ICE and CoreCivic denied pregnant detainee's repeated pleas for medical care at Eloy, and she miscarried in custody

In late November 2025, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Beatriz Pastrana Candela at a hotel in Tempe, Arizona, and transferred her first to a Florence holding facility and then to the Eloy Detention Center, which CoreCivic operates under contract with ICE, in Eloy, Arizona. Pastrana was nearly three months pregnant at the time of her arrest, a fact later confirmed by medical records reviewed by LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times, and she told arresting agents and detention staff repeatedly that she was pregnant.

A pregnancy test administered at intake at Eloy came back positive, but within days medical and corrections staff told Pastrana she was not pregnant and dismissed her escalating complaints of abdominal pain, at one point telling her the positive test was "a total lie." Only after further complaints and her own insistence that she was bleeding did staff arrange an outside medical examination, where a doctor confirmed she had miscarried. In a statement to LOOKOUT and Phoenix New Times, ICE said claims that Pastrana's requests for care were ignored are "categorically false" and that "ICE detention standards are among the highest in the nation." Exact dates for the onset of her pain and for the miscarriage itself are not established in the reporting; this entry records the event using the best-supported approximate date.

Pastrana's case follows a broader pattern documented by a U.S. Senate office review, which found at least 16 recorded miscarriages in ICE detention since January 2025 -- a figure that does not include her case because no formal filing was made in it. A 2021 ICE directive restricting the detention of pregnant, postpartum, and nursing individuals remains formally in effect but, according to reporting, has gone largely unenforced under the current administration. Pastrana remained detained at Eloy several months after the miscarriage.