Inside the country's largest immigrant family detention center
Guillermo Contreras Aug. 12, 2018 Updated: Aug. 13, 2018 6:52 a.m.
Inside the country's largest immigrant family detention...
1of6The South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley is the largest of the nation's three immigration detention centers for families, housing up to 2,400 people.Photo: Molly Hennessy-Fiske /Los Angeles Times
2of6An American flag is set in the middle of the pathway, where Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson toured the new South Texas Family Residential Center, just outside Dilley, Texas. Detained immigrants that are currently being held in Artesia will begin arriving at the Dilley facility within the next two weeks. This pictured center, built as a "man camp" for the oil and gas industry, is a temporary center that will be used until the new facility is completed. The new facility will accomadate 2400 individuals. Monday, Dec. 15, 2014.Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News
3of6Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson toured the new South Texas Family Residential Center, just outside Dilley, Texas. Detained immigrants that are currently being held in Artesia will begin arriving at the Dilley facility within the next two weeks. Monday, Dec. 15, 2014. This pictured facility, which was a "man camp" for the oil industry, will be used for approximatly 45 day until the new facility is completed.Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News
4of6Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson toured the new South Texas Family Residential Center, just outside Dilley, Texas. Detained immigrants that are currently being held in Artesia will begin arriving at the Dilley facility within the next two weeks. Monday, Dec. 15, 2014. This pictured facility, which was a "man camp" for the oil industry, will be used for approximatly 45 day until the new facility is completed in the adjoining lot.Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News
6of6Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, second from left, tours the new South Texas Family Residential Center, just outside Dilley, Texas, with Commander Robert Harris, left, Border Patrol Laredo Sector, Vice Admiral Williams "Dean" Lee, right, and Special Agent David Marwell of Homeland Security Investigations, second from right. Detained immigrants that are currently being held in Artesia will begin arriving at the Dilley facility within the next two weeks. Monday, Dec. 15, 2014. This pictured facility is an oil industry "man camp" that will be used for approximatly 45 days until the new facility is completed in an adjoining lot. The new facility will house 2400 individuals.Photo: Bob Owen, Staff / San Antonio Express-News
DILLEY — The classrooms in this former camp for oil workers about 75 miles south of San Antonio have children's drawings lining the walls and school projects proudly displayed on tabletops, much like at any other school.
The medical and dentist service areas have some of the latest technology, two cafeterias serve all-you-can eat buffet meals that include resident requests and a library is stocked with thousands of books in English and Spanish. It also offers community get-togethers, including Zumba, crocheting classes and movie nights.
While the 1,520 women and children here are free to roam about the campus of 50-plus acres, they are not free to leave.
RELATED: Authorities launch probe into reports of migrant child dying after stay at immigration facility.
Welcome to the South Texas Family Residential Center, a 2,400-bed detention facility in rural Texas that is at the epicenter of the immigration debate.
The privately run facility, operated by Nashville, Tenn.-based CoreCivic under contract for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is the largest of its kind in the nation, and was pressed into service during a heavy influx of undocumented immigrants from Central America in 2014 and 2015 during President Barack Obama's tenure. It cost more than $260 million to open and now has annual operating costs of about $156 million.
The facility receives about 110 new immigrants daily, most of them detained after illegally crossing the border in the Rio Grande Valley. Daniel Bible, field office director for ICE in San Antonio, said Dilley only accepts mothers with children and doesn't take people with criminal records. No men are held here; about 630 fathers and sons are housed in another lockup in rural Karnes County.
Last week, Bible said, the Dilley facility had immigrant families from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Armenia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Belize, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Romania.
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Mothers and their children are assigned to different "neighborhoods" named after animals — Red Parrot, Yellow Frog, etc. — and they share trailers that have rooms with six or 12 bunk beds. Each has a flat-screen TV, a telephone and a sink area. There are communal bathrooms, free washers and dryers, phone bank rooms and even living areas that include treadmills and stationary exercise bicycles.
In other parts of the campus, there are playgrounds, two chapels, day care services and a trailer offering free haircuts.
Every person who arrives gets T-shirts, pants, shorts and baseball caps of various colors that they can use in addition to the clothes they brought with them. They also get an identification card linking them to their immigration cases and an account for loading funds to use at the commissary or to make phone calls, which cost about 7 cents a minute for local calls and 35 cents a minute for international calls, plus 23 percent tax.
Even toddlers wear the badges, and they are scanned, for instance, at the cafeteria. That helps staff keep tabs on kids who might be losing weight, said Michael Sheridan, an ICE contracting officer representative who led reporters on a tour of the facility on Thursday.
Women and girls ages 10 and older are given pregnancy tests upon arrival and everyone gets physicals, mental health and dental screenings and immunizations within two weeks, officials said.
The Family Residential Center is intended as a short-stay facility, given an Obama-era court settlement that prohibits families from being held in detention longer than 20 days.
Officials said the average stay is closer to 15 days, though Bible acknowledged some have been kept longer than 20 days: "20 days is an average, it's not a hard set date."
In the current fiscal year (2018), 25,000 immigrants have come through its doors.
Many seek asylum. Sheridan said most people at Dilley pass the initial credible-fear screenings and are eventually released to live with relatives already in other parts of the United States.
RELATED: There is a U.S. crisis of empathy on immigration
Since Jan. 1, a few more than 120 people have been deported back to their home countries, Sheridan said.
The Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy of criminally prosecuting all illegal border crossers led to families being separated before public outcry prompted a presidential executive order halting the practice in June. About 10 percent of Dilley's residents were reunited after being separated, officials said.
Inside the high chain-link fence that surrounds the compound, there was no apparent evidence Thursday of the horrors some critics around the nation have levied against the facility. The most recent one came from lawyers for relatives of a young child who they say died "after being detained by ICE in unsanitary conditions" at the Dilley facility. Earlier reports said the toddler caught a respiratory disease from another child there.
Texas child welfare investigators have started an abuse and neglect investigation after the family lawyers finally provided the name of the child, and ICE is now conducting its own query after state officials passed on the information.
Dilley doesn't have a pediatrician on staff around the clock, but two of its three doctors are pediatricians and all are available during day business hours. Other medical staff attend to patients after hours, and ICE has agreements with San Antonio hospitals in case of circumstances requiring more advanced care, Sheridan said.
Agency ground rules prevented reporters from interviewing immigrants being held at the facility. But most immigrants seen Thursday appeared happy — women carried on conversations about dreams and horses outside one trailer, teen girls giggled as they played with toddlers in another area in the yard, while young boys played video games on computers in the library. Detainees can use the computers to check their email and surf the internet, but access to social media sites is restricted.
Sheridan said educational services are provided on contract with FuelEd and the facility has 22 bilingual teachers. Children ages 4 to 17 are given an educational assessment to determine placement. The children are taught under Texas Education Agency curriculum standards, though they don't begin the day with the Pledge of Allegiance as in other schools statewide.
The student-to-teacher ratio is about 20 to 1.
RELATED: Abolishing ICE is not the answer
One of the teachers, Julia Gomez, said the students are "incredibly flexible" given the lapses in education when their parents bring them on their long immigration journey.
"We are preparing them for schools on the outside," Gomez said. "They love coming here, even if it's just for two weeks."
Legal services on site are provided by the Dilley Pro Bono Project, a consortium of nongovernmental agencies and volunteers.
Overall, the facility stresses that residents respect one another, the facility and the staff.
"There are people that are against family detention and people who are pro family detention as an immigration consequence," Bible said. "However, the facility doesn't change. How it operates and what you saw today is how it operates and what it's like every day."
Guillermo Contreras covers federal court and immigration news in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | gcontreras@express-news.net | Twitter: @gmaninfedland
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Guillermo has been with the Express-News for 10 years, and has covered federal court and its investigative agencies for most of that time. He has also covered immigration, minority affairs and legal affairs as part of the projects team here and for other print, TV and radio outlets. Guillermo has also worked in Central America, Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona and California and his work has appeared in various publications, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, New York Post, Newsday, Denver Post and the Albuquerque Journal.
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