Worms in food, poor medical care, lights on 24/7: Families tell of life in Texas detention center

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Worms in food, poor medical care, lights on 24/7: Families tell of life in Texas detention center

[html]Immigrant families settle in for the night at the Holding Institute in Laredo, Texas, on Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

2026-02-28T15:04:21Z

                                       

LAREDO, Texas (AP) — A month after ICE agents sent the young Ecuadorian mother and her 7-year-old daughter to a sprawling         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/immigrant-detention-facility-families-texas-dilley-2cd794bdd0b81dca98c8353348fc149b">detention center 1,300 miles from their Minnesota home, they were finally free.

But when the bus pulled up to a migrant shelter in the border city of Laredo, dropping off a half-dozen families lugging bags stuffed with belongings, the stress of recent weeks tracked mother and daughter like the long shadows on that mid-February afternoon.

Night after night inside south Texas’         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/texas-immigration-detention-7fa98244c1b0245deb4462e9dc25292f">Dilley Immigration Processing Center with hundreds of other families, the grade-schooler wept and pleaded to know why they were being held.

   
       
   

“She would tell me, ‘Mom, what crime did I commit to be a prisoner?’ I didn’t know what to tell her,” said the 29-year-old, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear being identified could negatively affect their immigration case. Her husband was deported to Ecuador soon after they were taken into custody.

           
               
                   

   

       
   


       

       
     
   

   
   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   
       
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Immigrant families settle in for the night at the Holding Institute in Laredo, Texas, on Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

               
           
       
       
   

   
   
   


               
           
       

Many Americans were alarmed last month when         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-minnesota-boy-father-detained-342f319fafb766d13afe07f5bcc1f112">photos circulated showing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis detaining a 5-year-old boy wearing a bunny hat and carrying a Spiderman backpack. The concern followed Liam Conejo Ramos and his father when they were sent to Dilley, surrounded by chain-link fences on a dusty plain about 75 miles south of San Antonio.

   
       




   

But Liam was hardly an outlier. ICE has been holding hundreds of children at Dilley —         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-ice-children-detained-lawsuit-dilley-75530212ec0959eda2b42aada3fbe46a">many for months.

   
   
       
           
               
   
   


   
   

       
   

           
       
   
   

“We are all Liam,” Christian Hinojosa, an immigrant from Mexico, said by phone from Dilley, where she and her 13-year-old son were held for more than four months. They were released this month and allowed to return home to San Antonio where she works as a health aide.

She noted that Liam and his father were released from Dilley         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-boy-liam-conejo-ramos-fc958185cd2b4e946b82081be11bc0f6">after 10 days, when members of Congress and a judge         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-crockett-ice-5yearold-minneapolis-27d8a75f2e51a18d97933b5ae99adf10">intervened.

“My son says, ‘That’s unfair, Mama. What’s the difference between him and us?’”

   
       
   

Ramping up family detentions

When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014, nearly all families detained there had recently crossed the border from Mexico. Detentions at the facility were scaled back by the Biden administration in 2021, before it was closed three years later.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

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Since being         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="https://apnews.com/article/immigration-detention-trump-dilley-children-flores-settlement-ab13b37de2b5c1e8b198116c175a68eb">reopened by President Donald Trump’s administration last spring, life inside Dilley — a compound of trailers and other prefabricated buildings — has been shaped by three decisive changes.

The number of detained families has risen sharply since last fall. The government is holding many children well beyond the 20-day limit set by longstanding court order. And many detainees have lived in the U.S. for several years, with roots in neighborhoods, workplaces and schools, according to lawyers and other observers.

“Just imagine that you’re a child and you’re taken out of your surroundings,” said Philip Schrag, a Georgetown University law professor and author of “Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America.”

   
       
   

Suddenly you’re in “a completely strange environment with the doors locked and guards in uniform roaming around,” said Schrag, who counseled Dilley detainees as a volunteer lawyer during the Obama administration.

   
   

Have a news tip?

Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected]. For secure and confidential communications, use the free Signal app         data-gtm-enhancement-style="LinkEnhancementA" href="tel:+12022818604" target="_blank" rel="noopener">+1 (202) 281-8604.

   

ICE booked more than 3,800 children into detention during the first nine months of the new Trump administration, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. On an average day more than 220 children were held, with most of those detained longer than 24 hours sent to Dilley. More than half of Dilley detainees during that period were children.

           
               
                   

   

       
   


       

       
     
   

   
   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   

   
       

   
       
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A young immigrant girl who just arrived at the Holding Institute, a shelter in Laredo, Texas on Feb. 12, 2026, pets a cat as her mother and other families receive a welcome and instructions on how to purchase tickets to get back to their homes in the U.S. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)