A two-year-old detained in a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, is sick and not getting adequate help, said Joaquin Castro, a Democratic congressman from San Antonio. The boy, Kaleth, has a fever and is not eating the food served at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, which Castro said detainees have complained of having mold and worms.
“When his mother asked for help, the staff said it was all ‘mental’,” Castro wrote in a post on X. “A vulnerable child at the Dilley trailer prison was suffering and ICE denied their reality and their needs. It’s shameful and must stop.”
Dilley has been criticized for not providing adequate care and food for families. In February, the detention center reported two measles cases. It’s the same facility where five-year-old asylum seeker Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were kept for a week after being detained in Minneapolis.
Castro has been calling for the detention center to be “shut down immediately” and has long said Donald Trump’s immigration agenda is inhumane.
The congressman has sought to get several immigrants released from Dilley. Castro said: “I am calling for ICE to provide proper medical care to Kaleth and to release him and his mother Joani immediately.”
Earlier this week, Castro posted a video on his social media underscoring his demand to close Dilley. “As a country we have made the decision to commodify child suffering,” he said. “We have allowed investors to profit from the imprisonment of innocent children. Some are as young as two months old. We must shut down the Dilley trailer prison and #FreeOurChildren.”
The facility, formally titled the South Texas Family Residential Center, is run on behalf of ICE by the private corrections and detention company CoreCivic, which expects to make $180m annually in revenue from the property through at least March 2030.
Brian Todd, manager of public affairs for CoreCivic, said in February that allegations regarding access to clean drinking water were patently false, and that healthcare was available to all detainees. “The health and safety of those entrusted to our care is the top priority for CoreCivic,” he said.
Children and their parents who have had to spend weeks or months at Dilley have reported shortages of clean drinking water, chronic sleep deprivation and kids struggling for hygiene supplies and prompt medical attention.
A court filing from 15 September gave detailed and disturbing accounts of the lockup’s allegedly inhumane conditions, including descriptions of a “prison-like environment” where the guards reportedly call people imprisoned there “inmates” despite them not being criminals, and said they live in “cell-like trailers”.
Alexandra Villarreal contributed reporting
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