ICE Detention Center Holds Hundreds of Children Beyond Legal Limits, AP Report Reveals
The recent detention of a five-year-old boy and his father by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Minneapolis, resulting in their transfer to a Texas detention facility, has alarmed many Americans. This case, however, is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern uncovered by an Associated Press investigation.
Rising Detention of Children Under Trump Administration
The government has been holding hundreds of children alongside their parents at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, located approximately seventy-five miles south of San Antonio. Some families have been detained for several months, despite the Department of Homeland Security strongly defending the quality of care and conditions at the facility.
According to an AP analysis of data from the University of California, Berkeley's Deportation Data Project, ICE booked more than three thousand eight hundred children into detention during the first nine months of the new Trump administration. On an average day, over two hundred twenty children were being held, with the majority of those detained longer than twenty-four hours sent directly to Dilley.
The AP analysis further revealed that more than half of Dilley detainees during the early part of the Trump administration were children. Since the facility reopened last spring, the number of people detained at Dilley has risen sharply, reaching more than one thousand three hundred by late January. Researchers noted that nearly two-thirds of children detained by ICE in the early months of the Trump administration were eventually deported.
Systematic Violation of Twenty-Day Legal Limit
The government is holding many children at Dilley well beyond the twenty-day limit established by a longstanding court order. Leecia Welch, the chief legal director at Children's Rights, who visits Dilley regularly to ensure compliance, stated, "We've started to use one hundred days as a benchmark because so many children are exceeding twenty days."
During a visit this month, Welch counted more than thirty children who had been held for over one hundred days, highlighting a systematic violation of legal standards designed to protect minors in immigration custody.
Shift from Recent Crossings to Settled Families
When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014, nearly all families detained there had recently crossed the border from Mexico. However, lawyers and other observers report that many of those now sent to the facility have lived in the United States for several years.
This shift means children are being uprooted from the familiarity of schools, neighborhoods, and many of the people who care for them, exacerbating the trauma of detention for families who have established roots in American communities.
Parents Allege Deficient Care and Stressful Conditions
Parents and children recounted stressful conditions inside Dilley that raise serious questions about the quality of care being provided. One mother told the AP that her thirteen-year-old daughter cut herself with a plastic knife after staff withheld prescribed antidepressants and denied her request to join her mother down the hall.
Another mother described how her one-year-old daughter developed a high fever and vomited, with medical staff repeatedly offering only acetaminophen and ibuprofen before the baby was eventually admitted to hospitals with bronchitis, pneumonia, and stomach viruses. ICE disputed her account, claiming the baby "immediately received proper care."
Other families described more routine problems, including difficulty getting children to sleep in quarters where lights are kept on all night and stomach aches caused by foul drinking water. Both adults and children described the often overwhelming stress of being detained, which has caused many to despair.
ICE and DHS Defend Dilley Operations
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to detailed questions about Dilley submitted by the AP. However, both DHS and ICE sharply refuted allegations of poor care and conditions in statements issued this week.
ICE Director Todd M. Lyons stated, "The Dilley facility is a family residential center designed specifically to house family units in a safe, structured and appropriate environment." ICE emphasized that Dilley provides medical screenings, infant care packages, classrooms, and recreational spaces.
Once in full operation, Dilley is expected to generate about one hundred eighty million dollars 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 asserted that no child at Dilley "has been denied medical treatment or experienced a delayed medical assessment," adding that detainees receive comprehensive care from medical and mental health professionals.
Questions About Oversight and Policy Reversals
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 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. However, in reopening it, the Trump administration has completely reversed course, raising significant concerns about accountability and the welfare of detained children and parents.
