ICE has detained more than 6,200 children since Trump took office, at least 500 of them three years old or younger, and the average stay keeps growing.
Mothers describe worms and mold in the food, metal bunks in rooms shared with a dozen strangers, kids constantly sick, some cutting themselves or talking about suicide. Two measles cases turned up inside. DHS says detainees are "being provided with proper medical care" and three meals a day evaluated by dieticians.
The country's largest family detention center sits in Dilley, Texas, 72 miles south of San Antonio, run by the private prison company CoreCivic. It holds up to 2,400 parents and children. ICE does not allow journalists inside.
A Venezuelan mother, Maria Betania, was arrested with her two kids while they were walking to the school bus stop. They spent 17 days in Dilley before a federal judge ordered them released.
A pastor in San Antonio who meets detainees' families every week says roughly one in four families in her congregation has had someone arrested and deported.
Around 3,500 people have cycled through Dilley since it reopened, more than half of them minors. That is more people than live in the town of Dilley itself.
A 1997 court settlement limits detention of children to about 20 days. At least 60 kids have been held there for 100 days or longer, among them a 16-year-old Los Angeles student who had planned to try out for varsity tennis and has now spent 123 days locked up after Marco Rubio ordered his family's green cards revoked.
Ariana Velasquez, 14, held with her mother for about 45 days, wrote: "Since I got to this Center all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression."
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