https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will
Immigration
Immigration
We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.
by Nicole Foy, photography by Sarahbeth Maney
October 16, 2025
ProPublica
by Nicole Foy, photography by Sarahbeth Maney
October 16, 2025
ProPublica
Leonardo Garcia Venegas was detained immigration agents while filming a raid on his worksite, despite having a REAL ID on him and telling the officers he was a citizen.
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Reporting Highlights
Americans Detained: The government doesn’t track how many citizens are held by immigration agents. We found more than 170 cases this year where citizens were detained at raids and protests.
Held Incommunicado: More than 20 citizens have reported being held for over a day without being able to call their loved ones or a lawyer. In some cases their families couldn’t find them.
Cases Wilted: Agents have arrested about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, for allegedly interfering with or assaulting officers, yet those cases were often dropped.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned.
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”
But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced. Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.
About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Videos of U.S. citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds, but there is little clarity on the overall picture. The government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans.
So ProPublica created its own count.
We compiled and reviewed every case we could find of agents holding citizens against their will, whether during immigration raids or protests. While the tally is almost certainly incomplete, we found more than 170 such incidents during the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. That includes four who were held for weeks with their undocumented mother and without access to the family’s attorney until a congresswoman intervened.
Immigration agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances. Agents can hold people whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino.
Immigration agents also can arrest citizens who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers.
These cases have often wilted under scrutiny. In nearly 50 instances that we have identified so far, charges have never been filed or the cases were dismissed. Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative. In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasn’t given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery. In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court has ruled that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)
Americans Detained: The government doesn’t track how many citizens are held by immigration agents. We found more than 170 cases this year where citizens were detained at raids and protests.
Held Incommunicado: More than 20 citizens have reported being held for over a day without being able to call their loved ones or a lawyer. In some cases their families couldn’t find them.
Cases Wilted: Agents have arrested about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, for allegedly interfering with or assaulting officers, yet those cases were often dropped.
These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.
When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned.
“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”
But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced. Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.
About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Videos of U.S. citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds, but there is little clarity on the overall picture. The government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans.
So ProPublica created its own count.
We compiled and reviewed every case we could find of agents holding citizens against their will, whether during immigration raids or protests. While the tally is almost certainly incomplete, we found more than 170 such incidents during the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. That includes four who were held for weeks with their undocumented mother and without access to the family’s attorney until a congresswoman intervened.
Immigration agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances. Agents can hold people whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino.
Immigration agents also can arrest citizens who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers.
These cases have often wilted under scrutiny. In nearly 50 instances that we have identified so far, charges have never been filed or the cases were dismissed. Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.
Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative. In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasn’t given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery. In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court has ruled that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)
George Retes, an American combat veteran, at the site of his arrest by immigration agents on California’s Central Coast. Retes was detained for three days without access to a lawyer and missed his daughter’s third birthday.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the Department of Homeland Security said agents do not racially profile or target Americans. “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
A top immigration official recently acknowledged agents do consider someone’s looks. “How do they look compared to, say, you?” Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino said to a white reporter in Chicago.
The White House told ProPublica that anyone who assaults federal immigration agents would be prosecuted. “Interfering with law enforcement and assaulting law enforcement is a crime and anyone, regardless of immigration status, will be held accountable,” said the Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson. “Officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens, and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism.”
A spokesperson for Kavanaugh did not return an emailed request for comment.
An immigration raid on 79-year-old Rafie Ollah Shouhed’s car wash left him with broken ribs. Courtesy of Rafie Ollah Shouhed. Compiled by ProPublica.
Tallying the number of Americans detained by immigration agents is inherently messy and incomplete. The government has long ignored recommendations for it to track such cases, even as the U.S. has a history of detaining and even deporting citizens, including during the Obama administration and Trump’s first term.
We compiled cases by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We did not include arrests of protesters by local police or the National Guard. Nor did we count cases in which arrests were made at a later date after a judicial process. That included cases of some people charged with serious crimes, like throwing rocks or tossing a flare to start a fire.
Experts say that Americans appear to be getting picked up more now as a result of the government doing something that it hasn’t for decades: large-scale immigration sweeps across the country, often in communities that do not want them.
In earlier administrations, deportation agents used intelligence to target specific individuals, said Scott Shuchart, a top immigration official in the Biden, Obama and first Trump administrations. “The new idea is to use those resources unintelligently” — with officers targeting communities or workplaces where undocumented immigrants may be.
When federal officers roll through communities in the way the Supreme Court permitted, the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens are inevitably violated, argued David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He recently analyzed how sweeps in Los Angeles have led to racial profiling. “If the government can grab someone because he’s a certain demographic group that’s correlated with some offense category, then they can do that in any context.”
Cody Wofsy, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, put it even more starkly. “Any one of us could be next.”
When Kavanaugh issued his opinion that immigration agents can consider race and other factors, the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices strongly dissented. They warned that citizens risked being “grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.”
Leonardo Garcia Venegas appears to have been just such a case. He was working at a construction site in coastal Alabama when he saw masked immigration agents from Homeland Security Investigations hop a fence and run by a “No trespassing” sign. Garcia Venegas recalled that they moved toward the Latino workers, ignoring the white and Black workers.
Garcia Venegas began filming after his undocumented brother asked agents for a warrant. In response, the footage shows, agents yanked his brother to the ground, shoving his face into wet concrete. Garcia Venegas kept filming until officers grabbed him too and knocked his phone to the ground.
Other co-workers filmed what happened next, as immigration agents twisted the 25-year-old’s arms. They repeatedly tried to take him to the ground while he yelled, “I’m a citizen!”
Officers pulled out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to those legally in the U.S. But the agents dismissed it as fake. Officers held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for more than an hour. His brother was later deported.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the Department of Homeland Security said agents do not racially profile or target Americans. “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
A top immigration official recently acknowledged agents do consider someone’s looks. “How do they look compared to, say, you?” Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino said to a white reporter in Chicago.
The White House told ProPublica that anyone who assaults federal immigration agents would be prosecuted. “Interfering with law enforcement and assaulting law enforcement is a crime and anyone, regardless of immigration status, will be held accountable,” said the Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson. “Officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens, and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism.”
A spokesperson for Kavanaugh did not return an emailed request for comment.
An immigration raid on 79-year-old Rafie Ollah Shouhed’s car wash left him with broken ribs. Courtesy of Rafie Ollah Shouhed. Compiled by ProPublica.
Tallying the number of Americans detained by immigration agents is inherently messy and incomplete. The government has long ignored recommendations for it to track such cases, even as the U.S. has a history of detaining and even deporting citizens, including during the Obama administration and Trump’s first term.
We compiled cases by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We did not include arrests of protesters by local police or the National Guard. Nor did we count cases in which arrests were made at a later date after a judicial process. That included cases of some people charged with serious crimes, like throwing rocks or tossing a flare to start a fire.
Experts say that Americans appear to be getting picked up more now as a result of the government doing something that it hasn’t for decades: large-scale immigration sweeps across the country, often in communities that do not want them.
In earlier administrations, deportation agents used intelligence to target specific individuals, said Scott Shuchart, a top immigration official in the Biden, Obama and first Trump administrations. “The new idea is to use those resources unintelligently” — with officers targeting communities or workplaces where undocumented immigrants may be.
When federal officers roll through communities in the way the Supreme Court permitted, the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens are inevitably violated, argued David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He recently analyzed how sweeps in Los Angeles have led to racial profiling. “If the government can grab someone because he’s a certain demographic group that’s correlated with some offense category, then they can do that in any context.”
Cody Wofsy, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, put it even more starkly. “Any one of us could be next.”
When Kavanaugh issued his opinion that immigration agents can consider race and other factors, the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices strongly dissented. They warned that citizens risked being “grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.”
Leonardo Garcia Venegas appears to have been just such a case. He was working at a construction site in coastal Alabama when he saw masked immigration agents from Homeland Security Investigations hop a fence and run by a “No trespassing” sign. Garcia Venegas recalled that they moved toward the Latino workers, ignoring the white and Black workers.
Garcia Venegas began filming after his undocumented brother asked agents for a warrant. In response, the footage shows, agents yanked his brother to the ground, shoving his face into wet concrete. Garcia Venegas kept filming until officers grabbed him too and knocked his phone to the ground.
Other co-workers filmed what happened next, as immigration agents twisted the 25-year-old’s arms. They repeatedly tried to take him to the ground while he yelled, “I’m a citizen!”
Officers pulled out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to those legally in the U.S. But the agents dismissed it as fake. Officers held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for more than an hour. His brother was later deported.
Leonardo Garcia Venegas told agents he was a citizen both times he was detained. His REAL ID was dismissed as a fake.
Garcia Venegas was so shaken that he took two weeks off of work. Soon after he returned, he was working alone inside a nearly built house listening to music on his headphones when he sensed someone watching him. A masked immigration agent was standing in the bedroom doorway.
This time, agents didn’t tackle him. But they again dismissed his REAL ID. And then they held him to check his citizenship. Garcia Venegas says agents also held two other workers who had legal status.
DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Garcia Venegas’ detentions, or to a federal lawsuit he filed last month. The agency has previously defended the agents’ conduct, saying he “physically got in between agents and the subject” during the first incident. The footage does not show that, and Garcia Venegas was never charged with obstruction or any other crime.
Garcia Venegas’ lawyers at the nonprofit Institute for Justice hope others may join his suit. After all, the reverberations of the immigration sweeps are being felt widely. Garcia Venegas said he knows of 15 more raids on nearby construction sites, and the industry along his portion of the Gulf Coast is struggling for lack of workers.
Kavanaugh’s assurances hold little weight for Garcia Venegas. He’s a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, who speaks little English and works in construction. Even with his REAL ID and Social Security card in his wallet, Garcia Venegas worries that immigration agents will keep harassing him.
“If they decide they want to detain you,” he said. “You’re not going to get out of it.”
Garcia Venegas was so shaken that he took two weeks off of work. Soon after he returned, he was working alone inside a nearly built house listening to music on his headphones when he sensed someone watching him. A masked immigration agent was standing in the bedroom doorway.
This time, agents didn’t tackle him. But they again dismissed his REAL ID. And then they held him to check his citizenship. Garcia Venegas says agents also held two other workers who had legal status.
DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Garcia Venegas’ detentions, or to a federal lawsuit he filed last month. The agency has previously defended the agents’ conduct, saying he “physically got in between agents and the subject” during the first incident. The footage does not show that, and Garcia Venegas was never charged with obstruction or any other crime.
Garcia Venegas’ lawyers at the nonprofit Institute for Justice hope others may join his suit. After all, the reverberations of the immigration sweeps are being felt widely. Garcia Venegas said he knows of 15 more raids on nearby construction sites, and the industry along his portion of the Gulf Coast is struggling for lack of workers.
Kavanaugh’s assurances hold little weight for Garcia Venegas. He’s a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, who speaks little English and works in construction. Even with his REAL ID and Social Security card in his wallet, Garcia Venegas worries that immigration agents will keep harassing him.
“If they decide they want to detain you,” he said. “You’re not going to get out of it.”
Men building a home in rural Baldwin County, Alabama. Garcia Venegas was detained by immigration agents twice while working on homes in the area
George Retes was among the citizens arrested despite immigration agents appearing to know his legal status. He also disappeared into the system for days without being able to contact anyone on the outside.
The only clue Retes’ family had at first was a brief call he managed to make on his Apple Watch with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He quickly told his wife that “ICE” had arrested him during a massive raid and protest on the marijuana farm where he worked as a security guard.
Still, Retes’ family couldn’t find him. They called every law enforcement agency they could think of. No one gave them any answers.
Eventually, they spotted a TikTok video showing Retes driving to work and slowly trying to back up as he’s caught between agents and protestors. Through the tear gas and dust, his family recognized Retes’ car and the veteran decal on his window. The full video shows a man — Retes — splayed on the ground surrounded by agents.
George Retes’ family noticed his car in a compiled video posted to TikTok. This clip from that longer video shows his white vehicle surrounded by tear gas. Immigration agents later pinned him on the ground. nota.sra/TikTok
Retes’ family went to the farm, where local TV reporters were interviewing families who couldn’t find their loved ones.
“They broke his window, they pepper sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor,” his sister told a reporter between sobs. “We don’t know what to do. We’re just asking to let my brother go. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car.”
Retes was held for three days without being given an opportunity to make a call. His family only learned where he had been after his release. His leg had been cut from the broken glass, Retes told ProPublica, and lingering pepper spray burned his hands. He tried to soothe them by filling sandwich bags with water.
Retes recalled that agents knew he was a citizen. “They didn’t care.” He said one DHS official laughed at him, saying he shouldn’t have come to work that day. “They still sent me away to jail.” He added that cases like his show Kavanaugh was “wrong completely.”
DHS did not answer our questions about Retes. It did respond on X after Retes wrote an op-ed last month in the San Francisco Chronicle. An agency post asserted he was arrested for assault after he “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement.” Yet Retes had been released without any charges. Indeed, he says he was never told why he was arrested.
George Retes was among the citizens arrested despite immigration agents appearing to know his legal status. He also disappeared into the system for days without being able to contact anyone on the outside.
The only clue Retes’ family had at first was a brief call he managed to make on his Apple Watch with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He quickly told his wife that “ICE” had arrested him during a massive raid and protest on the marijuana farm where he worked as a security guard.
Still, Retes’ family couldn’t find him. They called every law enforcement agency they could think of. No one gave them any answers.
Eventually, they spotted a TikTok video showing Retes driving to work and slowly trying to back up as he’s caught between agents and protestors. Through the tear gas and dust, his family recognized Retes’ car and the veteran decal on his window. The full video shows a man — Retes — splayed on the ground surrounded by agents.
George Retes’ family noticed his car in a compiled video posted to TikTok. This clip from that longer video shows his white vehicle surrounded by tear gas. Immigration agents later pinned him on the ground. nota.sra/TikTok
Retes’ family went to the farm, where local TV reporters were interviewing families who couldn’t find their loved ones.
“They broke his window, they pepper sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor,” his sister told a reporter between sobs. “We don’t know what to do. We’re just asking to let my brother go. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car.”
Retes was held for three days without being given an opportunity to make a call. His family only learned where he had been after his release. His leg had been cut from the broken glass, Retes told ProPublica, and lingering pepper spray burned his hands. He tried to soothe them by filling sandwich bags with water.
Retes recalled that agents knew he was a citizen. “They didn’t care.” He said one DHS official laughed at him, saying he shouldn’t have come to work that day. “They still sent me away to jail.” He added that cases like his show Kavanaugh was “wrong completely.”
DHS did not answer our questions about Retes. It did respond on X after Retes wrote an op-ed last month in the San Francisco Chronicle. An agency post asserted he was arrested for assault after he “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement.” Yet Retes had been released without any charges. Indeed, he says he was never told why he was arrested.
Retes said that agents knew he was a citizen.
“They didn’t care.”
The Department of Justice has encouraged agents to arrest anyone interfering with immigration operations, twice ordering law enforcement to prioritize cases of those suspected of obstructing, interfering with or assaulting immigration officials.
But the government’s claims in those cases have often not been borne out.
Daniel Montenegro was filming a raid at a Van Nuys, California, Home Depot with other day-laborer advocates this summer when, he told ProPublica, he was tackled by several officers who injured his back.
Bovino, the Border Patrol chief who oversaw the LA raids and has since taken similar operations to cities like Sacramento and Chicago, tweeted out the names and photos of Montenegro and three others, accusing them of using homemade tire spikes to disable vehicles.
“I had no idea where that story came from,” Montenegro told ProPublica. “I didn’t find out until we were released. People were like, ‘We saw you on Twitter and the news and you guys are terrorists, you were planning to slash tires.’ I never saw those spike tire-popper things.”
Officials have not charged Montenegro or the others with any crimes. (Bovino did not respond to a request for comment, while DHS defended him in a statement to ProPublica: “Chief Bovino’s success in getting the worst of the worst out of the country speaks for itself.”)
The government’s cases are sometimes so muddied that it’s unclear why agents actually arrested a citizen.
Andrea Velez was charged with assaulting an officer after she was accidentally dropped off for work during a raid on street vendors in downtown Los Angeles. She said in a federal complaint that officers repeatedly assumed she did not speak English. Federal officers later requested access to her phone in an attempt to prove she was colluding with another citizen arrested that day, who was charged with assault. She was one of the Americans held for more than two days.
DHS did not respond to our questions about Velez, but it has previously accused her of assaulting an officer. A federal judge has dismissed the charges.
Other citizens also said officers accused them of crimes and suddenly questioned their citizenship — including a man arrested after filming Border Patrol agents break a truck window, and a pregnant woman who tried to stop officers from taking her boyfriend.
The prospects for any significant reckoning over agents’ conduct, even against citizens, are dim. The paths for suing federal agents are even more limited than they are for local police. And that’s if agents can even be identified. What’s more, the administration has gutted the office that investigates allegations of abuse by agents.
“The often-inadequate guardrails that we have for state and local government — even those guardrails are nonexistent when you’re talking about federal overreach,” said Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA School of Law.
More than 50 members of Congress have also written to the administration, demanding details about Americans who’ve been detained. One is Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat. After trying to question Noem about detained citizens, federal agents grabbed Padilla, pulled him to the ground and handcuffed him. The department later defended the agents, saying they “acted appropriately.”
How We Did This:
Americans have reported a wide range of troubling encounters with immigration agents. To get a wider sense of agents’ conduct, we cataloged all incidents we could find of citizens being held against their will by immigration officers.
Critically, there is no way to know the complete scope of these stops since the government itself does not track them. But we were still able to fill in the picture a bit more.
We reviewed more than 170 cases overall, which we sorted into two categories.
The first is Americans who were held because agents questioned their citizenship. We found more than 50 such cases. The second category is Americans arrested by immigration agents after being accused of assaulting or impeding officers at protests or during immigration arrests of others. In that category, we tallied about 130 Americans, including more than a dozen elected officials. In many of these cases, the government never charged these individuals or the cases were dismissed.
We also tracked another nine citizens who reported being concerned about racial profiling after being extensively questioned by immigration officials. This includes a Mescalero Apache tribal member who was pulled out of a store and asked for his passport, and a California man who was previously deported by mistake and got another deportation order in the mail.
We did all this by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We compiled cases from the beginning of the current Trump administration through Oct. 5. Our accounting of arrests in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago is particularly limited, since the events there are still unfolding.
We did not review cases of Americans detained in airports or at the border, where even citizens are more likely to encounter increased questioning. We also did not review cases of Americans arrested at some point after alleged encounters with immigration agents since those involved a judicial process. We similarly excluded arrests of immigration protestors by local police who, unlike many of the federal agencies, booked protesters into a local jail where they could access the legal process and their families could find them.
Corrections:
Do you have information or videos to share about the administration’s immigration crackdown? Contact Nicole Foy via email at nicole.foy@propublica.org or on Signal at nicolefoy.27.
A.C. Thompson contributed reporting.
Filed under — Immigration, Trump Administration
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Nicole Foy is ProPublica’s Ancil Payne Fellow, reporting on immigration and labor.
More Stories: Nicole Foy
Sarahbeth Maney
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I am a photojournalist documenting the impact of social issues on individuals and communities, supported by the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Foundation.
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I’m interested in hearing from residents impacted by the Eaton wildfire in Altadena, California, and individuals involved in local reparations programs and DEI initiatives throughout the U.S.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/reporter-details-life-for-children-and-families-detained-in-texas-migrant-facility
Reporter details life for children and families detained in Texas migrant facility
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsUd1fG2Pcs
PBS NewsHour
February 9, 2026
Since it reopened in March 2025, the ICE family detention center in Dilley, Texas, has held around 3,500 people, with more than half of them being children. As reports of contaminated food and the spread of measles have made national headlines, ProPublica spoke with two dozen detainees about the treatment of minors inside. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Mica Rosenberg of ProPublica. Watch PBS News for daily, breaking and live news, plus special coverage.
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https://www.propublica.org/article/life-inside-ice-dilley-children
VIDEO: Children detained at the immigrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas, speaking with ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg over video call. Clockwise from top left: Diana Crespo, Luka Mora, Juan Nicolas Mo, Alexander Perez, Amalia Arrieta, Mayra Delgado.
Immigration
February 9, 2026
Since it reopened in March 2025, the ICE family detention center in Dilley, Texas, has held around 3,500 people, with more than half of them being children. As reports of contaminated food and the spread of measles have made national headlines, ProPublica spoke with two dozen detainees about the treatment of minors inside. Amna Nawaz discussed more with Mica Rosenberg of ProPublica. Watch PBS News for daily, breaking and live news, plus special coverage.
PBS News podcasts:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/podcasts
Stream your PBS favorites with the PBS app: https://to.pbs.org/2Jb8twG Find more from PBS News at https://www.pbs.org/newshour
Follow us: TikTok: / pbsnews X: / newshour
Instagram: / newshour
Facebook: http://www.pbs.org/newshour
Read the Full Transcript
[Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.]
Amna Nawaz:
Since it reopened in March of 2025, the ICE family detention center in Dilley, Texas, has held around 3,500 people, more than half of them children. The center was first opened in the Obama administration, shuttered by President Biden in 2021, then reopened under President Trump last year.
As reports of contaminated food and the spread of measles have made national headlines, ProPublica went inside the facility, and through phone calls, letters and e-mails, spoke to two dozen detainees about the treatment of minors inside.
Mica Rosenberg of ProPublica joins me now.
Mica, welcome to the "News Hour." Thanks for joining us.
Mica Rosenberg, ProPublica:
Thank you so much for having me.
Amna Nawaz:
So, as you have been speaking with these detainees for weeks now, half of them kids, we should just point out these are some of the kids you have been talking to, 18-month-old Amalia and her family. She's blowing kisses to the screen here -- 13-year-old Gustavo.
I know they're sharing their experiences with you. Just tell us about what some of the common threads are, some of the common stories you have heard from them.
Mica Rosenberg:
Well, I think one thing that really stands out in what's happening in Dilley now is that, as you mentioned, this facility opened up during the Obama administration and families were housed there, but they were mainly families who were coming across the border and were there supposedly for a short period of time and hoping to be released into the United States or to come here for the first time.
But what's happening now is, many of the children that I spoke to are actually kids who've been living in the United States for -- some for years, and their families were picked up by ICE arrests in the interior, some of them at regular check-ins.
And so a lot of the kids that I talked to had really, in some cases, established U.S. lives. Some of them spoke perfect English. Some of them were in the middle of their high school years when they were detained. And so that's one thing that was quite different than in the past.
Amna Nawaz:
And we mentioned those reports about measles cases and some inedible food. Did you hear some of that from the kids inside?
Mica Rosenberg:
Yes, we heard -- one of the things that we were trying to do with this reporting was really to get the kids to talk about their experiences in their own words.
And so one of the things that they did is, some kids about what they were going through drew pictures about their experiences, and they talked about the repetitive food, some of them saying that they were sick constantly or getting sick, they maybe believed, from the water.
But some of the more vivid descriptions about the conditions really came from their mothers, who I spoke to over the phone or who e-mailed me. And they would talk to me about food that the kids could see or they believed was contaminated and that it was giving their children sickness.
And the administration says that these conditions are not what they're described as. But this is from the firsthand experience of the detainees inside. One thing that we did -- found is that there were over 300 kids who had been there longer than the average of 20 days, which is what under a longstanding legal settlement is supposed to be the standard of how long kids should be detained for and no longer.
Amna Nawaz:
We know officials from the administration have said the families are getting top-notch care inside Dilley. They say they get medical care and good food and learning services, special caregivers.
You spoke with Alexander Perez, 15-year-old from the Dominican Republic who talked to you specifically about school. What did he tell you?
Mica Rosenberg:
Well, he said that school is -- for the kids inside is really only an hour a day. There's -- the classes are capped at 12 kids per class.
And they said that it really only consisted of kind of worksheets, handouts, and that because the different age groups are mixed together -- and so a lot of the kids, as I mentioned, who were sort of in the middle of their school year were really missing their education. They were worried about falling behind.
Amna Nawaz:
Is it just a matter, Mica, repetitive food and inadequate learning or is there something more serious in terms of the emotional or mental toll that you saw?
Mica Rosenberg:
I think their parents were very worried that they were experiencing more serious distress. Mothers told me about some kids who were self-harming, who had cut themselves, other kids who had spoken of suicide, kids who were very much older than they should have been starting to wet their bed, not being able to sleep well at night.
So these are more things that the mothers told me about and the kids would talk more generally. So I think it's hard to say what the long-term impact will be, but I think it was -- it's been difficult on them.
Amna Nawaz:
And I know you were able to speak with some parents and kids after some of them were released. What did they tell you? Were they able to go back to their lives as normal?
Mica Rosenberg:
Well, a lot of it happened relatively recently. After I spoke to them, they were released.
I did speak to one girl, Ariana, who was 14, and she was able to go back to her high school, where she was welcomed by the principal and her teachers, who said that they had really missed her. She had worried about her grades and falling behind, but they said that they would try and support her.
But she -- when she and her mother were detained, they left behind two U.S. citizen siblings, a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old. They were detained in their regular check-in and just didn't come home that day. So her siblings were really sort of traumatized by that. And her little brother said that he was afraid to go to school because he was worried that they wouldn't be there when he came back.
So I think it's a combination of how the kids in detention are being impacted, but also the ones who are left outside.
Amna Nawaz:
That is Mica Rosenberg of ProPublica joining us tonight.
Mica, thank you so much your time and your reporting.
Mica Rosenberg:
Thank you so much for having me.
VIDEO: Children detained at the immigrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas, speaking with ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg over video call. Clockwise from top left: Diana Crespo, Luka Mora, Juan Nicolas Mo, Alexander Perez, Amalia Arrieta, Mayra Delgado.
Immigration
The Children of Dilley
ProPublica went inside the immigrant detention center for families in Dilley, Texas. Children held there told us about the anguish of being ripped from their lives in the United States and the fear of what comes next.
by Mica Rosenberg
February 9, 2026
ProPublica
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Fourteen-year-old Ariana Velasquez had been held at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas, with her mother for some 45 days when I managed to get inside to meet her. The staff brought everyone in the visiting room a boxed 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 was wearing a government-issued gray sweatsuit. At first, she sat looking blankly down at the table. She poked at her food with a plastic fork and let her mother do most of the talking.
She perked up when I asked about home: Hicksville, New York. She and her mother had moved there from Honduras when she was 7. Her mother, Stephanie Valladares, had applied for asylum, married a neighbor from back home who was already living in the U.S., and had two more kids. Ariana took care of them after school. She was a freshman at Hicksville High, and being detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center meant that she was falling behind in her classes. She told me how much she missed her favorite sign language teacher, but most of all she missed her siblings.
I had previously met them in Hicksville: Gianna, a toddler who everyone calls Gigi, and Jacob, a kindergartener with wide brown eyes. I told Ariana that they missed her too. Jacob had shown me a security camera that their mom had installed in the kitchen so she could peek in on them from her job, sometimes saying “Hello” through the speaker. I told Ariana that Jacob tried talking to the camera, hoping his mom would answer.
Stephanie burst into tears. So did Ariana. After my visit, Ariana wrote me a letter.
“My younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mom in more than a month,” she wrote. “They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are growing up.” Then, referring to Dilley, she added, “Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.”
Ariana Velasquez’s 5-year-old brother, Jacob, and 2-year-old sister, Gianna, at their home in New York. Anna Connors for ProPublica
Dilley, run by private prison firm CoreCivic, is located some 72 miles south of San Antonio and nearly 2,000 miles away from Ariana’s home. It is a sprawling collection of trailers and dormitories, almost the same color as the dusty landscape, surrounded by a tall fence. It first opened during the Obama administration to hold an influx of families crossing the border. Former President Joe Biden stopped holding families there in 2021, arguing America shouldn’t be in the business of detaining children.
But quickly after returning to office, President Donald Trump resumed family detentions as part of his mass deportation campaign. Federal courts and overwhelming public outrage had put an end to Trump’s first-term policy of separating children from parents when immigrant families were detained crossing the border. Trump officials said Dilley was a place where immigrant families would be detained together.
As the second Trump administration’s crackdown both slowed border crossings to record lows and ramped up a blitz of immigration arrests all across the country, the population inside Dilley shifted. The administration began sending parents and children who had been living in the country long enough to lay down roots and to build networks of relatives, friends and supporters willing to speak up against their detention.
If the administration believed that putting children in Dilley wouldn’t stir the same outcry as separating them from their parents, it was mistaken. The photo of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from Ecuador, who was detained with his father in Minneapolis while wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a blue bunny hat, went viral on social media and triggered widespread condemnation and a protest by the detainees.
Weeks before that, I had begun speaking to parents and children at Dilley, along with their relatives on the outside. I also spoke to people who worked inside the center or visited it regularly to give religious or legal services. I had asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for permission to visit but got a range of responses. One spokesperson denied 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.
Since early December, I’ve spoken, in person and via phone and video calls, to more than two dozen detainees, half of them kids detained at Dilley — all of whose parents gave me their’ consent. I asked parents whether their children would be open to writing to me about their experiences. More than three dozen kids responded; some just drew pictures, others wrote in perfect cursive. Some letters were full of age-appropriate misspellings.
Among them was a letter from a 9-year-old Venezuelan girl, named Susej Fernández, who had been living in Houston when she and her mother were detained. “I have been 50 days in Dilley Immigration Processing Center,” she wrote. “Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to live.”
Dilley, run by private prison firm CoreCivic, is located some 72 miles south of San Antonio and nearly 2,000 miles away from Ariana’s home. It is a sprawling collection of trailers and dormitories, almost the same color as the dusty landscape, surrounded by a tall fence. It first opened during the Obama administration to hold an influx of families crossing the border. Former President Joe Biden stopped holding families there in 2021, arguing America shouldn’t be in the business of detaining children.
But quickly after returning to office, President Donald Trump resumed family detentions as part of his mass deportation campaign. Federal courts and overwhelming public outrage had put an end to Trump’s first-term policy of separating children from parents when immigrant families were detained crossing the border. Trump officials said Dilley was a place where immigrant families would be detained together.
As the second Trump administration’s crackdown both slowed border crossings to record lows and ramped up a blitz of immigration arrests all across the country, the population inside Dilley shifted. The administration began sending parents and children who had been living in the country long enough to lay down roots and to build networks of relatives, friends and supporters willing to speak up against their detention.
If the administration believed that putting children in Dilley wouldn’t stir the same outcry as separating them from their parents, it was mistaken. The photo of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from Ecuador, who was detained with his father in Minneapolis while wearing a Spider-Man backpack and a blue bunny hat, went viral on social media and triggered widespread condemnation and a protest by the detainees.
Weeks before that, I had begun speaking to parents and children at Dilley, along with their relatives on the outside. I also spoke to people who worked inside the center or visited it regularly to give religious or legal services. I had asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for permission to visit but got a range of responses. One spokesperson denied 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.
Since early December, I’ve spoken, in person and via phone and video calls, to more than two dozen detainees, half of them kids detained at Dilley — all of whose parents gave me their’ consent. I asked parents whether their children would be open to writing to me about their experiences. More than three dozen kids responded; some just drew pictures, others wrote in perfect cursive. Some letters were full of age-appropriate misspellings.
Among them was a letter from a 9-year-old Venezuelan girl, named Susej Fernández, who had been living in Houston when she and her mother were detained. “I have been 50 days in Dilley Immigration Processing Center,” she wrote. “Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to live.”
Susej Fernández, 9, Shares Her Daily Struggles in Detention
Mica Rosenberg/ProPublica
A 14-year-old Colombian girl, who signed her name Gaby M.M. and who a fellow detainee said had been living in Houston, wrote a letter about how the guards at Dilley “have bad manner of speaking to residents.” She wrote, “The workers treat the residents unhumanly, verbally and I don’t want to imging how they would act if they where unsupervised.”
Nine-year-old Maria Antonia Guerra, from Colombia, drew a portrait of herself and her mother wearing their detainee ID badges. A note on the side said, “I am not happy, please get me out of here.”
Some of the kids I met spoke English as well as they did Spanish.
When I asked the kids to tell me about the things they missed most from their lives outside Dilley, they almost always talked about their teachers and friends at school. Then they’d get to things like missing a beloved dog, McDonald’s Happy Meals, their favorite stuffed animal or a pair of new UGGs that had been waiting for them under the Christmas tree.
They told me they feared what might happen to them if they returned to their home countries and what might happen to them if they remained here. Thirteen-year-old Gustavo Santiago said he didn’t want to go back 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 be detained.” He ended with a plea, “I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.”
An excerpt of the letter Ariana wrote from inside the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. She also wrote a wish list on New Year’s Eve, which included seeing her siblings and returning to her home in Hicksville, New York. Obtained by ProPublicaAround 3,500 detainees, more than half of them minors, have cycled through the center since it reopened, more than the population of the town of Dilley itself. Although a long-standing legal settlement generally limits the time children can be held in detention to 20 days, a data analysis by ProPublica found that about 300 kids sent to Dilley by the Trump administration were there for more than a month. The administration in legal filings has said the agreement from 1997 is outdated and should be terminated because there are new statutes, regulations and policies that ensure good conditions for immigrant minors in detention.
Habiba Soliman, 18, told me she had been detained for more than eight months with her mom and four siblings, ranging in age from 16 to 5-year-old twins, after her father was charged for an alleged antisemitic attack in June at rally in Boulder, Colorado, supporting the Jewish hostages who were being held in Gaza. Their father, Mohamed Soliman, pleaded not guilty to federal and state charges. Authorities have said they are investigating whether his wife and her children provided support for the attack. They deny knowing anything about it and an arrest warrant reports that he told an officer he never talked to his wife or family about his plans.
Despite Trump’s promise to go after 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 had overstayed visas. Many had filed applications for asylum, had married U.S. citizens or had been granted humanitarian parole and were detained when they voluntarily showed up for appointments at ICE offices. They said that it was unfair to arrest them, and that detaining their children was just plain cruel.
There were children in Dilley who were so distraught 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 quarantined some immigrants, and attorneys said ICE cancelled in-person legal visits until Feb. 14 as a safety precaution.
Read More Letters From Kids Detained at Dilley
“I Have Been Here Too Long”: Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that all detainees at Dilley are “being provided with proper medical care.” DHS did not respond to questions about individual detainees but said that all “are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries” and that “certified dieticians evaluate meals.” Detained parents are given the option for their families to be deported together, or they can have their children placed with another caregiver, the statement said.
CoreCivic said that Dilley, like its other facilities, is subject to multiple layers of oversight to ensure full compliance with policies and procedures, including any applicable detention standards.
Moms told me that their kids had lost their appetites after finding worms and mold on their food, had trouble sleeping on the facility’s hard metal bunk beds in rooms shared by at least a dozen other people, and were constantly sick.
“The shock for my daughter was devastating,” Maria Alejandra Montoya from Colombia wrote in an email to me about her daughter Maria Antonia. “Watching her adapt is like watching her wings being clipped. Hearing other children fight over card games at the tables makes me feel like we are not mothers and children, but inmates.”
Life Inside
Alexander Perez, a 15-year-old from the Dominican Republic, told me about going to school at Dilley. He said classes included kids from mixed age groups, and each class allowed only 12 students and lasted for just one hour. Slots were assigned on a first-come-first-served basis. Children would line up, hoping to get in. The staff leading the class would distribute handouts and worksheets to those who made it inside.
Alexander Perez complained that the lessons were usually meant for kids who were younger than him, so he found them boring. But because there wasn’t much else to do, he used to go whenever he could, until an instructor turned a social studies lesson into what felt like an interrogation about immigration policy.
“If we have recreational activities and classes designed to help us disconnect from what we’re experiencing here, why the need to ask ourselves these questions?” he said during a video call with me. “I didn’t think that was right.”
Alexander Perez, 15, Shares His Advice for Other Dilley Detainees
Mica Rosenberg/ProPublica
He, his mother and his 14-year-old brother, Jorge, said they had been detained while traveling from Los Angeles to Houston when the bus they were on was stopped by immigration agents who checked everyone’s status. They’d been in Dilley for four months by the time we spoke. His mother, Teresa, told me she was in the process of appealing a judge’s denial of her asylum petition, 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 on attending classes at Dilley, he played basketball in the recreation area and watched a lot of Spanish soap operas on TV. Jorge, who celebrated his birthday in December at Dilley with a tiny cake made from vanilla commissary cookies, spent most of the day sleeping.
DHS said in its statement that “children have access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets for math, reading, and spelling.”
Boredom was a theme that ran through many of the letters from children at Dilley. “They told me I could only be here 21 days but I have already spent more than 60 days waking up eating the same repeated meals,” wrote a 12-year-old Venezuelan girl who signed her letter Ender, and who a fellow detainee said had settled 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 thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here.”
Ariana expressed similar concerns in her letter. She wrote, “If you need medical attention the longest you have to wait is 3 hours, but to get any medicine, pill, anything it takes a while, there are various viruses people are always sick. Serious situations happen and the officers can’t take them serious enough there are no consecuenses, they don’t care.”
Stephanie Valladares’ home in Hicksville, New York, where she lives with her three children, Ariana, Jacob and Gianna Anna Connors for ProPublica
Bad Food, Insufficient Medicine
The lack of reliable medical care was perhaps the most serious concern parents and children spoke about in their interviews with me. The Texas-based nonprofit advocacy organization RAICES, which provides legal representation to many families at Dilley, said in a recent court declaration that its clients had raised concerns about insufficient 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 from Venezuela, who was being held with her 18-month-old, Amalia Arrieta, said shortly after they were detained following an ICE appointment on Dec. 11 in El Paso, Texas, the baby fell ill. For two weeks, she said, medical staff gave her ibuprofen and eventually antibiotics, but Amalia’s breathing worsened 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’s so cold here, she developed pneumonia and bronchitis,” Kheilin said. “She was malnourished, too, because she was vomiting everything.”
Do you work or have you worked at an immigration detention facility? Get in touch with ProPublica reporters on Signal at 917-512-0201 to share your experience.
If you or someone you know is or was in an immigration detention facility, you can also reach us over email at immigration@propublica.org. We take your privacy seriously.
Gustavo Santiago, the 13-year-old boy who’d been living in Texas, said he has been sick several times since he and his mom were detained on Oct. 5 of last year at a Border Patrol checkpoint. His mom, Christian Hinojosa, said that when Gustavo had a fever, the medical staff told her he was old enough for his body to fight it off without medication, so she sat up with him all night, draping him in cold compresses. She had to take him to the infirmary for a skin rash that she believed was caused by poor water quality at the center. She said he has also experienced stomach pain and nausea, which she blamed on unsanitary food preparation.
Among logs we obtained of calls made to 911 and law enforcement about the facility since it began accepting families again last spring, I found pleas for help for toddlers having trouble breathing, a pregnant woman who passed out and an elementary-school-aged girl having seizures. Local authorities were also called in for three cases of alleged sexual assault between detainees.
DHS said in its statement, “No one is denied medical care.”
CoreCivic said that health and safety is a top priority for the company and that detainees at Dilley are provided with a continuum of health care services, including preventative care and mental health services. The company said its medical staff “meet the highest standards of care” and said the facility works closely with local hospitals for any specialized medical needs.
The Kids of Dilley
Reporter Mica Rosenberg talked with dozens of detainees at Dilley, who shared their experiences in letters, videos, phone calls and voice memos.
Diana Crespo, 7, said she missed going to McDonald’s. 
Amalia Arrietta, 18 months old, blew kisses and waved at the screen. In her time detained at Dilley, Amalia was hospitalized with a respiratory infection.
Gustavo Santiago, 13, worried that he’d be forgotten inside Dilley. Mica Rosenberg/ProPublica
Torn From Their Lives
Ariana and her mother, Stephanie, were detained on Dec. 1, when they went for one of their regular check-ins at an ICE office in New York City’s Federal Plaza, which are required as they wait for a decision on their asylum case. Stephanie had come to the U.S. with experience working as an accountant and, after securing her work permit, she had finally found a job at a local import business where she could put that experience to use. They had been regularly checking in with ICE for years without incident. But after mom and daughter showed up for their 8 a.m. ICE appointment, they were told they couldn’t leave this time and were on a plane to Dilley by 6 that evening, without being given a chance to call their family. “Since the day my mom and I get detained in Manhattan NY, my life was instanly paused,” Ariana wrote in her letter from detention after our meeting. “All kids are being damage mentally, they witness how the’ve been treated.”
A 7-year-old Venezuelan girl named Diana Crespo was living in Portland, Oregon, when she and her parents, Darianny Gonzalez and Yohendry Crespo, were detained outside a hospital where they’d taken Diana for emergency care. The family had been granted humanitarian parole after entering the United States in 2024 and then applied for asylum when Trump revoked the parole program, saying that Biden had used it to allow immigrants to pour into the country at record levels. She said their active asylum case didn’t stop the immigration agents who intercepted them outside the emergency room from detaining them.
Maria Alejandra Montoya and her daughter Maria Antonia Guerra during an August 2025 vacation at Disney World. Three months later, when they were on their way to another Disney trip, agents detained them and sent them to Dilley. Courtesy of Maria Alejandra Montoya
Maria Antonia Guerra, the 9-year-old from Colombia, told me that the 10-day vacation to Disney World that she had planned with her mother and stepdad turned into more than 100 days at Dilley. She’d flown into Florida from Medellin, Colombia, where she lived with her grandmother, with a Cruella de Vil costume in her suitcase. Her mother, Maria Alejandra Montoya, was living in New York and had overstayed her visa, but had since married a U.S. citizen and was just waiting for her green card to be approved. Maria Antonia traveled regularly back and forth to the U.S. on a tourist visa, and Maria Alejandra had flown down to meet her at the airport. Immigration agents intercepted them and flew them to Texas. They both told me that it felt like a kidnapping.
“I am in a jail and I am sad and I have fainted 2 times here inside, 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 that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”
Released 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 mom.
Ariana at a McDonald’s hours after her release from detention Courtesy of Stephanie Valladares
The releases came as such a surprise that Stephanie said another woman began screaming and refused to let go of her bunk, fearing she was about to be deported back to Ecuador. Stephanie was fitted with an ankle monitor, and she and Ariana were dropped off in Laredo, Texas, where they scrambled to buy a plane ticket to LaGuardia in New York.
On Jan. 22, two days after her release, I met Stephanie again, this time holding Gigi as she showed up for her first ICE check in at an office near her home. She had been so nervous that she got lost on the way to the appointment. She was given a series of instructions and shown videos that explained the purpose and cadence of her regular check-ins. She’d have one every month at the office, and every two months she would be visited at her home.
Jacob had initially refused to go to school because he was afraid his mother and sister wouldn’t be there when he came home, but she’d finally gotten him to go by promising every morning that she’s not leaving again.
Ariana and her mother, Stephanie, were detained on Dec. 1, when they went for one of their regular check-ins at an ICE office in New York City’s Federal Plaza, which are required as they wait for a decision on their asylum case. Stephanie had come to the U.S. with experience working as an accountant and, after securing her work permit, she had finally found a job at a local import business where she could put that experience to use. They had been regularly checking in with ICE for years without incident. But after mom and daughter showed up for their 8 a.m. ICE appointment, they were told they couldn’t leave this time and were on a plane to Dilley by 6 that evening, without being given a chance to call their family. “Since the day my mom and I get detained in Manhattan NY, my life was instanly paused,” Ariana wrote in her letter from detention after our meeting. “All kids are being damage mentally, they witness how the’ve been treated.”
A 7-year-old Venezuelan girl named Diana Crespo was living in Portland, Oregon, when she and her parents, Darianny Gonzalez and Yohendry Crespo, were detained outside a hospital where they’d taken Diana for emergency care. The family had been granted humanitarian parole after entering the United States in 2024 and then applied for asylum when Trump revoked the parole program, saying that Biden had used it to allow immigrants to pour into the country at record levels. She said their active asylum case didn’t stop the immigration agents who intercepted them outside the emergency room from detaining them.
Maria Alejandra Montoya and her daughter Maria Antonia Guerra during an August 2025 vacation at Disney World. Three months later, when they were on their way to another Disney trip, agents detained them and sent them to Dilley. Courtesy of Maria Alejandra Montoya
Maria Antonia Guerra, the 9-year-old from Colombia, told me that the 10-day vacation to Disney World that she had planned with her mother and stepdad turned into more than 100 days at Dilley. She’d flown into Florida from Medellin, Colombia, where she lived with her grandmother, with a Cruella de Vil costume in her suitcase. Her mother, Maria Alejandra Montoya, was living in New York and had overstayed her visa, but had since married a U.S. citizen and was just waiting for her green card to be approved. Maria Antonia traveled regularly back and forth to the U.S. on a tourist visa, and Maria Alejandra had flown down to meet her at the airport. Immigration agents intercepted them and flew them to Texas. They both told me that it felt like a kidnapping.
“I am in a jail and I am sad and I have fainted 2 times here inside, 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 that being here was my fault and I only wanted to be on vacation like a normal family.”
Released 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 mom.
The releases came as such a surprise that Stephanie said another woman began screaming and refused to let go of her bunk, fearing she was about to be deported back to Ecuador. Stephanie was fitted with an ankle monitor, and she and Ariana were dropped off in Laredo, Texas, where they scrambled to buy a plane ticket to LaGuardia in New York.
On Jan. 22, two days after her release, I met Stephanie again, this time holding Gigi as she showed up for her first ICE check in at an office near her home. She had been so nervous that she got lost on the way to the appointment. She was given a series of instructions and shown videos that explained the purpose and cadence of her regular check-ins. She’d have one every month at the office, and every two months she would be visited at her home.
Jacob had initially refused to go to school because he was afraid his mother and sister wouldn’t be there when he came home, but she’d finally gotten him to go by promising every morning that she’s not leaving again.
Stephanie embraces her son, Jacob, at their home in New York after her release from detention. Anna Connors for ProPublica
Ariana went back 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 in on her. She was helping Jacob with his homework, but she took a break to give me an update. There are a lot of other immigrants at her school, but she had only told her close friends, who she sits with at lunch, about the reason for her prolonged absence. When other people asked, she just 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 is uncomfortable employing someone with an ankle monitor. And Ariana worries about her. She also worries about the people she met back at Dilley. Days after I asked DHS about several families mentioned in this story, five of them were released: Gustavo and his mom, Christian; Teresa and her sons, Alexander and Jorge; Kheilin and her baby, Amalia; Darianny and her daughter, Diana. Maria Antonia and her mom, Maria Alejandra, were returned to Colombia. Others are still detained. Ariana said, “I wish they got out because they shouldn’t be there any longer.”
Before we hung up, Ariana said something that suggested her youthful optimism hadn’t been entirely broken. She’d found that she’d gotten better at playing volleyball at Dilley and now plans to try out for her school team.
Ariana went back 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 in on her. She was helping Jacob with his homework, but she took a break to give me an update. There are a lot of other immigrants at her school, but she had only told her close friends, who she sits with at lunch, about the reason for her prolonged absence. When other people asked, she just 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 is uncomfortable employing someone with an ankle monitor. And Ariana worries about her. She also worries about the people she met back at Dilley. Days after I asked DHS about several families mentioned in this story, five of them were released: Gustavo and his mom, Christian; Teresa and her sons, Alexander and Jorge; Kheilin and her baby, Amalia; Darianny and her daughter, Diana. Maria Antonia and her mom, Maria Alejandra, were returned to Colombia. Others are still detained. Ariana said, “I wish they got out because they shouldn’t be there any longer.”
Before we hung up, Ariana said something that suggested her youthful optimism hadn’t been entirely broken. She’d found that she’d gotten better at playing volleyball at Dilley and now plans to try out for her school team.
PHOTO: Ariana sits alongside her siblings back at her home in New York. Anna Connors for ProPublica
For this story, ProPublica analyzed federal data on ICE detentions released through the Deportation Data Project. The data contains records for immigrant arrests and detentions going through October of 2025.
ProPublica plans to continue reporting on conditions inside immigration detention facilities. Please get in touch with our reporters through Signal at 917-512-0201 if you or someone you know:
Has worked at a detention facility housing immigrants.
Has been detained at such a facility.
Knows information about companies that have been contracted to build and provide services at such facilities.
Can share other insight or information about immigration detention facilities.
We are also interested in any letters, images, videos or other documentation that you can share. Check out these tips for contacting us securely. We take your privacy seriously.
Correction
February 9, 2026: This story originally misstated the nationality of Diana Crespo. She is Venezuelan, not Honduran.
CONTRIBUTORS:
Jeff Ernsthausen contributed data reporting. Gabriel Sandoval contributed research. Visual editing by Anna Donlan, Shoshana Gordon and Cengiz Yar. Photography by Anna Connors.
Filed under — Immigration, Trump Administration
For this story, ProPublica analyzed federal data on ICE detentions released through the Deportation Data Project. The data contains records for immigrant arrests and detentions going through October of 2025.
ProPublica plans to continue reporting on conditions inside immigration detention facilities. Please get in touch with our reporters through Signal at 917-512-0201 if you or someone you know:
Has worked at a detention facility housing immigrants.
Has been detained at such a facility.
Knows information about companies that have been contracted to build and provide services at such facilities.
Can share other insight or information about immigration detention facilities.
We are also interested in any letters, images, videos or other documentation that you can share. Check out these tips for contacting us securely. We take your privacy seriously.
Correction
February 9, 2026: This story originally misstated the nationality of Diana Crespo. She is Venezuelan, not Honduran.
CONTRIBUTORS:
Jeff Ernsthausen contributed data reporting. Gabriel Sandoval contributed research. Visual editing by Anna Donlan, Shoshana Gordon and Cengiz Yar. Photography by Anna Connors.
Filed under — Immigration, Trump Administration
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Mica Rosenberg
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Bluesky
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I am an investigative reporter on ProPublica’s national desk focusing on immigration.
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https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/02/09/toddler-was-returned-to-ice-custody-denied-medication-after-hospitalization-lawsuit-says
Immigration enforcement in Minnesota
February 9, 2026
Mica Rosenberg
X
Bluesky
I am an investigative reporter on ProPublica’s national desk focusing on immigration.
More Stories: Mica Rosenberg
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/02/09/toddler-was-returned-to-ice-custody-denied-medication-after-hospitalization-lawsuit-says
Immigration enforcement in Minnesota
February 9, 2026
Toddler was returned to ICE custody and denied medication after hospitalization, lawsuit says
An 18-month-old girl detained for weeks by U.S. immigration authorities was returned to custody and denied medication after being hospitalized with a life-threatening respiratory illness, according to a lawsuit filed in Texas federal court.
The child, identified in the lawsuit as "Amalia," was released by immigration authorities in President Donald Trump's administration after her parents sued on Friday. The parents, who also had been detained, were released as well. The suit had sought the release of all three of them.
The family was detained during a check-in with immigration authorities on December 11 and held at a facility in Dilley, Texas, according to the lawsuit. Amalia was hospitalized from January 18 to 28, and returned to the Dilley facility in the midst of a measles outbreak, the lawsuit said.
"Baby Amalia should never have been detained. She nearly died at Dilley," said Elora Mukherjee, an attorney for the family.
Mukherjee said hundreds of children and families detained at Dilley lack sufficient drinking water, healthy food, educational opportunities or proper medical care, and should be released.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
NBC News first reported on the lawsuit.
Trump's administration has been accused of heavy-handed and inhumane tactics as well as violating court orders while carrying out his mass deportation program.
A federal judge in Michigan criticized the administration in a January 31 ruling ordering the release of a 5-year-old boy - seen in a viral photo wearing a blue bunny hat outside his house as federal agents stood nearby - who was detained by immigration agents in Minnesota. The administration is now seeking to deport the boy.
Amalia's parents, originally from Venezuela, have lived in the United States since 2024 with their daughter, who is a Mexican citizen, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit says all three intend to file asylum applications in the United States.
Amalia developed a fever on January 1 that reached as high as 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius), started vomiting frequently and struggled to breathe, according to the lawsuit.
She was taken to the hospital on January 18 with extremely low oxygen saturation levels and diagnosed with COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus, viral bronchitis and pneumonia, according to the lawsuit. She was placed on supplemental oxygen.
Amalia was given a nebulizer and a respiratory medication upon her discharge from the hospital, but these were taken away by detention center staff upon her return, according to the lawsuit. The girl has lost 10 percent of her body weight and was given nutritional drinks to help her regain it, but these were also confiscated by authorities, according to the lawsuit.
https://www.propublica.org/article/ice-dilley-children-letters
Immigration
“I Have Been Here Too Long”: Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility
Hundreds of children are currently being held with their parents at an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas. In letters and drawings, eight kids convey the pain of feeling trapped with no end in sight.
by Mica Rosenberg, Anna Donlan, Shoshana Gordon and Cengiz Yar
February 9, 2026
ProPublica
A rainbow, a family portrait, a heart. These are the drawings found in handwritten letters from children detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas.
In early February there were more than 750 families, nearly half of them including children, as well as some 370 single adult women being held at this facility. It is just one of many immigration centers across the country, but the only one holding families. Since the start of the Trump administration, the number of children in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention has skyrocketed, increasing sixfold.
ProPublica received letters in mid-January from several children at Dilley. All but two of them had been living in the United States when they were detained. 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.
Read More
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement that all detainees at Dilley are “being provided with proper medical care.” DHS did not respond to questions about individual detainees but said all “are provided with 3 meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, soap, and toiletries” and that “certified dieticians evaluate meals.” DHS also said “children have access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets for math, reading, and spelling.” Detained parents are given the option for their families to be deported together, or they can have their children placed with another caregiver, the statement said. CoreCivic, which operates the facility, said it is subject to multiple layers of oversight and that health and safety are a top priority.
The public is rarely given an opportunity to glimpse inside Dilley and get a look at how the kids there are doing. Here, we let the children speak for themselves.
Susej F
A 9-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Houston, Texas
Detained for 50 days
“I miss my school and my friends I feel bad since when I came here to this Place, because I have been here too long.”
Read the full transcript
Read the full transcript
Listen to Ariana read her letter
Ariana V. V.
A 14-year-old from Honduras who was living in Hicksville, New York
Detained for 45 days
“Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.”
Read the full transcript
“Hello, my name is Ariana V.V. im 14 years old and im from Honduras, ive been detained for 45 days and I have never felt so much fear to go to a place as I feel here everytime I remind myself that once I go back to Honduras a lot of dangerous things could happen to my mom and my younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mom in more than a month. They are very young and you need both of your parents when you are growing up. Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression. When people have their courts the longest they will last is 15 minutes, our rights are not being provided, arrest are happening when people don’t even have any type of order, arrests are happening illegally.
Its sad to hear that peoples case are being denied and are getting send back to their country places where they are escaping from and are looking for protection and want to feel safe. Not a lot of people know what is happening in the Centers where immigrants are placed at. I haven’t been getting any school time. Every single person in here had their jobs they had their lifes, they aren’t any danger for this Country.
Ive been in this country for almost 7 years and in those 7 years my mom and I found a home and made a bigger family. I have never been separated from my siblings and its honestly sad because they are little and they need their mom and sister, yeah they are with their dad but its still different for them and my mom and I. Since the day my mom and I get detained in Manhattan NY, my life was instanly paused, from my knowledge you can’t be under custody for more than 15 or 20 days, well here in Dilley Immigration Processing Center people have been in this place for 7 months, 5 months, 4-2 months, its not fair that the ICE officers are not following the laws. All kids are being damage mentally, they witness how the’ve been treated.
They don’t have schools, doctor, all they have are nurses, if you need medical attention the longest you have to wait is 3 hours, but to get any medicine, pill, anything it takes a while, there are various viruses people are always sick. Serious situations happen and the officers can’t take them serious enough there are no consecuenses, they don’t care.”
Luisanney Toloza
A 5-year-old from Venezuela who had recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border
“My family”
Mia Valentina Paz Faria
A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas
Detained for 70 days
“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”
Read the full transcript
Scarlett Jaimes
A 17-year-old from Venezuela who was living in El Paso, Texas
“One of the things that I could complain about is that they don’t have varied food and it’s almost the same and it bores me that it takes away my appetite”
Read the full transcript
A 14-year-old from Colombia who was living in Houston, Texas
Detained for 20 days
“I feel so much sadness and depression of not being able to leave, its really sad to hear that peoples cases are being denied and getting send back to their countrys.”
Read the full transcript
A 12-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas
Detained for 60 days
“More than 60 days … going to the doctor and that the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst thing is that it seems the water is what makes people sick here.”
Read the full transcript
A 9-year-old from Colombia
Detained for 113 days
“Me in dilei [Dilley] am not happy please get me out of here to colombia.”
Read the full transcript
About the Letters:
Reporter Mica Rosenberg asked detainees whether their children would be willing to write letters or draw pictures about their experiences. One detainee gathered the letters and brought them out of the center when they were released from Dilley on Jan. 20. The detainee said the parents whose children participated were aware that the letters would be shared with a journalist with the intention of making them public. Afterward we reached out to the detainee who shared the letters and obtained, when possible, additional details like the locations where the families were living before they were detained. The length of time the children say they have been detained is as of mid-January, when they wrote the letters. Some of the letter writers have since been released; the status of others is unclear.
ProPublica plans to continue reporting on conditions inside immigration detention facilities. Please get in touch with our reporters through Signal at 917-512-0201 if you or someone you know:
Has worked at a detention facility housing immigrants.
Has been detained at such a facility.
Knows information about companies that have been contracted to build and provide services at such facilities.
Can share other insight or information about immigration detention facilities.
We are also interested in any letters, images, videos or other documentation that you can share. Check out these tips for contacting us securely. We take your privacy seriously.
Corrections
Filed under — Immigration, Trump Administration
Contributors
Mica Rosenberg
X
Bluesky
I am an investigative reporter on ProPublica’s national desk focusing on immigration.
More Stories: Mica Rosenberg
Corrections
Filed under — Immigration, Trump Administration
Contributors
Mica Rosenberg
X
Bluesky
I am an investigative reporter on ProPublica’s national desk focusing on immigration.
More Stories: Mica Rosenberg
Anna Donlan
Anna Donlan is an interactive story designer with ProPublica.
More Stories: Anna Donlan
Shoshana Gordon
I edit and art direct photography, illustration and other forms of visual storytelling.
More Stories: Shoshana GordonCengiz Yar
I am a visuals editor at ProPublica.
More Stories: Cengiz Yar
