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https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/12/7/2357105/-Her-baby-was-in-the-NICU-She-was-in-ICE-detention?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

Nayra Guzmán was arrested 15 days after her daughter’s difficult birth. Before Trump took office, postpartum immigrants were rarely detained by ICE.

By Mel Leonor Barclay and Shefali Luthra for The 19th

Nayra Guzmán knew there was something wrong with her daughter within hours of her birth — a long and complicated delivery that included a diagnosis of preeclampsia and ended in a Cesarean section. In the haze of recovery, the first-time mom noticed her daughter was struggling to breathe. When the baby started turning blue, Guzmán watched as doctors whisked her away to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

In the days that followed, the 22-year-old’s sole focus was her daughter’s recovery, even as their home, the greater Chicago area, became the latest target of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda in a campaign titled Operation Midway Blitz.

“We weren’t worried about the immigration raids,” said Guzmán, an immigrant from Mexico who has a pending petition for asylum and a pending application for a visa for victims of crime. “Our worry was, ‘How are we going to get this baby home and out of the hospital?’ That was our number one priority, that she would be safe and healthy, and everything else had fallen to the background.”

That changed on the morning of Monday, October 20. Just 15 days after her daughter’s birth, as Guzmán, her mom and younger brother loaded into their car for their daily drive to the NICU, they were surrounded by immigration enforcement agents and whisked away to detention.

Since Trump took office in January, the administration has abandoned Department of Homeland Security policies restricting the arrest and detention of immigrants who have recently given birth, are pregnant or are nursing. As a result, the administration has taken into custody immigrants like Guzmán, who are medically vulnerable and whose detention threatens not only their own health but also that of their newborn children — typically U.S. citizens — by depriving them of early bonding beneficial to a baby’s lifelong wellbeing.

The administration’s sudden expansion of immigration arrests in Chicago meant Guzmán was in the government’s custody for about 34 hours. She was kept in a holding facility that was intended to house people for only a small fraction of that time — one that has come under intense scrutiny amid allegations of overcrowding, unsanitary conditions and limited medical care. Even though she was still trying to produce breast milk for her daughter, Guzmán had limited access to food and water at the Broadview Processing Center and was never provided a breast pump. She said she was never assessed by a medical professional while in the government’s custody. Guzmán was left to manage the pain of her C-section recovery as well as her Type 1 diabetes with the supplies she had in her backpack at the time of her arrest.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on Guzmán’s detention or the general conditions at Broadview for immigrants who have recently given birth.

Medical professionals say the conditions of many detention facilities — crowded, dirty and with inconsistent access to health care, food and water — are a threat to most people’s health. They pose particularly acute concerns for people who are still navigating the physical and psychological weight of postpartum recovery like Guzmán.

News reports, lawyers, Democratic lawmakers and immigration rights activists have identified dozens of cases of pregnant, postpartum and nursing individuals who have been detained and whose health has suffered as a result. But the total amount remains unknown: In March, the Republican-led Congress let lapse a requirement that Homeland Security report twice a year on the number of pregnant, postpartum and nursing individuals who have been detained. The Trump administration has declined to provide that information despite repeated requests from lawmakers, The 19th and others.

Now, as the administration expands its immigration enforcement campaign, exporting its Chicago strategy to Charlotte and New Orleans, Guzmán’s case offers a rare window into detention for pregnant and postpartum immigrants. Guzmán is also among the growing number of immigrants who are being detained despite having no criminal record, even as the administration insists its immigration enforcement agenda targets criminals and people who pose a safety threat to the country.

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The family had finished breakfast and was loading into the car with some urgency. Guzmán’s daughter was still in the NICU, unable to eat or breathe independently. The doctors had planned a meeting to review the baby’s prognosis and care plans — and Guzmán also wanted to be there for her daughter’s noon feeding.

As Guzmán went to buckle her seatbelt, she looked out the window and noticed they were surrounded. By the look of the white SUVs, Guzmán said, the family knew immediately that they were being detained by immigration agents.

Guzmán remembers the agents asking where they were born and what paperwork they could show. The family, who arrived in the country three years ago, showed the agents their work permits and explained their pending asylum application. The family also explained that they were on their way to the NICU, and an agent approached Guzmán to ask how long it had been since the birth. With that information, they did not handcuff her as she was being detained.

Guzmán asked if she could please call the hospital to let them know she wouldn’t be coming in that day. Guzmán remembers an agent saying she’d have to talk about that with a judge, who would decide whether she would be released or go back to Mexico. The agents explained that after processing, she’d likely be going to a longer-term detention facility in Kentucky.

“In that moment, I just felt fear,” Guzmán said. “I thought, ‘The government is going to take custody of my daughter. I’m going to be in detention and I won’t be able to do anything for my daughter.’ If my daughter isn’t recovering with me there, I thought, then much less so if I’m arrested.”

Up to that point, Guzmán said the pain and difficulty of her own recovery had been overshadowed by her daughter’s. When she was with her, it all faded away. As she was being detained, it came into focus.

Guzmán’s C-section incision was throbbing on the ride to Broadview. The agent behind the wheel was driving fast over potholes, she said, despite pleas from her brother that Guzmán was in a fragile state following her surgery, which involved cutting through seven layers of tissue.

“How is it possible that I’m going all the way to Kentucky, in this state, six hours away? My scar is burning. I’m supposed to be resting,” she thought.

Once she arrived at Broadview, Guzmán said, she was taken to a room and examined by two immigration agents. They asked Guzmán to explain how her insulin pump and monitor worked and what medications she had in her backpack. One agent asked Guzmán to take off her belly binder, a stretchy garment that supports the abdomen after surgery. She declined, explaining that without it, she’d have a hard time managing the pain.

“I overheard another agent say, ‘Leave it. They’ll take it at the detention center,’” Guzmán recalled.

Eventually, she was transferred to a holding cell for women alongside her mom. They were given water and a sandwich at around 3 p.m., Guzmán said, her first meal since they were detained around 10 a.m.

The only places for rest inside the holding cell were small benches. Guzmán spent the night on one without a blanket or anything but what she had on her body.

“It was really uncomfortable. I was wearing two layers of leggings, two layers of socks, my sweatshirt, and I was still freezing,” Guzmán said. “Once I was laying down, I couldn’t really move because of the pain. And then I started to feel cramping in my uterus.”

C-section recovery typically involves six to eight weeks of rest, gentle movement, wound care and pain management. At a minimum, patients only 15 days out from a C-section require a bed, access to a breast pump, clean water and a sanitary restroom to change menstrual pads, said Dr. Beth Cronin, an OB-GYN in Rhode Island and chair of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology’s Committee of Advancing Equity in Obstetric and Gynecologic Health Care. They need access to a shower, and they need extra food — especially if they are breastfeeding.

“Those are medical necessities. You would never take anybody else who just had major surgery and give them a bench,” Cronin said upon learning about Guzmán’s case. The risk of infection is heightened for patients with Type 1 diabetes, she added.

Guzmán’s detention was made more difficult by the fact that she was held in a temporary ICE processing facility lacking the services of longer-term detention centers.

In a class-action suit filed October 30, nine days after Guzmán’s release, people who had been detained at Broadview described overcrowded and dirty cells; limited food and water; no access to showers, soap or menstrual supplies; inadequate medical care; and freezing conditions at night. Multiple people with diabetes said they were given only a sandwich at every meal, though bread can cause blood sugar spikes. Days later, a judge said he found the accounts “highly credible,” and described the conditions as “unnecessarily cruel.”  

In another case, filed by a nursing woman detained October 30 and released a day later, government officials conceded that they were not aware of any accommodations at Broadview — such as a lactation room or breast pump — that would allow detained immigrants to express breast milk.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/12/7/2357105/-Her-baby-was-in-the-NICU-She-was-in-ICE-detention?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/12/7/2357054/-Sean-Duffy-once-defended-Congress-s-power-of-the-purse-Now-he-defies-it?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=

As a congressman, Duffy made an impassioned legal case against executive overreach. A decade later, judges have used those same arguments to rebuke him for withholding billions in transportation funding.

By Jake Pearson for ProPublica

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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been one of the most vociferous defenders of President Donald Trump’s expansive use of executive authority, withholding billions of dollars in federal funding to states and dismissing protests of the White House’s boundary-pushing behavior as the gripings of “disenfranchised Democrats.”

But court documents reviewed by ProPublica show that a decade ago, as a House member, Duffy took a drastically different position on presidential power, articulating a full-throated defense of Congress’ role as a check on the president — one that resembled the very arguments made by speakers at recent anti-Trump “No Kings” rallies around the country.

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Related | Only Sean Duffy could make safety bigoted and weird

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In an assertive, thoroughly researched 2015 legal brief, Duffy, then a Republican representative from Wisconsin, detailed the history of America’s creation in reaction to the absolute power of the English crown, invoking the Magna Carta and the Founding Fathers as he made the case for the separation of powers.

“Just as Congress may not bestow upon the President Congress’s own exclusive power to make, or to repeal, federal law,” Duffy argued, citing a 1998 court decision, “it may not bestow upon the Executive its own exclusive power of the purse.”

The brief went on to cite James Madison’s account of the Constitutional Convention, where there was “unanimous agreement that Congress, not the President, should control the purse.”

At the time, Duffy filed the friend-of-the-court brief in support of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets funded. Duffy, who chaired the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, maintained that the agency’s unique funding system — its dollars come directly from the Federal Reserve System rather than by a congressional appropriation — improperly bypassed lawmakers’ authority.

The 39-page brief was filed under Duffy’s name along with a nonprofit group aligned with the Republican legal activist Leonard Leo and submitted by a preeminent conservative lawyer. Today, it stands in stark contrast to Duffy’s own actions as transportation secretary in the first year of Trump’s second stint in the White House. Indeed, his attempts to restrict congressionally appropriated transportation funding across all 50 states this year have been condemned by a congressional watchdog and federal judges, resulting in stinging public rebukes from the other branches of government that echo his own 2015 position.

Peter Levine, a civics expert at Tufts University, said that while it could be that Duffy’s views on presidential power have evolved over time, his apparent flip-flopping on something as fundamental as the meaning of the Constitution raises the prospect that Duffy may “just be playing a game for power.”

“The Constitution is a promise to continue to apply the same rules and norms over time to everybody,” he added. “When political actors completely ignore that, and just go after their own thing, I don’t think the Constitution can actually function.”

In response to questions, a Department of Transportation spokesperson asked for a copy of Duffy’s brief. But after ProPublica provided it, the spokesperson stopped responding. A message sent to a number listed for Duffy hasn’t been returned.

The expansion of executive power has been a hallmark of Trump’s second administration. The president issued a whopping 214 executive orders between Jan. 20 and Nov. 20, according to the The American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In both “number and ambition,” the orders and resulting actions are “exceeded on these dimensions in the last century only by Franklin D. Roosevelt,” one Harvard Law School professor recently noted.

Duffy has cited some of those directives as he has withheld congressionally approved transportation funds. And administration officials have defended doing so, claiming that a post-Watergate law asserting Congress’ power over spending improperly restrains the president’s authority.

But a congressional watchdog and the courts have taken issue with that expansive interpretation of federal authority.

For Duffy, the first instance came in May, when the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, concluded that the DOT had violated the law when it halted payments in February from a $5 billion fund for electric car charging stations that Congress approved under former President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law.

“The Constitution specifically vests Congress with the power of the purse,” the congressional watchdog wrote, arguing that the payments should resume. “The Constitution grants the President no unilateral authority to withhold funds from obligation.”

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Related | Sean Duffy faces pajama protest after playing fashion police

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A White House spokesperson called the GAO’s opinion “incorrect” when it was issued and argued that the DOT was “appropriately using” its authority.

In June, a federal judge in Washington ordered transportation officials to lift the pause after a handful of states sued Duffy and the DOT, writing that when the executive branch “treads upon the will of the Legislative Branch,” it’s up to the court “to remediate the situation and restore the balance of power.”

The government has moved to dismiss the lawsuit, writing that it had revamped the grant application process for the charging station money and also that the states’ constitutional concerns were unfounded, since another part of the Constitution “vests the President with broad, discretionary authority to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.’” The suit is ongoing.

Separately, a federal judge last month sided with states that had challenged an attempt by Duffy to condition billions of dollars more in federal funds for highway maintenance and other core transportation functions in exchange for helping the administration detain immigrants.

“Should Congress have wished, it could have attempted to entice State cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement through lawful means, and it could have sought to empower federal agencies to assist it in doing so,” John McConnell Jr., the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island, wrote in a Nov. 4 decision blocking Duffy’s actions.

But it didn’t, he said, and instead administration officials had “transgressed well-settled constitutional limitations on federal funding conditions.”

“The Constitution demands the Court set aside this lawless behavior,” he wrote.

The lawsuits are among hundreds of legal actions this year challenging the constitutionality of the White House’s various actions, including its attempts to halt the disbursement of hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending that Congress had previously approved.

As for the legal challenge Duffy supported in 2015, it was ultimately unsuccessful and the Supreme Court last year affirmed the constitutionality of the CFPB’s funding mechanism.

Yet the ruling has not insulated the bureau from the Trump administration, and officials have advanced novel legal theories to achieve what Duffy sought a decade ago. The administration now argues that since the Fed operates at a loss, it has no profits to transfer to the CFPB.

As a result, the bureau is being starved. According to a recent court filing by government lawyers, it will run out of operating funds by early next year.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/12/7/2357054/-Sean-Duffy-once-defended-Congress-s-power-of-the-purse-Now-he-defies-it?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=