The number of parents and children booked into the nation’s only immigrant family detention center, in Dilley, Texas, fell in February by more than 75 percent from the previous month, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained by ProPublica.
Between April 2025, when President Donald Trump began sending families there, and January of this year, the number of people detained with their families averaged about 600 per month. In February, so-called registrations fell to 133. By mid-March, they fell again to just 54.
This week, there were only about 100 people in family detention at Dilley, compared to an average daily population of more than 900 in January, according to the data.
Current and former ICE officials and attorneys with clients in Dilley said they were unable to explain the reason for the sharp decline. However, they said the change followed weeks of growing public pressure generated in part by the widespread publication of letters written by several of the detained children in which they described the conditions inside Dilley and their despair at being torn from their homes and schools.
ProPublica published several of these letters on February 9 after visiting the facility — about an hour south of San Antonio — in mid-January. The letters ignited a storm of outrage in Washington and across the country. They were raised during congressional hearings and plastered on posters at anti-ICE protests.
Representative James Walkinshaw, a Virginia Democratread the letters aloud to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons at a congressional hearing on February 10, pressing him for answers about whether detaining children could have negative psychological effects. He pointed to a drawing made by a 5-year-old Venezuelan girl, Luisanney Toloza, depicting her family.
“My son is 5 years old. He can’t write a lot of words, but he can communicate through drawings like this,” Walkinshaw said, particularly noting the expressions on the family’s faces. “None of the faces are smiling.”
It was another 5-year-old who first brought public attention to the children detained at Dilley. Liam Conejo Ramos was arrested on January 20 in Minnesota and sent to the facility with his father. A photo of him during his detention, wearing a blue bunny hat, went viral.
The inmates, emboldened by the attention, organized a demonstration in a courtyard of the establishment which was captured in an aerial photograph and widely posted on social media. Lawmakers demanded several visits to press for the release of Ramos and others. Nearly 4,000 doctors, nurses and health professionals sent a letter to the Trump administration calling for the immediate release of all children currently in immigration detention. This month, social media personality Rachel Accurso, an educator better known as Ms. Rachel, who directs popular children’s shows, posted a video conversation with one of the children detained at Dilley to his 4.9 million followers on Instagram, garnering more than 3,700 comments.
Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, has been at the forefront of efforts by lawmakers in his party to close Dilley and for the administration to find alternatives to family detentions. When asked about the decline in the number of families detained at Dilley, he said, “This trailer prison is no place for children, and I’m glad to hear the numbers continue to decline,” adding, “It reminds us that people can make a difference by speaking out.” »
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that custody decisions are made “daily, on a case-by-case basis,” adding that “the administration does not make immigration decisions based on public opinion.” We respect the rule of law.” In the past, the agency said Dilley provided families with a safe environment with access to educational materials, child care essentials and 24-hour medical and mental health care. Meanwhile, CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs the facility, said in a statement that it had “no say” in whether inmates would be deported or released. In previous statements, he said the health and safety of inmates was his “top priority.”
Dilley opened as a family detention center under former President Barack Obama in 2014, primarily for new border crossers. Trump kept the facility operating during his first term, but President Joe Biden stopped detaining families in 2021, arguing that the United States should not engage in child detention.
Shortly after taking office a second time, Trump resumed family detentions at Dilley. As the number of border crossings has fallen to a record low, more and more families detained there have been arrested inside the United States and have been in the country long enough to put down roots and build networks of relatives and friends. The children held there range in age from newborns to older teenagers. The vast majority of adults detained at Dilley had no criminal record in the United States.
Following the protests and the publication of children’s letters, detainees and lawyers interviewed by ProPublica said: the guards took away colored pencils, colored pencils and drawing paper during recent room searches. This week, ProPublica has learned the establishment had cut off access to video calls in common areas.
The Trump administration said in a recent court filing that personal property was not destroyed at Dilley and that items confiscated during searches were “limited to materials identified as protest-related and not permitted by facility rules.” CoreCivic “vehemently” denied that staff confiscated or destroyed children’s artwork or personal supplies. DHS said the restrictions were put in place on video calls following live streaming of recorded calls online “that resulted in the unauthorized release of sensitive law enforcement information.” The agency added that video calls are still available in private rooms, as is access to in-person visits and telephones.
While a longstanding legal agreement, known as the Flores Agreement, states that children generally should not be detained for more than 20 days, data obtained by ProPublica showed that the average days in detention were longer than in any month since family detentions resumed at the facility last year. Each month between November and February, the average length of stay in family detention was more than 50 days.
DHS has said in the past that the Flores Agreement, in effect since the 1990s, was outdated and should be repealed as new regulations address the needs of children in custody.
An Egyptian family, Hayam El Gamal and his five children aged 18 to 5 year old twinshas been at Dilley for nine months. They were taken into custody after the father, Mohamed Soliman, was charged in connection with an alleged anti-Semitic attack in Boulder, Colorado, that killed one person and injured 13 others. The family said they were unaware of his plans. DHS said it was still investigating.
A Guatemalan boy, 13 years old named Edison was released from Dilley with his mother this week. During his 92-day detention, Edison cried during video calls with his father in Chicago, saying he felt like he was being treated like a criminal. (His father asked that his son’s last name not be used.) Then, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a guard came to their room and told him and his mother to start packing their things. That night, they were on a plane to Chicago to find Edison’s father. “We don’t understand why they were released,” his father said. “All I can tell you is that it was a miracle from God.”
Upon their arrival, the family returned home to enjoy a seafood dinner, one of Edison’s favorites.
