February 28, 2026
LAREDO, Texas (AP) — A month after ICE agents sent the young Ecuadorian mother and her 7-year-old daughter to a sprawling detention center 1,300 miles from their Minnesota home, they were finally free.
But when the bus pulled up to a migrant shelter in the border city of Laredo, dropping off a half-dozen families lugging bags stuffed with belongings, the stress of recent weeks tracked mother and daughter like the long shadows on that mid-February afternoon.
Night after night inside south Texas’ Dilley Immigration Processing Center with hundreds of other families, the grade-schooler wept and pleaded to know why they were being held.