A new report by human and immigrant rights groups documents horrific conditions and treatment of families at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center located about 70 miles south of San Antonio, Texas.
The April 1 report by Human Rights First and RAICES relies on research through immigration data and extensive interviews with families held at the federal facility between April 2025 and February 2026. The sprawling center has become the Trump administration’s sole location for incarcerating immigrant families and children.
The study concluded that “inhumane conditions, routine mistreatment and due process violations experienced by families at Dilley are pervasive and systemic.”
Constitutional and other legal protections are routinely violated at the Department of Homeland Security site, including arbitrary detentions and violations of statutory prohibitions against returning asylum seekers to the countries they fled because of persecution.
Operated by prison contractor CoreCivic, Dilley housed more than 5,600 people, including parents, newborns and toddlers, during the 10-month stretch covered by the report.
Other organizations also have documented abuses at the Texas facility. The Marshall Project reported ICE has placed more than 6,200 people at the center during President Donald Trump’s current term. That report explained that child immigrants have been placed in detention going back multiple administrations, but that practice was halted by President Joe Biden in 2021.
Detainees held at the South Texas Family Residential Center wave signs during a demonstration in Dilley, Texas, Saturday, Jan. 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Brenda Bazán)
In February, ProPublica published letters from children detained at Dilley: “In their words and drawings, they convey how much they ache for creature comforts and describe the anguish of being trapped. They write about missing their friends and teachers, falling behind at school, having unreliable access to medical care when they’re sick — some say they’re sick a lot — and feeling scared about what comes next.”
According to the report by Human Rights First and RAICES — Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services — families held at Dilley often are prevented from taking actions necessary to mount effective challenges to their detention and deportation.
“The first year of this revived policy has resulted in the systemic violation of due process rights, including the denial of meaningful access to counsel, defective fear screenings and collusion between the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security during immigration court proceedings to target and detain as many families as possible pursuant to DHS’ mass deportation campaign,” the report says.
Dilley housed asylum seekers, families with pending petition cases, immigrants with humanitarian parole status and legally resettled refugees, including individuals detained by ICE during operations Metro Surge and PARRIS in Minnesota earlier this year.
“The trauma of displacement and incarceration has resulted in many families being coerced by the administration to abandon their legal claims to protection — not out of choice, but as a means of shielding their children from further harm,” the report says.
To force that cooperation and end their claims to asylum, families are threatened with separation: “There are many instances of family separation, including families separated within Dilley, across different detention facilities, and instances in which children have been taken from one or both parents.”
To force that cooperation and end their claims to asylum, families are threatened with separation:
The report also found many children were held far beyond the 20-day limit set in a 1997 settlement in Flores v. Meese. “Families interviewed for this report were detained on average two months while some families interviewed had been detained up to six months, indicating that the Trump administration is seriously neglecting or outright defying the Flores settlement.”
Researchers also learned that just being incarcerated at Dilley poses a significant risk to physical and mental health. Children have been sent there with life-threatening illnesses and without provision for treatment, and pregnant women have received inadequate prenatal monitoring and other care.
“While detained at the prison, children and their parents have limited access to clean water, nutritious food, sleep, personal hygiene, privacy or clean or appropriate clothing. Parents and children experience verbal abuse and hostile behavior by ICE agents and Dilley staff.”
The hardships of the Trump administration’s renewed family detention policies are calculated to grow its mass detention and deportation efforts, the report claims.
“Up to 73,000 people on average are in ICE custody each day, the largest incarcerated population in this country’s history. Detention conditions are increasingly inhumane, punitive and even deadly. In 2025, 33 people died in ICE custody, making it the deadliest year since the early 2000s. At least 14 people have died in ICE custody in the first two and a half months of 2026.”
The program relies on nearly inexhaustible funding from Congress, the study notes. DHS has been allocated more than $150 billion for the mass deportation campaign, which includes $45 billion for expanded immigration detention.
And the agency’s methods of populating the center have been just as alarming although much more high-profile.
ICE frequently targets families in full compliance with immigration requirements. Many transfers to Dilley begin during routine immigration check-ins and often with children in tow. Others are detained after immigration court hearings, at hospitals, on the way to school and outside churches.
Authorities at Dilley also have exploited language barriers among detainees, including the requirement they fill out paperwork and sign documents they cannot fully understand, the report says.
“A family from Azerbaijan with a 5-year-old received a negative credible fear determination after being denied adequate interpretation in their interview,” according to the study. “U.S. immigration officials later threatened the family with separation in front of their 5-year-old and referred them for criminal prosecution for not complying with the deportation process, according to an attorney who is now representing the family.”
The immediate and long-term effects of conditions and treatment at Dilley are devastating, the report says.
“Human Rights First and RAICES reviewed multiple cases that revealed consistent patterns: Delayed and denied treatments, misdiagnoses, ignored emergencies and direct interference with ongoing care. The inhumane conditions and routine mistreatment experienced by families while jailed at Dilley are pervasive and systemic, as well as widespread in past iterations of family detention.”
The rights groups urge an end to family and child detention because they say it is inhumane: “The overwhelming and distressing evidence presented throughout this report confirms that the revived policy of family detention is a humanitarian and systemic failure that lacks any legitimate legal or policy justification.”