March 2, 2026
Parents and children from a detention center in Texas found themselves dropped at a border town shelter with few means to leave.
Kheilin Valero Marcano, Stiven Arrieta Prieto and their 1-year-old daughter, Amalia, felt overjoyed when, in early February, they were allowed to leave the Dilley Immigration Processing Center.
But after spending about two months locked in the prison-like detention facility for immigrant children and their parents in South Texas brush country, the family quickly faced new, unexpected challenges. They were driven more than an hour away to Laredo, on the north bank of the Rio Grande, and dumped at a shelter, with little more than the clothes on their backs. They were 600 miles away from where they had been arrested in El Paso. And even further from California, where they hoped to settle as their immigration case moved forward.