Immigration Officer Points Weapon at 11 Week Old Breastfeeding Baby

This heart-breaking story illustrates how laws that protect breastfeeding are not enough to prevent harassment of nursing mothers and babies. This incident took place at a United States Citizenship and Immigration Office, a location subject to the federal law enacted in 1999 that states that a woman may breastfeed her child at any location in a federal building or on federal property, if the woman and her child are otherwise authorized to be present at the location. However, the woman in question feared her permanent residency status would be threatened if she lodged a complaint, and she has only come forward to tell her story nearly four years later. Read on to learn of her ordeal, and stay tuned tomorrow for a report of the interesting research this mother did to gauge society’s attitudes towards breastfeeding in public.

“In August 2003, as an Australian woman, now residing in West Michigan, I had been waiting with my infant for three hours to speak with an Immigration Officer, because there had been an error in printing my Permanent Residency Card, more commonly known as a Greencard. During the lengthy wait, I was threatened to be forcibly removed by three armed security guards if I did not stop breastfeeding my baby in the waiting room of the US Citizenship and Immigration Office in Detroit. I initially refused; one officer drew his weapon and pointed it at me. Since I was sitting with an infant under a light blanket across my chest, his weapon, purposefully or not, was pointed at both of us. I explained that I had tried breastfeeding on the chair provided in the public toilets; but it was a broken office chair, where the seat only balanced precariously upon the base and with the slightest shift of weight, the chair, my child and I were sent tumbling.

I, like hundreds of other immigrants, had arrived at 7 a.m. to get a place in line and hoped to be seen by immigration officials that day. At 9 a.m., I was the next number to be called, and when my 11-week-old became fussy, I tried soothing and distracting her. But being only eleven weeks her concentration was short and need was intense for basics like comfort and food, especially in a foreign environment. By 10 a.m., not having been able to breastfeed her adequately for four hours, including travel time, I faced the option of holding a screaming infant in an overstuffed waiting room, where tensions were already running high, or breastfeeding. Placing a light blanket over my shoulder and abdomen I apologized to the man next to me for having to take up a little extra room on the arm rest. Before security arrived, the man beside me, of Middle Eastern appearance and his wife wearing a full hijab or headscarf, had responded kindly and in heavily accented English, “Your body is covered. We are all in this together; you must do, what you need to do, to care for your child.” I was comforted by these words of reassurance as I had been concerned about issues of cultural insensitivity considering that Detroit has the one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in the United States, and the diversity within this Immigration Office reflected the statistics.

One plain-clothed official did come out to dismiss the security guards and explained to me that there were “no eating or drinking” signs, clearly displayed all over the waiting room and that breastfeeding in a room of predominantly Muslim men was culturally inappropriate. I challenged the official by asking why then had a British woman been able to bottle feed her baby in the waiting room without such bullying and bravado, and why had it been two hours that I had been forced to wait not being able to leave the room as my number was the next to be called? The official had no satisfactory answer, other than to say that he had not witnessed the bottle feeding event and that considering the extra work load that all immigration officers were facing in a post 9/11 world, that I would just have to wait.

My options were to return to the Immigration Office the following day and repeat the long wait and perhaps repeat the ordeal for both my daughter and I, or to stay and not breastfeed my baby. The fears of having to start the process over again the following day made me decide to stay and just not nurse her. I waited another hour before being seen. My ten pound infant, confused and afraid, screamed inconsolably for that entire hour, whilst I wept openly. I was emotionally exhausted and felt in total conflict with my own body. I had to ignore what every hormone in my body was screaming at me to do and remain calm enough to soothe my infant. At some point, I asked security if I could stand and rock her a little, I was refused as this too, is against waiting room rules.

When did breastfeeding in public become an issue that brought people to a trigger point? This was a horrifying ordeal, which took days for my child and I to recover from. The drive back from Detroit afterwards took 12 hours because I just could not get [my daughter] to calm down and I repeatedly had to find safe places to stop the car and sit and nurse her. The days that followed were unsettling and the experience has left me uncomfortable of ever nursing in public and very disappointed in the immigration process. A breastfeeding relationship between a mother and her child is just that, a “relationship.” When one fails to meet the needs of the other, hurt and confused emotions rise to the surface and can inhibit a healthy interaction. There were a host of issues rolled into that one situation. In a post 9/11 world, immigration offices around the United States were barraged with new screening procedures and public scrutiny for not being strict enough. I understand and sympathize with the pressure they were under but what perplexes me to this day, is why breastfeeding in the United States of America is such a public taboo?”