Democrats says ICE’s notorious Dilley detention center is operating in ‘a new era of secrecy’ under new DHS chief

An immigration detention center in rural Texas is growing “more secretive” under new leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, while young children and families inside continue to face “cruelty” and a lack of adequate medical treatment, according to Democratic members of Congress.

Lawmakers’ recent visit to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center follows growing scrutiny into the sprawling, fenced-in facility run by private prison firm CoreCivic, roughly 70 miles south of San Antonio.

Rep. Joaquin Castro, who has visited Dilley several times, says the facility now operates with a “creepy secrecy” under new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

“Under Secretary Mullin, DHS has become more secretive, not less. And yet the cruelty remains the same,” he said in a briefing after Wednesday’s visit.

“There’s a new era of secrecy at DHS,” he added in a video posted to social media. “Things may be getting worse.”

The number of people in detention with their families temporarily dropped last month to roughly 100 detainees from January’s average daily population of more than 900. But advocates and lawmakers say more than 300 people, including 77 children, are currently locked up at the facility.

Those children join the roughly 6,200 children who were placed in ICE detention since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term.

“What is happening here in Dilley is not a policy debate and it’s not abstract,” according to Zaira Garcia, regional government relati

ons director at advocacy group FWD.us.

“It is mothers, fathers and children being held behind these walls, in conditions that put their health, their safety and their dignity at risk,” she said Wednesday.

When Castro and fellow Democratic Rep. Greg Casar arrived at the facility on Wednesday, employees “pulled out scripts that they had been commanded to read by ICE leadership in Washington, D.C.,” Castro said during a press briefing.

“This was literally a script — kind of like a propaganda script about the place,” he said in a video posted to social media. “It was very creepy. … It matches up with what people told us: When members of Congress go, the place gets locked down.”

He said Dilley staff refused to answer their questions and instead directed them to ask, in writing, to officials in D.C.

The Independent has requested comment from DHS.

Nearly 600 immigrant children have been held inside the detention center with inadequate food and medical care, often far beyond court-mandated limits on how long children can be detained, according to court documents filed last month.

Emergency crews have been dispatched to Dilley nearly a dozen times over the last six months, according to call logs reviewed by ProPublica and NBC News.

Staff at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center have dialed 911 to report children with severe fever, broken bones, respiratory distress, seizures, plunging oxygen levels and other medical emergencies, including a pregnant woman who passed out.

In at least three cases, children were transferred more than an hour away to a pediatric hospital in San Antonio equipped to treat complex or life-threatening conditions.

Medical issues persist at the facility, according to the congressmen.

One five-year-old girl who has been locked up with untreated cavities for several months, Castro said. She has only been prescribed Ibuprofen for the pain for two months, he said.

Another boy who had blood in his stool was only given laxatives, according to Castro.

“There are people there with grave medical conditions that are worsening because of lack of medical treatment and because they’re not taken seriously, because they’re not treated as fully human,” Castro told reporters.

Casar read a statement from a 19-year-old detainee who has been inside Dilley for five months.

“These months have been the hardest of my life,” she said.

The woman from Portland, Maine, is a first-year college student studying to be a nurse, Casar said. “The uncertainty, the fear and the loneliness have been overwhelming,” she said.

The Dilley compound first opened during Barack Obama’s administration to support the wave of families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, though Joe Biden’s administration stopped holding families at the facility in 2021.

The Trump administration reopened the facility as law enforcement agencies began pursuing immigrants with families who have spent years living in the country’s interior.

Liam Conejo Ramos, a five-year-old from Minnesota, was detained at Dilley with his father in January after their arrest in suburban Minneapolis, an incident captured in a now-viral image of the preschooler standing in his frozen driveway. Liam grew ill and became lethargic while in custody, according to his father and members of Congress who visited the family.

The detention center also came under fire after the hospitalization of two infants housed there, including a two-year-old girl, whose parents say she was denied medicine despite her health rapidly deteriorating.

ICE also confirmed at least two measles cases inside the facility earlier this year after lawyers representing immigrants inside raised alarms over the possibility of an outbreak and a wave of reported illnesses among children.

In a lengthy statement to “debunk” reports about conditions at the facility, ICE said the agency provides “the best healthcare illegal aliens have received in their entire lives” in most cases.

The agency’s acting director Todd Lyons said the facility is “designed specifically to house family units together in a safe, structured and appropriate environment.”

“What’s important for people to remember is that ICE detains to deport — so detention is not punitive, and Dilley is not a ‘correctional center’ or anything like that,” he said in February. “It’s a place where families who have been in the U.S. illegally can get medical care, educational services, recreational opportunities and essential daily living needs while they await deportation.”