When guards appeared earlier this month outside the room Christian Hinojosa shared with her son and other women and children at the Dilley, Texas, immigration detention center, she guessed what they were looking for. She quickly put on her winter down jacket, then slipped a manila paper envelope inside. “Thank God the weather was cool,” she said – the jacket did not arouse suspicion.
Then, she said, she was asked to leave the room while eight to 10 guards lifted mattresses, opened drawers and searched through papers. Inside the envelope were children’s writings and artwork about life in America’s only detention center for immigrant families, a collection of trailers and dormitories in the scrubland south of San Antonio. She planned to share their letters with the outside world.
Guards took away crayons, colored pencils and drawing paper during recent searches at Dilley, according to Hinojosa and three other former detainees, as well as lawyers and advocates in contact with the families inside.
Guards also took away artwork, they said, including a child’s drawing of Bratz fashion dolls.
They said inmates have lost access to Gmail and other Google services in the Dilley library due to increased searches, seizures and communication restrictions, making it harder for them to contact lawyers and attorneys.
They and family members said guards sometimes stood within earshot during detainees’ video calls with relatives and reporters.
“We are kidnapped, help me!” »
Inmates and others interviewed for this story said those measures were strengthened after the Jan. 22 arrival of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old wearing a blue bunny hat, which sparked protests and visits to Congress. They said the crackdown intensified as Dilley’s children and parents wrote letters to share with the public and journalists and relatives recorded video calls with inmatesincluding those published by ProPublica this month. The children’s stories, many told in their own words, have fueled an outcry over the scope of the Trump administration’s deportation campaign, which the president had promised would focus on criminals.
Inmates said the more they tried to make their voices heard, the more difficult it became.
One mother, who asked to remain anonymous because her immigration case is still pending, told ProPublica that she and her three children watched through a window as guards swept their room in late January, removing drawings from the walls and placing crayons and crayons in plastic bags before taking them away.
With little schooling available at Dilley and the weather too cold for children to want to play outside, drawing was the children’s main distraction, the former inmate said. “What were they going to do now?” she said. “They were so bored.”
After inspecting the room, the woman said, the children simply “cried and cried and cried.”
“I can’t see my pet Willi”
CoreCivic, the private prison company that operates the Dilley facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a written statement that routine inspections of living facilities are standard practice and that inmates are informed of what items they are allowed to have in their rooms.
“We vehemently deny any claims that our staff confiscated or destroyed children’s personal artwork or associated supplies,” the statement said, adding that there are examples of children’s artwork “proudly displayed” throughout the facility.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that “ICE does not destroy children’s letters,” but the agency acknowledged that in one case “All writings in the cell were seized” as part of an investigation into a mother who DHS said refused to submit to a search and shoved a detention center employee. CoreCivic referred questions to DHS when asked about this incident. ProPublica was unable to reach the mother for comment.
This week, DHS has issued press releases that he said were “rectify the file » about Dilley, saying “adults with children are housed in facilities that provide for their safety, security and medical needs.” Statements from DHS and CoreCivic to ProPublica did not answer questions about the blocking of Google services or whether guards were listening to calls from Dilley detainees.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, visited Dilley after Liam and his father, both from Ecuador, were arrested in Minnesota and transferred in January. He returned last week and was asked at a news conference Friday about reports of children’s letters and drawings being deleted.
“I believe these stories, because I have heard similar stories myself,” Castro said.
He said he was repeatedly told that guards had warned inmates not to speak to him. “Yeah, I think there’s a lot of secrecy there,” Castro said.
DHS did not respond when asked to comment on Castro’s claim about the guards. A CoreCivic spokesperson said, “To our knowledge, no staff member warned residents not to speak to Rep. Castro. »
“I’m bored here”
The Dilley Immigration Processing Center opened during the Obama administration, primarily to accommodate families who had just crossed the border. Then Biden ended the practice of detaining families in 2021. President Donald Trump restarted it even as border crossings during his second term reached record levels. Today, ICE is ramping up immigration-related arrests inside the country, and Dilley has been detaining many families living in the United States for years.
Families spend their days behind a metal fence, sleeping in rooms containing six bunk beds and a common area with a few small tables and desks. More than 3,500 people have cycled through the detention center since the Trump administration began sending families there last spring.
Hear Christian Hinojosa in his own words: “It’s not just about me. It’s about my child.”
A ProPublica reporter who had been speaking with Dilley families since late last year visited the center for an in-person visit in mid-January and asked families if their children would like to write about their experiences. On January 22, we received a package of colorful drawings and handwritten letters from a recently released inmate, which we subsequently published.
Then on January 24, dozens of detainees staged a mass protest in the courtyard, photographed from above, where they shouted “libertad” and held up hand-drawn signs. The panels were made using art materials from the detention center, former detainees said.
This protest and Liam’s detention sparked widespread media coverage and a visit from Castro, who arrived on January 28. Supporters gathered outside Dilley and some confronted state troopers. In early February, Liam and his father were released, and ProPublica published the letters it received. By then, it had become clear to the inmates that their voices – particularly those of children – had captured the attention of the general public.
They continued to write.
“We were looking for help,” said Hinojosa, who collected letters at ProPublica’s request. “We were looking to be heard.”
Hinojosa and her 13-year-old son Gustavo, both from Mexico, were released in early February after four months in Dilley to return home to San Antonio. (Although a 1990s legal agreement states that children generally should not be detained for more than 20 days, DHS has said the agreement should be terminated because new regulations took into account the needs of detained children.)
“My parents say it’s been 4 months, but for me and my little sister,” a 9-year-old wrote in one of the letters collected by Hinojosa. “For a year now I just want to go to the United States to be with my grandparents and finally end this nightmare.”
“I’m writing this letter so you can hear my story,” a 7-year-old wrote in another of the letters. “I need your help…I’m crying a lot. I want to get out of here and go back to my school.”
“I see how they treat us like criminals,” wrote Edison, a Chicago seventh-grader born in Guatemala, “and we are not.”
“We are not criminals”
CoreCivic stated that Dilley residents are provided with a written description of the possessions they are allowed to have in their living space and that decorating rooms with personal items is permitted “provided they do not pose a health or safety risk.”
Former inmates told ProPublica that they had undergone room searches before January, but that they were usually carried out by only two employees at a time, not eight or more.
After guards searched Hinojosa’s room after the protest, she said, she and other residents could not locate their colored pencils, which had been purchased at the police station and stored in a small cup atop the writing table where the children liked to scribble. “Even knowing we paid for them ourselves,” she said, “they took them away.”
“There were many, many families whose children had their pencils and papers thrown away,” said a third mother, who also asked to remain anonymous due to her immigration status.
“I just…want to finally end this nightmare.”
Former detainees and their family members described the careful attention given by guards during calls to their homes, some of which were made via computer tablets located in a common area.
Edison, 13, a seventh-grader from Chicago, cried during a recent video call at home that his father shared with ProPublica, saying he felt cooped up.
Seventh-grader Edison shares his struggles at Dilley with his father
The father, who asked that his son’s last name not be used, recalled the boy saying before the recording began: “Dad, there’s an officer here and he’s watching us.” » He said his son looked panicked.
The mother who said she watched guards sweep her room told ProPublica that after the January protest in Dilley, a half-dozen guards were stationed in a room where the calls were taking place. “Every time someone came to make a call,” she said, “they would practically stand behind you. »
As families detained at Dilley continue to try to make their voices heard, Hinojosa and other recently released inmates are determined to help.
Hinojosa carefully protected his fellow citizens’ letters and drawings before his release. Every time she left her room, she wore the gray puffy jacket issued by CoreCivic and stored the drawings and letters in it.
“I carried them with me all day to prevent anyone from taking them,” she told ProPublica. “I knew they were valuable.”
Most of the pieces she carried were different from the vivid paper drawings ProPublica received in January. With the shortage of paper, Hinojosa said, children were drawing pictures on the backs of old works of art. Since colored pencils and colored pencils were now rare, some drew with ordinary pencils.
Hinojosa left Dilley earlier this month with her son Gustavo and with 34 pages of drawings and letters. They capture the names and lives of dozens of people.
In addition to long notes from the mothers who remained inside, simple sketches of the children held with them: a teddy bear. A bus home. A pet cat named Willi. A family of three stick figures stuck behind a fence. A family of six stick figures stuck behind a fence. A single little stick figure stuck behind a fence. Many of the drawings show faces, and most of them are frowning.
“I want to leave”
