March 25, 2026
First-person accounts paint a bleak picture of the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas.
In January, after ICE detained 5-year-old Liam Ramos—with his blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack—and his father near Minneapolis, the two were sent to the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the nation’s only detention center for families. Located on a flat, desolate stretch of land about an hour south of San Antonio, Dilley is a sprawling collection of trailers run by the private prison company CoreCivic. The facility held as many as 1,400 people, including young children, teenagers, and their parents, earlier this year.