Fourteen-year-old Ariana Velasquez had been detained at the Dilley, Texas, immigration detention center with her mother for about 45 days when I managed to get in to meet her. The staff brought everyone in the visiting room a packed lunch from the cafeteria: a cup of yellowish stew and a hamburger patty in a plain bun. Ariana’s long black curls hung loosely around her face and she wore a gray government-issued sweatsuit. At first, she just sat there, staring blankly at the table. She touched her food with a plastic fork and let her mother do most of the talking.
She perked up when I asked about her home: Hicksville, New York. She and her mother left Honduras when she was 7 years old. His mother, Stephanie Valladares, had applied for asylum, married a neighbor who was already living in the United States and had two other children. Ariana took care of them after school. She was a freshman at Hicksville High and being detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center meant she was falling behind in her classes. She told me how much she missed her favorite sign language teacher, but especially her brothers and sisters.
I had already met them in Hicksville: Gianna, a little girl everyone calls Gigi, and Jacob, a kindergartener with big brown eyes. I told Ariana they missed her too. Jacob had shown me a security camera their mother had installed in the kitchen so she could monitor them from work, sometimes saying “Hello” over the speaker. I told Ariana that Jacob tried to talk to the camera, hoping his mother would respond.
Stephanie burst into tears. Ariana too. After my visit, Ariana wrote me a letter.
“My younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mother for over a month,” she wrote. “They are very young and you need both parents to grow up.” Then, referring to Dilley, she added: “Since I came to this center, all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression. »
Dilley, operated by the private prison company CoreCivic, is located about 72 miles south of San Antonio and nearly 2,000 miles from Ariana’s home. It is a large collection of trailers and dormitories, almost the same color as the dusty landscape, surrounded by a high fence. It was first opened during the Obama administration to accommodate an influx of families crossing the border. Former President Joe Biden stopped detaining families there in 2021, arguing that America should not engage in child detention.
But soon after returning to office, President Donald Trump resumption of family detentions as part of his mass deportation campaign. Federal courts and massive public outrage ended Trump’s first-term policies. separating children from their parents when immigrant families were detained crossing the border. Trump officials said Dilley was a place where immigrant families would be held together.
As the second Trump administration’s crackdown both slowed border crossings to a record low and accelerated a wave of immigrant arrests across the country, the population inside Dilley has changed. The administration began sending parents and children who had lived in the country long enough to put down roots and build networks of relatives, friends, and supporters willing to speak out against their detention.
If the administration thought that placing the children at Dilley wouldn’t generate the same outcry as separating them from their parents, it was wrong. The photo of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from Ecuador, arrested with his father in Minneapolis while wearing a Spider-Man backpack and blue bunny hat, went viral on social media and sparked widespread condemnation And a protest by inmates.
A few weeks before, I had started talking to Dilley’s parents and children, as well as their loved ones outside. I also spoke to people who worked inside the center or who visited it regularly to provide religious or legal services. I had asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for permission to visit me, but received varying responses. One spokesperson rejected my request, another said he doubted I could get formal approval and suggested I could try showing up there as a visitor. So I did it.
Since early December, I have spoken, in person and via phone and video calls, to more than two dozen detainees, half of whom were children detained at Dilley – all of whose parents gave me consent. I asked the parents if their children would be willing to write to me about their experiences. More than three dozen children responded; some just drew, others wrote in perfect cursive. Some letters were full of age-appropriate spelling mistakes.
Among them was a letter from a 9-year-old Venezuelan girl named Susej Fernández, who was living in Houston when she and her mother were arrested. “I stayed at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center for 50 days,” she wrote. “Seeing how people like me, immigrants, are treated, changes my view of the United States. My mother and I came to the United States looking for a nice, safe place to live.”
Susej Fernández, 9, shares his daily struggles in detention
A 14-year-old Colombian girl, who signed her name Gaby MM and who, according to a fellow inmate, lived in Houston, wrote a letter about how Dilley guards “have a bad way of talking to residents.” She wrote: “The workers treat the residents inhumanely, verbally and I don’t want to imagine how they would act if they were not supervised. »
Nine-year-old Maria Antonia Guerra from Colombia drew a portrait of herself and her mother wearing their inmate ID badges. A note on the side read: “I’m not happy, please get me out of here.” »
Some of the children I met spoke English as well as Spanish.
When I asked kids to tell me about the things they missed most about their lives outside of Dilley, they almost always talked about their teachers and friends at school. Then they would come across things like the disappearance of a beloved dog, Happy Meals from McDonald’s, their favorite stuffed animal, or a pair of new UGGs waiting for them under the Christmas tree.
They told me they feared what might happen to them if they returned to their home country and what might happen to them if they stayed here. Gustavo Santiago, 13, said he did not want to return to Tamaulipas, Mexico. “I have friends, school and family here in the United States,” he said of his home in San Antonio, Texas. “To this day I don’t know what we did wrong to get arrested. » He ended with a plea: “I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask you not to forget us.”
About 3,500 inmates, more than half of whom are juveniles, have cycled through the center since it reopened, more than the population of the town of Dilley itself. Although a longstanding legal rule generally limits the length of time children are held in detention at 20 days, a ProPublica analysis of the data found that about 300 children sent to Dilley by the Trump administration had been there for more than a month. The administration has said in legal filings that the 1997 agreement is outdated and should be terminated because new laws, regulations and policies ensure good conditions for immigrant minors in detention.
Habiba Soliman, 18, told me she was detained for more than eight months with her mother and four siblings, ages 16 to 5, after her father was charged with an alleged anti-Semitic attack in June at a rally in Boulder, Colorado, in support of Jewish hostages being held in Gaza. Their father, Mohamed Soliman, has pleaded not guilty to federal and state charges. Authorities said they were investigating whether his wife and children supported the attack. They deny knowing anything about it and an arrest warrant indicates he told a police officer. he never told his wife or family about his plans.
Despite Trump’s promise to prosecute violent criminals, the vast majority of adults detained at Dilley over the last year had no criminal record in the United States. Some of the parents I spoke to were on overstayed visas. Many had filed asylum applications, married U.S. citizens, or been on compassionate parole and were arrested when they voluntarily showed up for appointments at ICE offices. They said it was unfair to arrest them and that detaining their children was simply cruel.
There were children in Dilley who were so upset that they cut themselves or talked about suicide, several mothers told me. Recently, two cases of measles were discovered in the center. Federal officials said they had quarantined some immigrants and lawyers said ICE had canceled in-person legal visits through Feb. 14 as a safety precaution.
Read more letters from children detained at Dilley
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that all detainees at Dilley were “receiving appropriate medical care.” DHS did not respond to questions about individual detainees, but said all “receive three meals a day, drinking water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap and toiletries” and that “certified dietitians evaluate meals.” Detained parents have the option of deporting their families together or placing their children in the care of another guardian, the statement said.
CoreCivic said Dilley, like its other facilities, is subject to multiple levels of oversight to ensure full compliance with policies and pr procedures, including applicable detention standards.
Moms told me their children lost their appetites after finding worms and mold on their food, that they struggled to sleep on the facility’s hard metal bunk beds in rooms shared by at least a dozen other people, and that they were constantly sick.
“The shock for my daughter was devastating,” Maria Alejandra Montoya, from Colombia, wrote to me in an email about her daughter Maria Antonia. “Seeing her adapt is like watching her wings get clipped. Hearing other kids fighting over card games at the tables makes me feel like we’re not mothers and children, but inmates.”
Life inside
Alexander Perez, a 15-year-old from the Dominican Republic, told me about his schooling at Dilley. He said the classes included children from different age groups and each class only allowed 12 students and lasted only an hour. Time slots were allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. Children lined up hoping to get in. The staff running the class handed out handouts and worksheets to those who managed to get in.
Alexander Perez complained that the classes were usually aimed at children younger than him and therefore found them boring. But since there wasn’t much else to do, he went whenever he could, until an instructor turned a social studies class into what looked like an interrogation about immigration policy.
“If we have recreational activities and classes designed to help us disconnect from what we experience here, why do we need to ask ourselves these questions? he said on a video call with me. “I didn’t think it was fair.”
Alexander Perez, 15, shares his advice for other Dilley inmates
He, his mother and his 14-year-old brother Jorge said they were stopped while traveling from Los Angeles to Houston when the bus they were on was stopped by immigration agents who were checking everyone’s status. They had been in Dilley for four months at the time we spoke. His mother, Teresa, told me that she was in the process of appealing a judge’s denial of his asylum request, which might explain why it was a touchy subject for Alexander when it came up in class. He told me that after he gave up taking classes at Dilley, he played basketball in the recreation area and watched a lot of Spanish soap operas on television. Jorge, who celebrated his December birthday in Dilley with a cupcake made from vanilla cookies, spent most of the day sleeping.
DHS said in its statement that “children have access to teachers, classrooms, and educational booklets for math, reading, and spelling.”
Boredom was a recurring theme in many of Dilley’s children’s letters. “They told me I could only stay here 21 days, but I’ve already spent over 60 days waking up eating the same meals over and over again,” wrote a 12-year-old Venezuelan girl who signed her Ender letter and who, according to a fellow inmate, had moved in with her mother in Austin, Texas. She wrote that when she felt sick and went to the doctor, “the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst part is it seems like it’s the water that makes people sick here.”
Ariana expressed similar concerns in her letter. She wrote: “If you need medical attention you have to wait at most 3 hours, but to get medicine, pills, anything it takes time, there are various viruses, people are always sick. Serious situations happen and officers can’t take them seriously enough, there are no consequences, they don’t care.”
Bad food, insufficient medicines
The lack of reliable medical care was perhaps the most serious concern parents and children discussed in their interviews with me. The Texas-based nonprofit advocacy organization RAICES, which provides legal representation to many Dilley families, said in a recent court filing that its clients have raised concerns about inadequate medical care on at least 700 occasions since August 2025. The organization reported: “Children with medical complaints frequently experience delays, dismissals or lack of follow-up.
Kheilin Valero of Venezuela, who was detained with her 18-month-old child, Amalia Arrieta, said that shortly after their arrest following an appointment with ICE on Dec. 11 in El Paso, Texas, the baby became ill. For two weeks, she said, medical staff gave her ibuprofen and eventually antibiotics, but Amalia’s breathing deteriorated to the point that she was hospitalized in San Antonio for 10 days. She was diagnosed with COVID-19 and RSV. “Because she went so many days without treatment and because it is so cold here, she developed pneumonia and bronchitis,” Kheilin said. “She was also malnourished because she vomited everything. »
Gustavo Santiago, the 13-year-old boy who lived in Texas, said he had been sick several times since he and his mother were arrested Oct. 5 last year at a Border Patrol checkpoint. His mother, Christian Hinojosa, said that when Gustavo had a fever, medical staff told her he was old enough that his body could fight it off without medication, so she sat with him all night, wrapping him in cold compresses. She had to take him to the infirmary for a rash which she said was due to the poor quality of the water at the center. She said he also experienced stomach pain and nausea, which she blamed on unsafe food preparation.
Among the logs we obtained from calls made to 911 and law enforcement about the facility since it began welcoming families again last spring, I found calls for help for toddlers having difficulty breathing, a pregnant woman who passed out and a school-aged girl who was having seizures. Local authorities were also called to three cases of alleged sexual assaults between inmates.
DHS said in its statement, “No one is being denied medical care.”
CoreCivic said health and safety are a top priority for the company and that inmates at Dilley benefit from a continuum of health care services, including preventive care and mental health services. The company said its medical staff “meets the highest standards of care” and said the facility works closely with local hospitals for any specialized medical needs.
Dilley’s children
Reporter Mica Rosenberg spoke with dozens of inmates at Dilley, who shared their experiences in letters, videos, phone calls and voice memos.
Torn from their lives
Ariana and her mother, Stephanie, were arrested Dec. 1 while on their way to one of their regular check-ins at an ICE office in New York’s Federal Plaza, which are required while awaiting a decision on their asylum case. Stephanie had come to the United States with experience as an accountant, and after getting her work permit, she eventually found a job with a local import company where she could put that experience to good use. They had been checking in with ICE regularly for years without incident. But after mom and daughter showed up for their ICE appointment at 8 a.m., they were told they couldn’t leave this time and were on a plane to Dilley at 6 p.m. that evening, without a chance to call family. “Since the day my mother and I were detained in Manhattan, New York, my life was instantly cut short,” Ariana wrote in her detention letter after our meeting. “All children suffer from mental illness, they witness how they were treated.”
Diana Crespo, a 7-year-old Venezuelan girl, was living in Portland, Oregon, when she and her parents, Darianny Gonzalez and Yohendry Crespo, were detained outside a hospital where they had taken Diana for emergency care. The family had been granted humanitarian parole after entering the United States in 2 024, then sought asylum when Trump revoked the parole program, saying Biden used it to allow immigrants to flood into the country at record levels. She said their active asylum cases did not stop immigration agents who intercepted them outside the emergency room from arresting them.
Maria Antonia Guerra, a 9-year-old from Colombia, told me that the 10-day Disney World vacation she planned with her mother and stepfather turned into more than 100 days in Dilley. She had arrived in Florida from Medellin, Colombia, where she lived with her grandmother, with a Cruella de Vil costume in her suitcase. Her mother, Maria Alejandra Montoya, lived in New York and had overstayed her visa, but she had since married a U.S. citizen and was just waiting for her green card to be approved. Maria Antonia regularly traveled to the United States on a tourist visa, and Maria Alejandra had picked her up at the airport. Immigration agents intercepted them and took them to Texas. They both told me it was like a kidnapping.
“I’m in prison and I’m sad and I fainted twice here, when I arrived every night I cried and now I don’t sleep well,” Maria Antonia, who wears thick glasses, wrote to me. “I felt like being here was my fault and I just wanted to be on vacation like a normal family. »
Freed but still afraid
In January, shortly after my visit to Dilley, ICE released some 200 people all at once, without explanation. Among them were Ariana and her mother.
The releases came as such a surprise that Stephanie said another woman started screaming and refused to let go of her bunk, fearing she was about to be deported to Ecuador. Stephanie was fitted with an ankle monitor and she and Ariana were dropped off in Laredo, Texas, where they rushed to buy a plane ticket to LaGuardia in New York.
On January 22, two days after her release, I met Stephanie again, this time in Gigi’s arms as she showed up for her first ICE check-in at an office near her home. She ha I was so nervous that she got lost on the way to the appointment. She was given a series of instructions and shown videos explaining the purpose and cadence of her regular recordings. She received one every month at the office and every two months she received a visit to her home.
Jacob had initially refused to go to school because he was afraid his mother and sister wouldn’t be there when he got home, but she eventually convinced him to go by promising him every morning that she wouldn’t leave again.
Ariana returned to school a few days later. Her English teacher immediately hugged her and sobbed, “We really missed you.” »
I called Ariana last Wednesday to check on her. She was helping Jacob with his homework, but she took a break to give me an update. There are many other immigrants at her school, but she has only explained the reason for her prolonged absence to her close friends, with whom she has lunch. When other people asked her, she simply said, “I had to go to Texas for something.” »
She says she’s trying to put the ordeal behind her, but the toll is real.
Her mother lost her job because her boss isn’t comfortable hiring someone with an ankle monitor. And Ariana is worried about her. She also worries about the people she met in Dilley. Days after DHS questioned several families mentioned in this article, five of them were released: Gustavo and his mother, Christian; Teresa and her sons, Alexander and Jorge; Kheilin and her baby, Amalia; Darianny and her daughter, Diana. Maria Antonia and her mother, Maria Alejandra, were returned to Colombia. Others are still detained. Ariana said: “I wish they would come out because they shouldn’t be here anymore.”
Before hanging up, Ariana said something that suggested her youthful optimism hadn’t been entirely shattered. She found she improved playing volleyball at Dilley and is now considering trying out for her school’s team.
For this article, ProPublica analyzed federal data on ICE detentions released as part of the Deportation Data Project. The data contains records of immigration arrests and detentions through October 2025.
