The baby was due any day. On July 3, 2008, Juana Villegas was nine months pregnant, driving with her kids in Berry Hill, when a police officer pulled her over for a traffic violation.
In most cases, the encounter would have ended with a warning, maybe a ticket. But Villegas had no valid driver’s license. She wasn’t in the country legally. So, the officer arrested her and took her to jail. That’s when Villegas says she got scared.
“The officer had told me when he arrested me that they were going to send me to Mexico, that I wasn’t going to stay here,” she says in Spanish.
The Davidson County Sheriff’s Office no longer asks about immigration status. But when Villegas was arrested, it was still their policy to screen for undocumented immigrants and hold them until they could be taken into federal custody. So, they kept Villegas on a detainer.
Before taking her out of the jail, staff handcuffed Villegas’ hands and shackled her legs as she lay on a stretcher. Then she left in an ambulance, unable to move.
At the hospital, they chained Villegas’ leg to the bed. Throughout labor, the restraint stayed on, even after a doctor signed an order to remove it, according to a lawsuit she later filed. The shackle didn’t come off until two hours before Villegas gave birth. In the morning, her ankle was chained to the bed once again.
“Yo no me podía mover para ningún lado,” she says, explaining how limited her movement was.
Villegas says she will never forget what happened to her. And she doesn’t want anyone else to feel the same helplessness she did.
“Nunca se me va a olvidar,” she says. “No se lo deseo a nadie, me digo. A nadie, a nadie.”
Villegas settled a lawsuit with Metro in 2013 and was granted a visa to stay in the U.S. The sheriff’s office has also changed its policy. But almost a decade later, it is still legal in Tennessee to restrain pregnant people, even when they are giving birth.
A bill passing through the legislature hopes to change that. SB 2769 / HB 2875 would prohibit the use of restraints when a medical professional confirms that someone is pregnant, with a few exceptions. After years of fits and starts, the legislation has garnered the support of criminal justice reform advocates, medical professionals and even members of law enforcement.
The bill still has to pass through several more votes before it could become law. A Senate committee is expected to discuss the bill Tuesday afternoon.
Building momentum for anti-shackling bills
“Pregnancy is a unique time and condition when there’s physiologic and other anatomic changes that makes shackling, in particular, disadvantageous,” Dr. Howard Herrell, an obstetrician in Greeneville, testified at a House committee meeting in March.
Screenshot Obstetrician Howard Herrell tells lawmakers that shackling pregnant people could pose a health risk.
Herrell noted that the legislation follows the advice of multiple medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Restraining pregnant people could increase their risk of a blood clot, which he said happened to a woman in Tennessee who was shackled to a chair for six days.
Pregnancy can also throw off someone’s center of balance, he said. Adding restraints to the equation could cause trips or falls that could endanger the pregnant person and the fetus. During labor, the doctor said, shackles could make it difficult for medical providers to act as quickly as possibly during an emergency.
“For many other reasons, not even to mention psychological issues, we, the medical establishment, support limited and only in desperate and emergent situations that women should be shackled,” Herrell said.
The First Step Act, which passed with bipartisan support in congress in late 2018, barred the practice for people in federal custody in most cases. Dozens of states have enacted similar laws, including every state immediately surrounding Tennessee.
In Tennessee, Rep. Karen Camper, D-Memphis, and Sen. Raumesh Akbari, D-Memphis, have brought their own legislation before the Republican-led General Assembly for several years, without success. This session, some expressed skepticism once again.
Resistance from local sheriffs
“We cannot create a deliberate indifference in a jail environment in which we treat one inmate different than another inmate,” Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association Chair Jeff Bledsoe testified at a House Corrections Subcommittee meeting last month.
Screenshot Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association Chair Jeff Bledsoe tells lawmakers he wants sheriff’s deputies to be allowed to restrain pregnant people in some cases at a meeting in March 2022.
Beyond concerns about special treatment, Bledsoe said sheriffs were also worried about the safety risk.
“Just because an inmate’s pregnant does not mean they’re incapacitated, and we do not know what’s in everyone’s mind as to what their attempts or actions could be,” he said. “We have to prepare for the worst and hope for the best, and restraints help us to protect ourselves, to protect the inmate.”
Bledsoe said curbing the use of restraints would be most difficult for small sheriff’s offices, because many local jails have few employees and limited space.
An amended version of the legislation takes those concerns into account, along with feedback from the Tennessee Department of Correction.
Now, the bill would allow correctional officers to shackle pregnant people when they are traveling or if staff believe they might try to escape or cause harm to themselves or others. In those cases, officers would need to write a report within 72 hours explaining why they believed the restraints were necessary.
Shackling someone’s ankles, legs or waist during labor and delivery would be explicitly banned.
With those changes, the bill has picked up steam. Supporters are optimistic this time it will finally become law.
“I think many people didn’t realize it was still happening,” says Anna Carella of Healthy and Free Tennessee, which is advocating for the bill. “I think most people are shocked to hear that this inhumane practice is still happening in our state.”
Carella says resistance to the proposal is based hypothetical scenarios. Meanwhile, she says, there are documented cases of pregnant people developing blood clots or having miscarriages after they were shackled. Some were being held in jail pre-trial and had not been found guilty of anything. But even for those who have committed crimes, Carella says, restraints are typically overkill.
“It’s a human rights violation. It’s a moral issue. It’s a common-sense issue to just protect the health of our fellow Tennesseans,” she says. “Tennessee is ready for this legislation to pass.”
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