Life for immigrant families in detention: sick children, no doctors

LAREDO, TX – They stole a few hours' sleep under glaring LED lights, crowded in by dozens of other detainees. They shivered through fevers and flus and prayed deadlier diseases weren't stalking their confines. Then, just as they feared their confinement would linger indefinitely, they were released. 

Immigrant families detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sometimes for months, were quietly driven to a nonprofit migrant shelter an hour away in recent days and set free. They spoke exclusively with USA TODAY about what they experienced at the South Texas Family Residential Center – an ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas.

Paloma Marta Aguayo, 30, of Mexico, said the worst part was the sick children. 

She arrived at the Laredo shelter on a charter bus carrying 40 people from Dilley, including a mother and her child who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, according to Joe Barron, director of the Holding Institute nonprofit shelter.

"There were a lot of sick people in there," said Aguayo, who is eight months pregnant and spent more than a month at the detention center with her 5-year-old daughter, Amaya. "And no doctors."

A 5-year-old and other children in detention

The immigrants said they were arrested and detained before they even realized what was happening.

One moment, they were attending their required immigration court hearing in California, picking up a child from school in Minnesota, or having breakfast at a truck stop in Arizona. The next moment, they were being whisked away in handcuffs to a detention center in the brush country of South Texas, in the small town of Dilley – population 5,732. 

President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign seeks to remove millions of immigrants living in the country illegally – and the family releases appear to run counter to that goal. ICE has freed more than 240 detained people – half of them minors – to the Laredo border shelter so far in January.

This latest move comes as the Department of Homeland Security and the White House are trying to control their public image following the shooting of two U.S. citizens by immigration agents and the detention of a 5-year-old, all in Minneapolis. The reaction has eroded support for ICE, which falls under the DHS, with Democrats threatening a government shutdown over funding the agency.

No one is allowed to be held at Dilley if they have a criminal record, and many of the families were in a legal immigration process when they were detained.

"Unlike what we’ve seen previously, many families detained at Dilley have lived in the U.S. for years, are actively pursuing their immigration cases, and have no final removal orders," said Neha Desai, managing director of Children's Human Rights and Dignity at the National Center for Youth Law. "We’ve spoken with families who were detained at courthouses while attending their immigration hearings ‒ punished simply for doing exactly what the federal government asked them to do."

In an emailed statement, DHS denied claims of poor conditions at the facility and defended its operation.

"The Dilley Detention Center is retrofitted for families. Adults with children are housed in facilities that provide for their safety, security, and medical needs," the agency said. "ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards."

On Feb. 1, ICE halted "all movement" at the detention center for families after two measles cases were confirmed at the facility, the DHS told USA TODAY. ICE quarantined the two detainees and those suspected of exposure to the detainees, according to Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary. 

The Trump administration held more than 1,000 immigrant parents and children in mid-January at the 2,400-bed facility, which sits on 55 acres ringed by fencing and concertina wire. Among the detainees on Jan. 28 was 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was detained by immigration agents alongside his father. Photos of the boy wearing a blue bunny hat and his school backpack went viral.

A judge determined that the boy could not be immediately deported, and he and his father were released over the weekend and returned to Minneapolis.

On Jan. 28, about 300 people chanting "Bring them home" and holding signs reading "Liberation not incarceration" marched from a park in central Dilley to the federal detention center. They drove down from San Antonio and nearby cities to protest conditions inside the facility and the detention of children. 

Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, met with Conejo Ramos and his father and expressed concern about the conditions in which they were being held.

"No child that is 5 years old should be in detention like that," Castro said in a social media post following an inspection of the detention center.

Past administrations, Democrat and Republican, have used Dilley to hold families who had recently crossed the border. Now, most of the detained families have been in the United States for years and were swept up in immigration raids from Los Angeles to Minneapolis, Barron said.

"Everyone that we're getting, they have somebody waiting for them already," he said, of the people released to his shelter. "Their (airfare) tickets are being bought right away. That means they have roots."

A court date or cash to leave the country

Under the Biden administration, the Holding Institute shelter, belonging to the United Methodist Church, took in as many as 1,200 recent migrants a day, Barron told USA TODAY.

As soon as Trump took office in January 2025, those numbers dropped to nearly zero as migration across the U.S.-Mexico border dried up.

But on Jan. 17, ICE contacted the shelter and asked if they could receive people. Barron has been receiving between 30 and 80 immigrants a day from the Dilley detention center ever since, mostly families with young children, he said. 

A charter bus with 40 people rolled to a stop in front of the shelter on a recent Tuesday. Nearly everyone stepped off, ordered ride-sharing services and headed to area hotels, carrying plastic bags filled with belongings and government-issued puffy winter jackets. Barron arranged for the mother and child with tuberculosis to be isolated in another Laredo shelter run by Catholic Charities, he said. 

Before their release, immigration officials were giving the families a choice, Barron said: Receive a $5,000 stipend from the federal government to self-deport or remain in the United States until their immigration court date.

The legal immigration process, including asylum petitions, can take years to resolve. DHS did not respond specifically to questions asking how many families chose to self-deport, or why these parents and children were released. 

No separation between sick and healthy

Max, an immigrant from Russia who has lived in Los Angeles for six years, said he was having breakfast with his 14-year-old daughter at a truck stop in Phoenix on Christmas morning when a bevy of federal agents swarmed the place and began asking customers for their papers. The agents wore "ICE" badges and identified themselves as belonging to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One wore a Santa Claus hat. 

Max, who declined to describe his immigration status, requested that his last name and the name of his daughter not be published for fear of retribution from the government.

The pair was hauled off and transported to the Dilley detention facility. There, they slept in bunkrooms and shared meals with hundreds of other immigrant parents and children. Hand sanitizer stations throughout the center were either empty or didn’t work. 

Like others, Max noticed an alarming number of sick children throughout the facility. 

"We were there for about a month and faced a number of different epidemics," he said. "No one tried to do anything like separate sick people from healthy people." 

Max and his daughter were released on Jan. 27 and driven to the Holding Institute late that night. He spent the night at a local hotel and was attempting to fly back to Los Angeles the following day. When he returns, he'll have to meet with an ICE official – and deal with any residual effects from the jarring 30-day experience, he said. 

“It wasn't good for my daughter's health, both physical and mental,” Max said. "And also, maybe, for mine."

Detention is unhealthy for all children, data shows

Immigrant advocates and health professionals have fought the detention of immigrant children for decades. A 1997 legal settlement, known as the Flores agreement, lays out standards by which youth can be detained by immigration officials and generally restricts their detention to 20 days or less.

Barron said he has received children from Dilley ranging in age from infants to young teenagers. One family told him they had been locked up at the Dilley facility for eight months.

"Can you imagine the trauma these kids have had, being uprooted from where they’re from?" Barron said. "It's bad."

In its statement, DHS emphasized that the Dilley detention center cares for detainees, including providing adequate food and access to legal representation.

"All detainees are provided with three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries," the statement said. "Inmates also have access to phones to communicate with their family members and lawyers. Certified dieticians evaluate meals. All of this is funded the by the US taxpayer."

In 2025, the Trump administration sought to nullify the Flores settlement, arguing it represents an outdated constraint on immigration enforcement. A federal judge in August 2025 denied the administration's request.

Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, has repeatedly said that parents who enter the United States illegally bear responsibility for the fate of their children, including their deportation.

"This is parenting 101," Homan said last year on CBS's "Face the Nation." "You can decide to take that child with you, or you can decide to leave a child here with a relative or another spouse."

Detention of any length of time isn’t healthy for children, studies have found.

In one, health researchers evaluated the medical records of 165 children held in family detention between 2018 and 2020, during the first Trump administration, and found evidence of troubling conditions, including stunting of height, "severe wasting" and malnutrition. The study also found that a majority of children had been held well beyond the 20-day limit before their release. According to the records, not a single child had been screened for tuberculosis, as required by ICE’s own Family Residential Standards.

Responding to concerns about child welfare, the Biden administration ended the practice of family detention. Trump reopened Dilley to detain families in early 2025.

The administration simultaneously began dismantling some of the oversight mechanisms that helped protect detained families and children. An immigration detention ombudsman's office was largely destaffed, as was the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which performed inspections of family detention facilities.

Barron said ICE officials told him the recent releases were due to overcrowding of the facility and an effort to comply with the Flores agreement. 

A few days before their release, in the wake of the fatal shooting by federal agents of Alex Pretti, families inside the Dilley detention center held a protest against the conditions of their detainment. They screamed "Let us out!" and waved as a media drone captured them in the detention center's dirt courtyard.

Migrant families told Barron that officials responded by temporarily cutting off the facility's water and internet.

Detention long used as deterrent against migration

The 2,400-bed family detention center in Dilley was the Obama administration’s response to a wave of Central American families arriving at the Southwest border in 2014.

Families were crossing the border by the tens of thousands from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to seek asylum in the United States. That year, there was a fourfold increase in the number of arriving families, according to U.S. Border Patrol data.

The Obama administration saw detention as a potential "deterrent" to migration. After holding families at makeshift sites, including on the campus of a Border Patrol training facility in New Mexico, the administration opened the South Texas Family Residential Center.

Detention would ensure "timely and effective removals … while deterring others from taking the dangerous journey and illegally crossing into the United States," then-Acting ICE Director Thomas Winkowski said in November 2014.

The pushback began almost immediately.

Advocates began referring to Dilley as a “baby jail” because mothers and infants were being held there. It was the government’s most expensive detention center, at the time costing roughly $298 per bed, per night.

Desai, the children's rights attorney, said detaining children, while "profoundly inhumane and dangerous," is not technically illegal until they're kept for a prolonged period of time or in dangerous conditions. 

Still, studies have shown that long-term detention of children could lead to profound physical and mental harm, she said. 

"Living under constant surveillance and stress, witnessing their parents' fear, and spending long days with no structure or activity is a dangerous combination that can leave lasting scars on children, including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and developmental delays," Desai said. 

Ibuprofen as the only medical care

Aguayo, the Mexican migrant, crossed the Rio Grande into Texas in mid-December and was transported to the Dilley center with her 5-year-old daughter, Amaya, on Dec. 20 – among the very few who had recently crossed.

Two days later, Amaya became violently ill, shivering with high temperatures and crying constantly. They were given ibuprofen for the fever, but no one examined her, she said. 

When she tried to cover the lights with a blanket to allow Amaya to sleep, guards made her remove it, she said. Finally, after several weeks, she petitioned the center for release, Aguayo said, arguing that she wasn’t receiving medical care for her pregnancy. 

They were released on Jan. 23, after spending 35 days at the family detention center.

Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY and can be reached at [email protected]. Follow Jervis on X: @MrRJervis