Pregnant Migrant Minors Still Sent to South Texas Shelters

The federal government is still sending pregnant migrant minors who arrive at the border alone to shelters in the far southern tip of Texas, more than a year after the practice began and despite questions from 48 members of Congress, according to reporting by the Texas Newsroom and the California Newsroom published by LAist on Oct. 29 and NPR on Oct. 30. The placements, made by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services, put girls as young as 12 in a state with a near-total abortion ban.

It matters now because a proposed HHS rule that would rewrite ORR’s abortion-related duties has sat at the White House since January, and the agency’s answers to Congress leave open whether a Texas placement is a case-by-case call or a standing practice.

A directive, a quiet move and an HHS denial

ORR decides where each unaccompanied child referred to it lives while the child’s immigration case proceeds. An April 30, 2026, letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and ORR acting director Angie Salazar, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), describes a July 22, 2025, directive to send pregnant children to the Urban Strategies shelter in San Benito, near Brownsville. The letter says that practice conflicts with ORR Field Guidance #21, the agency’s 2022 instructions on placing pregnant minors, and it posed 12 questions.

According to the LAist report, ORR stopped placing newly arrived pregnant girls at San Benito by April 7 and began sending them to a Compass Connections shelter in Los Fresnos, about 20 minutes away, a shift the outlet says was not disclosed to Castro. The same reporting says ORR placed more than 20 pregnant girls in the region between July 2025 and May 2026, and that at least four were later moved out of state, including a 12-year-old sent to New York. HHS has published no comparable figures.

HHS rejects the idea of a blanket rule. In a September reply to lawmakers quoted by LAist, Assistant Secretary Alex J. Adams wrote that ORR “does not make placement decisions for pregnant youth based on a blanket rule or one-size-fits-all approach,” and that placements weigh each child’s safety, medical needs, legal access and best interest. The department told the outlet there have been “no operational changes regarding the placement of pregnant unaccompanied children.” In January, HHS told The Daily Signal its goal was to protect the young migrants “and to save the lives of their unborn babies,” the Texas Tribune reported.

Others see a pattern. Castro called it “an informal but strict policy of sending these girls to deep South Texas,” LAist reported, and an internal July 2025 email from ORR’s acting health director, quoted by the outlet, warned that Texas “has one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the U.S.”

Why Texas changes the legal math for pregnant migrant minors

Abortion access for minors in federal immigration custody has been litigated before. ORR’s attempt during the first Trump administration to block girls in its care from ending pregnancies produced the 2017 Garza v. Hargan fight and the J.D. v. Azar class action, settled in 2020. Current federal requirements, which the Castro letter cites, call on ORR to move a minor who seeks an abortion to a state where it is legal.

That requirement is what makes a Texas placement consequential. A girl in the Rio Grande Valley who wants an abortion, or who develops a complication Texas doctors may hesitate to treat under the state’s narrow medical exception, has to be moved. The practical effect is that a placement made in the first days after referral shapes her options long before any medical question arises.

The transfer duty itself may not last. HHS sent the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs a proposed rule titled “Unaccompanied Alien Children Program Foundational Rule; Updates to Accord with the Hyde Amendment” (RIN 0970-AD34) on Jan. 23, 2026, and that office still lists it as pending review. The Texas Tribune has reported that a July 2025 Justice Department legal opinion concluded the government cannot pay to move detainees across state lines for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or a threat to the mother’s life. A final rule along those lines would narrow the exit route from Texas to those exceptions.

Placement also decides which immigration court and which legal aid providers a child will see, part of a wider fight over children’s cases that includes the dispute over HHS’s in-house lawyers for children, the court challenge to short-notice child asylum interviews and the government’s bid to end the Perez-Funez safeguards.

What to watch

The Hyde Amendment rule: publication of RIN 0970-AD34 in the Federal Register would open a public comment period and signal how far HHS intends to go.
HHS data: lawmakers asked for counts of pregnant children by age, state and trimester; none has been released.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

Administrator

Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds an LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Diego and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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