A Haitian woman who admitted she snuck into the country illegally on a Haitian sloop last December gave birth on the floor of the Carmichael Road Detention Centre two weeks ago and was later released back into society, The Nassau Guardian can confirm.
Maryle Claude, 19, said after she had her baby she was transferred to Princess Margret Hospital.
She claimed immigration officers then released her and threatened that either she sort out papers for her and her baby or they would deport her.
Haitian Ambassador to The Bahamas Antonio Rodrigue confirmed that the Haitian embassy is aware of the matter.
Rodrigue said an embassy official visited the woman in hospital.
Immigration and Foreign Affairs Minister Fred Mitchell said yesterday he was made aware of an "emergency like that", though he did not go into specifics.
Claude said she was picked up by immigration officers early one morning, but could not remember the date.
She recalled that she gave birth at the detention center on November 16.
"On Sunday evening, I was feeling pain and at about 6 p.m. I pushed out the baby's head," she said through a translator yesterday.
"Before that, two women from the Royal Bahamas Defence Force came over and saw me in pain and told me that nothing was wrong and that I was just complaining and that I just wanted to get out of the situation I was in.
"At 6 p.m. I ended up having the baby, but they still didn't carry me to the hospital. The other girls who were in the room with me started to make noise and carry on bad and at 8 p.m. they took me to the hospital."
Claude said the other detainees helped deliver the baby. She said that she was so weak she passed out during the ordeal and had to be revived.
The Haitian mother delivered a healthy baby boy, whom she named Alexander.
"I would have rather been deported," she said.
"I would have been home with my family and had my baby. To know that I had a baby in a prison on the floor, knowing that I could have died and even my baby could have died is terrible."
When asked about her release, Mitchell said he could not say what the administrators did, but admitted that "there is no facility to deal with people like that".
He added, "You do not want to send a message out where you have a baby and are paroled out into the public. That is not how it works."
Claude claimed that there were two other women at the detention center who were pregnant.
When called for comment yesterday, Immigration Director William Pratt said he was out of office for a while, but was made aware of a woman who went into labor at the detention center. He stressed though that he had no information regarding Claude.
Pratt said if she was at the facility, she would have been the responsibility of the Department of Immigration.
"If she went into labor, the first thing our officers would do is call an ambulance," he said.
"It is not that [anyone] meant for her to have [a] baby on the floor."
He added, "Having a baby does not give anyone a passport to stay in The Bahamas."
Pratt said if the woman is in the country illegally, she would be picked up and deported.
Claude told The Guardian that she is working on getting her papers.

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