Many Americans were alarmed recently when immigration officers in Minneapolis took custody of a 5-year-old boy and sent him and his father to a Texas detention center. But he was no outlier.
The government has been holding hundreds of children and their parents at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, about 75 miles south of San Antonio. Some have been detained for months.
The Department of Homeland Security has strongly defended the quality of care and conditions there.
Here are key findings from an Associated Press report on how the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement is shaping life inside the facility.
Detention of children has been rising
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement booked more than 3,800 children into detention during the first nine months of the new Trump administration, according to an AP analysis of data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project.
On an average day, more than 220 children were being held, with most of those detained longer than 24 hours sent to Dilley. More than half of Dilley detainees during the early part of the Trump administration were children, the AP analysis found.
Since being reopened last spring, the number of people detained at Dilley has risen sharply and reached more than 1,300 in late January, according to researchers. Nearly two-thirds of children detained by ICE in the early months of the Trump administration were eventually deported.
ICE holds many children longer than 20-day limit
The government is holding many children at Dilley well beyond the 20-day limit set by a longstanding court order.
“We’ve started to use 100 days as a benchmark because so many children are exceeding 20 days,” said Leecia Welch, the chief legal director at Children’s Rights, who visits Dilley regularly to ensure compliance. In a visit this month, Welch said she counted more than 30 children who had been held for over 100 days.
Many settled families among those currently detained
When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014, nearly all the families detained there had recently crossed the border from Mexico.
But many of those now sent to the facility have lived in the U.S. several years, according to lawyers and other observers, meaning children are being uprooted from the familiarity of schools, neighborhoods and many of the people who care for them.
Parents Allege Deficient Care
Parents and children recounted stressful conditions inside Dilley, including experiences that raise questions about the quality of care being provided.
A 13-year-old girl cut herself with a plastic knife after staff withheld prescribed antidepressants and denied her request to join her mother down the hall, the mother told the AP.
Another mother said when her 1-year-old daughter developed a high fever and vomited, medical staff repeatedly offered only acetaminophen and ibuprofen before she was eventually admitted to hospitals with bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach viruses. ICE disputed her account, saying the baby “immediately received proper care.”
Other families described more routine problems, like the difficulty of getting children to sleep in quarters where lights are kept on all night and of stomach aches caused by foul drinking water.
Both adults and children described the often overwhelming stress of being detained that has caused many to despair.
ICE, DHS defend Dilley
DHS did not respond to detailed questions about Dilley submitted by the AP. But both DHS and ICE sharply refuted allegations of poor care and conditions in statements issued this week.
“The Dilley facility is a family residential center designed specifically to house family units in a safe, structured and appropriate environment,” ICE Director Todd M. Lyons said in a statement.
Dilley provides medical screenings and infant care packages as well as classrooms and recreational spaces, ICE said.
Once in full operation, Dilley is expected to generate about $180 million in annual revenue for CoreCivic, the for-profit prison company that operates it under contract with ICE, according to the company’s recent filing with securities regulators.
In response to questions from the AP, a CoreCivic spokesman said no child at Dilley “has been denied medical treatment or experienced a delayed medical assessment.” The company said detainees receive comprehensive care from medical and mental health professionals.
Questions about oversight
The increased detention of families comes as the Trump administration has gutted an office responsible for oversight of conditions inside Dilley and other facilities.
In years past, investigators found problems at Dilley, including consistently inadequate staffing and disregard for the trauma caused by the detention.
A special committee recommended that family detention be discontinued except in rare cases, and the Biden administration began phasing it out in 2021. Dilley was closed in 2024. But in reopening it, the Trump administration has completely reversed course.
