DILLEY, TEXAS — The Trump Administration revived and expanded family detention at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas, where more than 5,000 children and parents have been held over the past year. The administration also issued executive actions directing immigration enforcement against children in the early days of President Donald Trump's second term.

In 2025, the administration attempted to terminate multiple immigration protections for asylum seekers, including humanitarian parole programs, and began apprehending families awaiting court hearings. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said, "The law requires those in the country illegally claiming asylum to be detained pending removal." The spokesperson also denied that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement targets children and said all detainees receive due process and proper medical treatment.

Under President Joe Biden, DHS had designated "protected areas" discouraging ICE and Customs and Border Protection from conducting operations where children gather. The Trump Administration rescinded that designation. Following the rescission, ICE and CBP agents conducted operations at playgrounds, child-care centers, and schools. In March, Democrats in Congress released a report documenting 42 ICE and CBP operations in or around schools, school bus stops, and day-care centers. The Executive Office for Immigration Review also canceled a memo urging immigration judges to adopt child-friendly courtroom procedures, and ICE launched an initiative directing agents to track down unaccompanied migrant children to verify potential trafficking and deport them. "The real through line is a strategic and coördinated effort specifically to target kids, with the goal to make life so unbearable for immigrant families at every point of contact that they feel they have no choice but to leave," said Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center.

On April 1, Human Rights First and RAICES released a report on ICE family detention based on interviews with 35 families detained over the past year. The report described more than a dozen family separations by U.S. immigration enforcement since Trump returned to office, most occurring at Dilley. It also documented accounts of widespread medical neglect of children, including infants, at the facility and alleged that due-process violations led to summary deportations of children and families with credible asylum claims. CoreCivic operates the facility.

Among the detained was 18-month-old Amalia, who was sent to a San Antonio hospital with critically low oxygen levels. She and her mother spent more than a week in intensive care under ICE supervision before being returned to Dilley. Doctors prescribed Amalia medication by nebulizer, but ICE officers confiscated the prescribed medication at the facility. A DHS spokesperson said any claims that Amalia did not receive her medication or proper medical treatment are false. Many children detained at the facility have had severe respiratory illnesses.

Amalia and her parents, Stiven Arrieta Prieto and Kheilin Valero Marcano, were released from detention in early February. On their first weekend out of detention, Valero Marcano said, "I want to be a spokesperson for all the women with children at Dilley who are living with the nerves and desperation of not knowing if their child will survive. So that they won't lose hope. So that they won't keep living in purgatory."

In early April, a family of four from India who had lived in Los Angeles since 2022 had been detained at Dilley for nearly 50 days. At least two families at the facility had been detained for over 100 days. The Flores agreement sets a legal limit of 20 days for holding a child in immigration detention. In January, the average daily population at Dilley exceeded 900; by mid-March, it fell to under 100 before rising again.