“A lot” of pregnant juveniles have crossed the border into the Rio Grande Valley as part of the influx of Central American illegal immigrants, says Albert Spratte, the sergeant-at-arms of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the valley.
“It’s not uncommon to see 16-, 17-year-old girls who are six to eight months pregnant,” Spratte tells National Review Online. Border Patrol agents do not appear to have kept statistics on the amount of pregnant teenagers traveling to the U.S., he says, but some arrive almost nine months pregnant.
Other women arrive much earlier in their pregnancy. One Border Patrol agent working in the San Diego Sector tells NRO that the agent has not witnessed massive numbers of pregnant juveniles crossing in California, but he has run into several pregnant mothers crossing the border throughout the agent’s career. “I had one woman claim she was going into labor—we took her to the hospital; she wasn’t,” the agent says. “Doctor said she wasn’t going into labor, it was too early, but she was trying to stay to have the anchor baby.” The agent says the woman was ultimately deported back to Mexico safe and sound.
Bob Dane, communications director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, says he thinks pregnant alien minors could represent the next group of people to surge across the border. While he says he could not think of anything more dangerous to the wellbeing of a newborn child than the journey such minors would have to make, he says he thinks the trip would result in an “absolute success” for the teens. Dane says birthright citizenship represents a strong incentive for pregnant minors considering a journey to the United States, as the women know they will not be separated from their offspring.
