Washington, DC — Yesterday news broke of the Trump administration beginning to detain families at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas (nicknamed Dilley). The facility will detain up to 2,400 families. The alarming return of family detention, a policy that was widely condemned and has been dormant for four years, is yet another layer of the Trump administration’s unprecedented and cruel expansion of immigration detention, that if fully realized will triple the current detention system.
Families have largely not been subjected to family detention since the Biden administration stopped detaining families at the Berks Detention Center in Pennsylvania, the Karnes Residential Center in Texas, and the South Texas Family Residential Center - proving that the U.S. can welcome families to the United States without jailing them. Family detention centers have a well-documented history of negligence and abuse, including inadequate medical and mental health care, unhealthy weight loss among children, and inappropriate disciplinary tactics, including threats to separate families if children misbehave. Numerous studies have shown the psychologically damaging effects of family detention: medical and child welfare professionals have noted again and again that it is especially harmful to children, leading to emotional and mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and weight loss, among other physical and behavioral health problems.
About the South Texas Family Residential Center (Dilley):
Dilley was one of four family detention centers opened by President Obama when his administration dramatically expanded family detention in 2014. The Trump administration continued to use Dilley to further expand the use of family detention and family separation. In a step welcomed by advocates, the Biden administration stopped detaining families in December 2021. However, ICE did not terminate its long-standing contract with the facility. Instead, the South Texas Family Residential Center began detaining single adults. When at capacity, the South Texas Family Residential Center was the largest detention center in the United States.
While in operation for family detention, Dilley had reports of foul water and negligent medical treatment, with hospitals confirming that children are consistently released with health issues they dubbed “Dilley-ish.” In 2018, a 19-month old girl, Mariee, tragically died after leaving the facility and in 2019, a guard was accused of physically assaulting a 5-year-old.
In response to this news, immigrant justice advocates issued the following responses:
Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director of Detention Watch Network, said:
“It is enraging to see the Trump administration reinstate family detention, a policy of jailing immigrant parents with their children – including babies. Detention is harmful and traumatic for everyone, but especially children. Families should be able to navigate their immigration cases in community with support services provided and facilitated by local community based groups – never Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an enforcement agency that is plagued by egregiously poor conditions and a culture of violence. Taking away a child’s freedom and deliberately putting them in these conditions is unconscionable, as is denying a parent their most fundamental role of providing their child with a loving and nurturing environment. Family detention, like all immigration detention, is inhumane, unjust, and unnecessary. Everyone, certainly children and their parents, deserves to freely and safely move for opportunity and stability.”
Mike Ishii, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Tsuru for Solidarity, said:
“My mother was just a young girl when her entire family was rounded up and imprisoned in a U.S concentration camp. This horrible precedent helped lay the foundation for a cruel system that dehumanizes and abuses immigrants today. What country allows this kind of violence and cruelty? Just weeks after the 83rd commemoration of EO 9066 that authorized forced removal and mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, we call upon our neighbors everywhere to stop the Trump administration from once again enacting cruel policies targeting children and families.”
Amy Fischer, Director of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Program at Amnesty International USA, said:
“Reopening family detention facilities with devastating histories of abuses, trauma, and long-term psychological damage underscores that cruelty is the point of these Trump administration policies. Instead of spending billions of taxpayer dollars on mass detention and deportation, the U.S. government should invest that money in systems that benefit and bolster the human rights of all our communities, like housing, healthcare, climate resilience, education, and infrastructure to help our communities thrive.”
Robyn Barnard, Senior Director, Refugee Advocacy at Human Rights First said:
“Families deserve to live and grow together– in freedom and safety. The Trump Administration, however, plans to resume the shameful practice of family detention, imprisoning parents and their children in inhumane conditions that cause profound, long-lasting psychological and physical harm. The egregious conditions in family detention are well-documented: from inadequate medical and mental healthcare, abuse, a lack of due process, and inappropriate disciplinary tactics, such as threats to separate families. Immigration detention is an affront to basic values that we all hold dear: dignity, due process, and freedom.”
Marie-Hélène Rousseau, Communications Strategist with the #WelcomeWithDignity Campaign said:
“No matter where we come from, we would do anything to protect our families and keep them safe. The Trump administration’s plan to resume family detention deprives people seeking safety of their freedom and violates their fundamental rights. The Trump administration’s cruel agenda of detention, deportation, and family separation, is an attack on our families, our communities, and our values. Detention, deportation, and family separation are profoundly harmful, traumatic experiences for anyone–even more so for children, who suffer from long-term repercussions of inhumane conditions in family detention. We must leave these policies in the past, where they belong, and instead uplift policies that keep us all safe and allow all our communities to thrive.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.