DILLEY — A sign in the window at the post office in Dilley, Texas, reads the town motto: “A Slice of the Good Life.”
Just a few thousand people live in this small, rural community about an hour and 15 minutes from the U.S. Mexico border. But good paying jobs can sometimes still be hard to come by, said Reynaldo Treviño, who was born here.
Agriculture is key to the county’s economy. The oil business is still steady. Folks can work at the fast food restaurant, Treviño remarked, chatting at the local Burger King on a Monday afternoon.
Jobs at the immigration detention center, he said, pay better.
“I don’t see anything wrong with that individual working there if he has an economic decision to make,” said Treviño, a retired Air Force civilian contractor who now chairs the local Democratic party.
Local voters here went for Donald Trump last year — more than 60% of those in the county who turned out. This, plus the financial benefits of the facility, Treviño said, make community leaders reluctant to be critical of the facility: “A lot of the political folks will stay neutral.”
Texas has become an enthusiastic partner in President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. More immigrants are being detained here than any other state — about 11,000 people in its 20 facilities as of this month — and state leaders have also offered the administration land to build more.
Now, two facilities in South Texas are at the center of Trump’s plans to bring back the policy of detaining and deporting migrant families.
The detention center in Dilley, called the South Texas Family Residential Center and run by private prison operator CoreCivic, will reopen soon. It can house up to 2,400 people. A second facility in nearby Karnes City is already detaining families.
Dilley City Administrator Henry Arredondo understands the financial impact better than most. When the Biden administration closed Dilley detention center last summer, Arredondo said the city lost 500 to 600 jobs, money from hotels and sales tax revenue.
But, he acknowledged, the issue of family detention is sensitive.
“The human beings that are going to be there,” Arredondo said, “they need to be treated with dignity and respect.”
Texas and Trump
Family detention centers are controversial.
Child behavioral experts say keeping children in these facilities deprives them of regular activities like going to school and playing with other kids. It can also affect their mental health and psychological development.
In 2021, the Biden administration ended the practice of holding families in detention. The facility in Dilley, which housed only adults after this policy change, was eventually shuttered because of high operating costs.
About 100 miles due east, in Karnes City, families are already being held at the immigrant detention center there.
The GEO Group, another private prison company, operates the 1,328 facility. It recently announced it had updated its contract with the federal government to detain a “mixed population” — which means they’ll house families instead of only adult men.
It’s unclear how many families are detained there now.
The GEO Group referred questions to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE did not return emails or calls from The Texas Newsroom.
Asked about the families that will be detained at these facilities, Gov. Greg Abbott said Texas will work closely with Trump “to secure the border.”
“Abbott fully supports the Trump Administration using every tool and strategy to aid in the deportation of illegal immigrants,” Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement.
Venezuelan family detained
Laura Flores-Dixit, managing attorney of the nonprofit American Gateways, represents one of the families at the Karnes facility.
She said the family of four, with kids ages 6 and 8, is from Venezuela and was seeking political asylum.
According to her account, they arrived at a U.S. port of entry about a year and a half ago and received a notice to appear in immigration court scheduled for a later date. When they showed up to court on that day, she said, they learned they weren’t in the court system and then they tried but failed to file a new asylum application.
“So here they were in this limbo. They’re trying to do the right thing being told that they can’t,” Flores-Dixit said in an interview with The Texas Newsroom in her office in San Antonio. “And then, in comes a new administration that says that people [who] do not have their application filed and in process that they should just self deport.”
The family, who was living in Ohio, tried to do just that, she said. They headed to a Canadian port of entry to try to request asylum there but Flores-Dixit said they were detained and turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection — which sent them to Texas.
“We're immensely concerned about children being detained at any time,” Flores-Dixit said. “It's our fervent belief that there's no humane way to detain children.”
‘What goes on behind those walls’
The Karnes County Immigration Processing Center is a flat sprawling building, tightly secured with black metal fencing, gates and cameras along a two-lane farm market road.
Mike Guerrero is having lunch a mile away at Becky’s Cafe downtown. He’s a frequent customer and a lifetime resident of the county. Guerrero said just about everyone in this area knows someone who immigrated — legally or illegally — and he worries about the detained kids.
“That'd be a good idea to house the whole families in those [centers], until they decide, you know, what they're going to do with them,” Guerrero said. “I don't agree in separating the kids.”
Like Dilley, Karnes County voted conservatively in 2024. Nearly four in five voters here chose Trump last year.
Also like Dilley, Karnes County Judge Wade Hedtke pointed to economics when asked about the detention center here. The GEO Group has been a good partner for the county for 20 years, he said, bringing good-paying jobs to the area.
“They’ve employed a lot of our locals,” Hedtke said. “But as far as what goes on behind those walls, the county doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
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