Illness Is Rampant Among Children Trapped in ICE's Massive Jail in Texas
Amid growing calls from lawmakers and human rights groups to shut down the sprawling Dilley Immigration Processing Center in southern Texas, an analysis shows the number of people incarcerated at the notorious immigration jail for children and families has nearly tripled in recent months.
Texas lawmakers and attorneys for immigrant families say a growing number of children at the facility are suffering in dangerous and inhumane conditions. People incarcerated at Dilley were quarantined after at least two became sick with measles last week. In another recent case, an 18-month-old girl was hospitalized with a life-threatening lung infection after spending two months in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the migrant jail. The girl was reportedly returned to Dilley after spending 10 days at the hospital and denied prescribed medication, according to a federal lawsuit. She was only freed after lawyers filed an emergency petition demanding her release.
As the nation’s main large immigration jail designed to hold families — though the Trump administration is racing to build more — families are transferred from across the country to a remote part of Texas as they wait weeks or months to see an immigration judge. Recent federal data show that the average daily population exploded from an average of 500 people a day in October to around 1,330 a day in late January, according to Detention Reports, a new tool that maps data on 237 immigration jails nationwide.
“This geographic concentration means children and parents arrested in places like Minnesota face detention in rural south Texas, more than 1,000 miles from their communities, legal counsel, and family support networks,” noted Austin Kocher, an immigration data expert at Syracuse University, in a post on February 9. “As many people have said previously, the rural location of detention facilities serves as a barrier to oversight, accountability, and due process.”
ICE does not release the number of children held in its custody, including at Dilley. However, the facility requires at least one parent be held along with each child. Adult women vastly outnumber adult men in the latest data. Kocher estimates that about 800 children are held there on any given day, and a ProPublica investigation estimates Dilley was holding about 750 families as of early February.
https://truthout.org/articles/children-are-getting-sick-inside-ices-massive-family-jail-in-texas/
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Suffering a measles outbreak at Dilley. That could kill a lot of people.
