Amid growing calls from lawmakers and human rights groups to shut down the sprawling Dilley Immigration Processing Center in southern Texas, an analysis shows the number of people incarcerated at the notorious immigration jail for children and families has nearly tripled in recent months.
Texas lawmakers and attorneys for immigrant families say a growing number of children at the facility are suffering in dangerous and inhumane conditions. People incarcerated at Dilley were quarantined after at least two became sick with measles last week. In another recent case, an 18-month-old girl was hospitalized with a life-threatening lung infection after spending two months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the migrant jail. The girl was reportedly returned to Dilley after spending 10 days at the hospital and denied prescribed medication, according to a federal lawsuit. She was only freed after lawyers filed an emergency petition demanding her release.
As the nation’s main large immigration jail designed to hold families — though the Trump administration is racing to build more — families are transferred from across the country to a remote part of Texas as they wait weeks or months to see an immigration judge. Recent federal data show that the average daily population exploded from an average of 500 people a day in October to around 1,330 a day in late January, according to Detention Reports, a new tool that maps data on 237 immigration jails nationwide.
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ICE does not release the number of children held in its custody, including at Dilley. However, the facility requires at least one parent be held along with each child. Adult women vastly outnumber adult men in the latest data. Kocher estimates that about 800 children are held there on any given day, and a ProPublica investigation estimates Dilley was holding about 750 families as of early February.
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The Dilley facility garnered national attention after the incarceration of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, whose arrest in Minnesota and transfer to Texas became a national symbol of the Trump administration’s brutality. Like other children held in confinement, Ramos reportedly fell ill while detained. The two were released on February 1 after lawmakers and attorneys intervened, with U.S. District Judge Fred Biery issuing an almost poetic yet scathing rebuke of the Trump administration in his ruling freeing the father and son.
Children held inside Dilley organized protests in solidarity with Liam Conejo Ramos as the case hit the headlines. Immigration attorney Eric Lee posted a viral video in mid-January recording the sound of hundreds of children shouting for freedom from behind the prison walls. Meanwhile, journalists, families incarcerated at Dilley, and their attorneys have reported inedible food, undrinkable water being mixed with baby formula, and medical neglect of children with severe illnesses.
“Medical professionals have repeatedly documented how any amount of detention has long-term negative consequences for children,” said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, in an email. “Families should be able to navigate their immigration cases in community, never behind bars in ICE detention where conditions [are] abysmal and abusive.”
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Since Trump returned to office, the daily average number of children incarcerated with adults fighting deportation orders has grown at least sixfold, according to The Marshall Project. That growth is part of a general explosion of the incarceration of immigrants as the Trump administration systemically dismantles legal avenues for bonding out of immigration jail, fights review of removal orders to maximize deportations, and moves to revoke legal status and protections for hundreds of thousands of refugees and asylum seekers.