The Government Was Tracking the Periods of Undocumented Girls

While our government has done a horrendous job at keeping track of the separation of families at the border, one thing they have managed to keep track of was the periods of young girls. According to documents obtained by MSNBC, the Trump Administration has documents detailing the menstrual cycle of undocumented girls to know if and when they are pregnant. However, the Office of Refugee Resettlement — those in charge of taking care of detained migrants — did not gather this information to help assist these young girls with their health but instead to make sure they couldn’t get access to abortions.

A story published in Harpers Baazar shows the correlation between the government keeping track of their periods and the former head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement — Scott Lloyd. The story indicates that because of Lloyd’s history as an “anti-abortion crusader,” his agenda from the beginning was to prevent all pregnant undocumented girls from choosing what they wanted to do with their pregnancy.

Evidence of the Office of Refugee Resettlement stepping in is when they tried to block undocumented women from having an abortion. In 2017, Lloyd testified that undocumented women weren’t allowed the right to choose — as indicted by law — because they are undocumented and not American citizens protected by the law.

“When there’s a child in the program who is pregnant, he has been reaching out to her and trying to help as much as possible with life-affirming options,” a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official told the Washington Post in 2017. “He by law has custody of these children, and just like a foster parent, he knows that that’s a lot of responsibility and he is going to make choices that he thinks are best for both the mother and the child.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) intervened on behalf of the undocumented pregnant women, and a judge ruled that the government cannot block them from having an abortion. Lloyd, who in the past paid his ex to help her get an abortion, has since been removed from his post at the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

The Harpers Bazaar piece goes on to link the connection between the Trump Administration tracking periods and blocking abortions to a foster/adoption agency “that has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos.”

It’s unclear if the government and immigration officials are continuing to track the menstrual cycles of undocumented women who are currently detained. Before the documents were exposed, Lloyd denied keeping track of their periods under oath. Now he is being asked to clarify those comments now that the truth has been revealed.