For decades, detaining undocumented immigrant families has been a controversial enforcement tactic. Critics of “family detention” say young children suffer from confinement. Supporters say locking up their families while awaiting deportation will send a harsh message about the consequences of illegal entry into the United States.
Now, after it has stopped being used under the Biden administration, family detention is being revived by President Trump as his administration moves forward with promises to crack down on immigration.
The family has recently begun arriving at detention facilities in southern Texas, and immigration lawyers expect more people to be brought in over the next few days. A second detention center, also in southern Texas, is ready for families.
Each facility is set up to accommodate thousands of people. At one site, multiple families are being detained in rooms with four to eight bunk beds and shared bathroom facilities, lawyers say.
Family detention was used during the previous Trump and Obama administrations, with children being offered medical and educational guidance. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the same services will be offered at reopened facilities.
Most of the previously detained families were Central Americans who recently crossed the southern border, and many were expected to be deported quickly, unless they sought asylum and expressed credible fear of returning to their home country.
With quiet borders and extremely low illegal intersections, immigration enforcement has shifted inside the country and made the Trump administration's pledge to do massive deportation into good.
It led to the arrest of people who had connections to communities who worked or attended school before their families were taken to federal custody. And some of them are tied to a newly reopened detention center in Kerns, Texas, and a soon-to-return detention center in Dilly, Texas, south of San Antonio.
Families crossing illegally across the United States with young children have long presented particularly troubling legal and political challenges to the White House and the federal government, as minors are guaranteed special protections.
When he first took office in 2017, Trump was quick and aggressive in trying to curb the border crossings, with many arrivals being family. However, after his administration began to separate immigrant children from his parents, the public protests were so loud that the White House eventually stopped practicing.
Now, back to another semester, Trump and his advisors have revealed that they plan to make family migration a key target, and resuming detention is an effort to stop families from entering the United States.
Border Emperor Thomas D. Homan said the family's detention must be resurrected. He also showed the administration would go to court to challenge a long-standing agreement that would limit how long immigrant children can be detained.
Asked if she was personally comfortable with family detention practices, Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem suggested that she had the option to return to her country if her family didn't want to be detained. “We've set up a system and a website, and people here illegally can register, and we can go home on our own and unite our families,” she told CBS News this month.
Many human rights and religious groups consider family detention to be inhumane and ineffective. Immigration attorneys point to a long history of lawsuits relating to due process violations at the facility, inadequate medical care, and sexual abuse allegations. Authorities say that in many cases, the family was detained within two weeks at the facility when it last opened. Immigration attorneys say the length of detention varies, with some families being held for several months.
Child Rights Attorney Leecia Welch has been visiting detention centres for many years to ensure that the government complies with its legal obligation to properly care for children.
“I spoke to hundreds of children during my custody, and their stories still bother me,” Welch said. “They shared that they rarely go out and see the sun, that they are cold, have no toys and are left in dirty clothes.”
Two family detention centers in Texas are run by US customs and private prison companies that have contracted with immigration enforcement. The Dilley site, run by Corecivic, can maintain 2,400 people. The other is Karnes' 1,328-bed facility, managed by Geo Group.
The Texas-based organization, Center for Refugee and Immigration Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, said its attorneys had discovered more than 12 families at the Kerns facility. Migrants came from several countries, including Angola, Brazil, Colombia, Iran, Romania and Russia, wherever they were in three weeks or ten years.
The Venezuelan family, with two children, 6 and 8, was first sent to Karnes after opening earlier this month. After nearly two years in Ohio, they had decided to move to Canada when Trump took office, saying their lawyer, Laura Flores Dixit, will manage lawyers for legal advocacy group, American Gateway.
Crossing the northern border, the family was intercepted by Canadian officials and returned to the United States. They were detained for 20 days at a Buffalo border facility, she said.
Flores-Dixit said it was merciless to see families looking to leave the US in lengthy detention with young children. “Kid restraining children is by no means a humanitarian solution,” she said.
Family detention faces legal obstacles in both Republican and Democrat administrations. The University of Texas, Austin University School of Law and the American Civil Liberties Union filed some of the earliest lawsuits against the practice after former Republican President George W. Bush opened a family detention center northeast of Austin in Hutt, Texas in 2006.
Former Democrat President Barack Obama resumed practices on a much larger scale in fall of 2014 amid a surge in families across the border after fleeing gang violence. He opened the facility in Kerns and Dilly, and within months he opened another facility in Artesia, New Mexico. As a result, federal immigration officials have closed the Artesia facility as a result of criticism of the delay in the legitimate process. All three were used under the Trump administration, but the legal challenges limit the time families were locked up.
After President Biden took office in 2021 and committed a humanitarian approach to immigration, his administration began releasing his family from detention facilities. But the Biden administration restored practices in 2023 when officials tackled an authoritarian government and increased immigrant families who fled poverty.
Sheila McNeill Contributed research.
