the end of the Gulf War with parades in New York City and Washington in the first major military display on the streets of D.C. since the early decades of the Cold War. The festivities in the capital featured around 8,000 military personnel, tanks, missile launchers, fireworks shows and an address by then-President George H.W. Bush. Some 800,000 people attended the event, which cost around $12 million, The Washington Post reported in 1991, or just under $29 million in today's dollars. Hunter Ledbetter, a Marine reservist who was deployed to Iraq during the war, told the Post at the time that it was "the most exciting moment of my life." The parade — which recognized the U.S.'s campaign to drive Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait — was largely uncontroversial, Simpson said: "No one objected to that parade." Troops march over the Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., as they head towards the Pentagon during the National Victory Day Parade on June 8, 1991. DOUG MILLS Still, the parades drew some pushback. Some critics questioned the D.C. Gulf War parade's price tag, and D.C. officials said the procession of heavy tanks had left tread marks on the city's streets. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis criticized the New York parade since it followed an uprising by Iraq's Kurds that Hussein's regime brutally suppressed. "Honor is due the soldiers who were in the gulf," Lewis wrote at the time. "But for other reasons — reasons all too painfully evident — it is clear now that a celebratory parade would be inappropriate. Fireworks while Kurdish babies die?" Cold War inaugurations Presidential inaugural parades often include some military personnel, dating back to the first inauguration of President George Washington in 1789. In the early decades of the Cold War, the festivities also sometimes featured tanks and missiles on the streets of the capital. Some military equipment appears in photos from the 1949 parade after President Harry Truman's swearing-in, President Dwight Eisenhower's 1953 and 1957 inaugurations and President John F. Kennedy's 1961 festivities. Kennedy's inauguration featured a replica of the PT boat that the new president served on during World War II. The entire event cost around $1 million in 1961 dollars — or more than $10 million today — paid for by private donors, The New York Times wrote at the time. A Navy PT boat rides high above Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 1961 as the inaugural parade passes the presidential reviewing stand. President John Kennedy waves to sailors aboard. Anonymous / AP Army tanks move along Pennsylvania Avenue during the Inaugural Parade for President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Jan. 21, 1953. Anonymous / AP Simpson says inauguration parades sometimes included a few tanks as an exhibition, but they were typically "much more limited" than the parade planned for this weekend. "It wasn't like Pennsylvania Avenue was lined with tanks," he said. Parades with military equipment became less common after the 1960s. That could be due to the Vietnam War, which was deeply unpopular in its later years, and the eventual easing of Cold War tensions. "After Vietnam, parades get complicated because [parades are always] linked to the outcomes of the wars and the conduct of them," said Aaron O'Connell, a history professor at the University of Texas, Austin. "And that makes it more difficult to cheer and throw a ticker tape parade, when people are coming home in ones and twos, and they're not coming home in large units, and the war hasn't gone as well as we would've liked." World Wars I and II New York City marked victory in World War II with a massive military parade on Fifth Avenue in early 1946. The event included thousands of members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and dozens of tanks and howitzers, requiring planners to close off the Manhattan Bridge and carefully bring heavy equipment over the East River from Brooklyn. The New York Times reported millions of spectators attended the parade. In mid-1942, months after the U.S. formally entered World War II, the city hosted a morale-boosting "New York at War" parade that the Times said was meant to "give a realistic picture of what the American armed forces and their machines of destruction look like." Soldiers stand rigidly at attention in their vehicles which carry 8-inch Howitzers during the Victory Parade of the 82nd Airborne Division on Fith Avenue in New York on Jan. 12, 1946. HARRY HARRIS / AP Thousand of people line the streets to cheer on military units in New York on June 13, 1942. Anonymous / AP The end of World War I was also celebrated by victory parades in New York and D.C. in 1919. It could've gone smoother: Dozens of artillery tractors that participated in the New York parade took a wrong turn after the event and got lost in Brooklyn for hours, the Times wrote at the time. The 1st Division of the U. S. Army parades beneath an arch at 14th and Pensylvania Avenues in Washington D. C. on Sept. 17, 1919. Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images Civil War and 19th century celebrations Washington hosted a massive two-day parade in May 1865 to celebrate the Union's victory in the Civil War, featuring over 100,000 troops, according to the National Park Service. The event — called the Grand Review of the Armies — was made up of military volunteers who passed through the capital on their way home from the former Confederate states, Simpson says. The event featured Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and President Andrew Johnson, taking place months after President Abraham Lincoln's assassination. "The place was packed," said Simpson. People watch soldiers on horseback, followed by those on foot, parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington during the "Grand Review of the Armies" on May 23-24, 1865. Matthew Brady / AP Other countries Mr. Trump may have drawn inspiration for Saturday's parade from abroad. The president first hinted at hosting a military parade after attending France's annual Bastille Day parade in 2017. He called it "a tremendous thing," and added, "We're going to have to try and top it" on the Fourth of July. His administration began planning a Veterans' Day parade a year later, but it was called off, with Mr. Trump blaming city officials for driving up the cost. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron attend the annual Bastille Day military parade on the Champs-Elysees avenue in Paris on July 14, 2017. AFP Contributor France has hosted its Bastille Day military parade every July for over a century, recognizing the anniversary of the start of the 1789 French Revolution. 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Yahoo
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