A Nashville-area mother is being held in Louisiana after an immigration detention that, according to advocates, left her breastfeeding infant and medically vulnerable toddler in someone else’s care.
Sanctuary of the South says Maria Perez was detained in Nashville while taking her children to a doctor’s appointment and later transferred to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile. The group alleges she was arrested without a warrant, has no criminal history, and has complied with her immigration-case requirements since entering the United States in 2022 while seeking asylum after fleeing domestic violence in Guatemala. It says the children — a 10-month-old whom Perez was breastfeeding and a 2-year-old with Down syndrome — are being cared for by a neighbor and have missed medical appointments. FOX 17 News reported that ICE had not responded to questions about the detention or the advocacy group’s allegations as of publication Wednesday.
ICE Policy Puts Nursing Detention Under Scrutiny
The allegations have drawn attention to ICE Directive 11032.4, the agency’s policy for pregnant, postpartum, and nursing people in custody. ICE’s directive says the agency generally should not arrest or detain someone known to be nursing for an administrative immigration violation unless release is prohibited by law or “exceptional circumstances” exist.
The same policy says decisions about detention should be considered separately from the decision to initiate removal proceedings. In Perez’s case, Sanctuary of the South is alleging that the detention itself conflicts with those safeguards, but ICE has not publicly explained whether it believes an exception applies.
Mother Was Transferred To Basile Detention Center
The South Louisiana ICE Processing Center is located in Basile, roughly in central Louisiana, far from the children Perez was reportedly caring for in Tennessee. The facility’s operator, GEO Group, lists it as a center operated under contract with ICE.
ICE Response Remains The Missing Piece
Key questions remain unanswered, including why Perez was detained during a medical trip, what prompted her transfer to Louisiana, and how officials assessed the impact on her children. FOX 17 News said it contacted ICE for confirmation and comment but had not received a response when its report was published.
For now, the allegations come from Sanctuary of the South and have not been independently confirmed by ICE or established in a court finding. The case is likely to remain under scrutiny because it places a vulnerable family directly against the agency’s stated policy for nursing people in immigration custody.
