Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include a statement from CoreCivic, which runs the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — Two controversial immigration detention facilities in South Texas are being reopened for the detention and deportation of migrant women and families, officials tell Border Report.
This includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Karnes County, Texas, and the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, which the Biden administration closed last year.
There are reports that some families have already begun arriving at the Karnes facility, located between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
“This is exactly what we were warning all about in terms of Trump’s real agenda. His obsession with immigration is indiscriminate in that it targets our family members, our coworkers; it targets women and children. This is exactly what we said was going to happen,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the nonprofit America’s Voice, said in response to a question from Border Report during a call with media Friday.
“Those detention centers had been closed for a reason, because they had been found to be breaking all kinds of human rights standards and laws, and to have them be reopened for family detention at that is just an indication of how far this administration is willing to go,” Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, deputy director of federal advocacy for the nonprofit United We Dream,” told Border Report.
Border Report has reached out to ICE officials to ask if families have started to be moved to the Dilley and Karnes facilities. This story will be updated if information is received.
The South Texas Residential Center in Dilley was among the biggest immigration detention facilities in the United States and can hold up to 2,400 people.
Border Report toured the facility in 2019, during the first Trump administration, when it was filled with immigrant families — many separated during the day from eating together and being together and put in groups based on ages.
The Biden administration shut down the facility last summer citing excessive costs to keep it open and operate compared to other immigration facilities. In a statement at the time, ICE called it “the most expensive facility in the national detention network.”
But now it is reopening and once again will be run by CoreCivic. The Tennessee-based private prison operator in 2023 generated $156.6 million in revenues in 2023 from the Dilley facility, according to Dow Jones.
In January, Border Report reported that ICE was looking to expand these migrant detention facilities to fulfill promises by then President-elect Donald Trump to launch mass deportations across the United States once he took office.
Trump has said ICE raids will focus on criminals illegally in the United States. But Cárdenas says the detention of moms and children will show he is focused on deporting many more people.
“Our fear is that the American public has been so conditioned on this notion that they’re going only after quote, unquote, ‘criminals.’ But we know that’s not the case. So our job is to really elevate these harms and just also show the human suffering,” she said.
“We’ll probably be seeing those visuals again, of children and and parents in cages and hopefully it will lead to some rightful indignation and to the closing of these detention centers back,” Macedo do Nascimento said.
Eunice Cho is a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which in September sued ICE for a request of more information on exactly which and where the agency plans to increase detention beds.
She told Border Report at the time that based on some data they had received that the South Texas Family Residential Center would likely be reopened.
“We have serious concerns about expanding immigration detention in South Texas. Many of these facilities that I’ve just named have very serious histories of conditions, violations and abusive conditions in those detention facilities,” said Cho, who works on the ACLU’s National Prison Project.
“The South Texas Family Residential center in Dilley, Texas, which is, of course, a facility that is notorious because children as young as 19 months have died in that facility as a result of poor medical care,” Cho said. “The Dilley facility has a long and lengthy history of poor conditions of confinement for people at that facility. There have been allegations of sexual assault and sexual abuse against family members, against children, poor medical care at that facility.”
“This is a facility that has been built to lock up children, babies, and parents who are awaiting adjudication of their immigration proceedings,’ she said.
This is a facility that has been built to lock up children, babies, and parents who are awaiting adjudication of their immigration proceedings.”
Eunice Cho, ACLU lawyer
In 2019, a 19-month-old girl died six weeks after being released from the facility in Dilley. She and her mother, Yazmin Juarez, had spent nearly three weeks at the facility. Juarez filed a wrongful death lawsuit alleging that the girl contracted a respiratory illness while in detention, and that ICE released the mother and daughter when the girl was still sick.
A jury sided with CoreCivic in the lawsuit filed by Juarez.
In a statement responding to ACLU lawyer Cho’s comments, a CoreCivic spokesman said, “No individual, adult or child, died at this facility.”
Brian Todd, manager of public affairs for CoreCivic, said the company did not provide the medical care at the Dilley facility when Juarez and her daughter were detained, adding that at the time, ICE provided the care. He said detainees had open access to multiple onsite health clinics administered by ICE.
“We care about every person entrusted to us, especially vulnerable populations for which our partners rightfully have very high standards that we work hard to meet each day,” Todd said. “Our hearts continue to go out to this family for the tragic loss of their child.”
NewsNation reported Friday that those sent to the Dilley facility will not be awaiting immigration proceedings, but rather will be waiting for deportations. NewsNation says they are marked for removal after illegally crossing the border into the United States from Mexico.
“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,” said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director of Detention Watch Network.
During Friday’s call, Michael Ettlinger, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, estimated that Trump’s deportation plans, if fully carried out, would cost $100 billion in taxes.
“The bottom line is that the idea that large scale deportation is good for Americans has proven to be an illusion in the past and is an illusion now. The deportation programs we’ve seen have been bad for virtually everyone, and vastly larger deport deportations would be worse,” Ettlinger said.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@Borderreport.com.