Congressman Joaquín Castro: Bearing Witness in the Dilley, Texas Detention Center, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Congressman Joaquín Castro: Bearing Witness in the Dilley, Texas Detention Center

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

February 23, 2026

When Joaquín Castro speaks about what he witnessed in Dilley, Texas, he is not speculating—he is bearing witness. He has reported that eight women are currently pregnant inside the South Texas Family Residential Center, a federal immigration detention facility funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and operated under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Eight pregnancies unfolding behind barbed wire.

These women remain largely out of public view, their prenatal care subject to conditions we can only imagine. As Castro emphasized during his February 20 visit, detention centers are not designed to safeguard maternal health. They are designed to confine.

He has also raised serious concerns about CoreCivic, the private corporation operating the facility, citing failures to provide even basic dental and general medical care to those detained. BlackRock is its largest shareholder. The land and structures are owned by Target Hospitality. The City of Dilley neither owns nor manages the site.

Originally opened in 2014 for family detention, the center houses hundreds of migrants — primarily women and children — and has long faced scrutiny over health care, living conditions, and the well-being of children held there.

If routine medical care is already inadequate, what does that mean for women who require consistent prenatal monitoring, proper nutrition, rest, and emergency responsiveness? What happens if complications arise?

The moral gravity deepens when we remember Liam Cornejo Ramos—and now two-month-old baby Juan Nicolas, reportedly suffering from bronchitis, who was recently deported to Mexico. An ill infant deported. Pregnant women detained. Children experiencing psychological, emotional, and physical harm in confinement.

A drawing shared with Congressman Castro by a child
during his visit who is currently held in detention.

These are not bureaucratic footnotes. They are human lives shaped by policy decisions and corporate contracts. When health care becomes secondary to detention quotas and profit margins, we move into dangerous territory.

Castro’s testimony pulls back the curtain. If these women are kept out of sight, they must not be kept out of conscience. Dilley is more than a point on a map. It is a test of our collective humanity. What we tolerate there, especially for pregnant women and sick children, will define us long after the headlines fade.

This is the first report of a child that has died in the context of the detention center in Dilley, Texas.  I'm sure more details will be coming out.

This is horrific and unacceptable. What else is happening—or not happening that should be happening like basic care—in these detention centers?   Transparency and accountability is a MUST or more children will die!  

-Angela Valenzuela

First Child Detained by Trump Reportedly dies due to ‘Possible Negligence’

Update 3:33pm, Aug. 1, 2018 Eastern: HillReporter has just learned, via the Washington Post, that the The American Immigration Lawyers Association has confirmed that a child did in fact die shortly after being released from the ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas.  This is what AILA had to say:

“AILA has learned that a toddler died soon after release from the Dilley South Texas Family Residential Center,” Gregory Z. Chen, director of government relations for the 15,000-member association, said in a statement. “We do not have information on the cause of death or information that confirms a connection between medical treatment at STFRC and this death.”

Attorney group: Child died ‘soon after’ release from ICE family 

detention facility

By Maria SacchettiAugust 1 at 2:34 PMEmail the author

The American Immigration Lawyers Association said Wednesday that a migrant toddler died shortly after being released from an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Dilley, Tex.

“AILA has learned that a toddler died soon after release from the Dilley South Texas Family Residential Center,” Gregory Z. Chen, director of government relations for the 15,000-member association, said in a statement. “We do not have information on the cause of death or information that confirms a connection between medical treatment at STFRC and this death.”

Chen did not name the child or say when the alleged death occurred, and The Washington Post was unable to independently verify the death.

ICE said Wednesday that it could not investigate the situation without the child’s name or other information. However the agency made clear that no child died while in its care.

“Reports that a child died in ICE custody at Dilley are false,” the agency tweeted

Chen said the association’s lawyers have “seen ongoing inadequacies in the standard of care provided to mothers and children in Dilley, and have filed complaints with the government raising these concerns.”

[Autopsy of a debacle: What went wrong with Trump’s family separations]

Word that a child may have died emerged on social media late Tuesday and spread quickly on the Internet, igniting fresh outrage weeks after the Trump administration halted its controversial practice of separating parents and children after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

Hundreds of separated families have been reunited in recent days at Dilley and at least one other ICE family detention center. Those centers also house families taken into custody at the border but not separated by the government. Because there is so little information available about the child who reportedly died, it is impossible to say whether that child was among the minors who had been separated.

“Without a name or more specific information, we are unable to research this allegation,” ICE spokeswoman Danielle Bennett said in a statement. “That doesn’t make the allegation true, just impossible to refute.”

Dilley is the largest of ICE’s three family detention centers, with a capacity of about 2,400 people. It is located about an hour southwest of San Antonio.

A June 2017 report by the Homeland Security inspector general said the family detention centers are “clean, well-organized, and efficiently run.” The report also found that the agency was working to address “the inherent challenges of providing medical care and language services” in detention.

A Houston immigration lawyer, Mana Yegani, tweeted late Tuesday that a girl, who had suffered a respiratory illness while at Dilley, had died soon after her release.

“The child died following her stay at an ICE Detention Center, as a result of possible negligent care and a respiratory illness she contracted from one of the other children,” the tweet said. She added that the girl had a grandmother in New Jersey.

Yegani said she learned of the death online through a D.C. lawyer, Melissa Turcios.

In an email to The Post, Turcios said she is a friend of the child’s family and is helping them to obtain pro bono legal counsel but had no further comment.