The ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, is again at the center of a national fight over the detention of migrant families and children. But for Tania Warner, the controversy is not abstract. It is something she says she lived through with her 7-year-old daughter.
The South Texas Family Residential Center, about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio, reopened in 2025 after the Trump administration revived family detention as part of its broader immigration-enforcement strategy. The facility can hold up to 2,400 people and is operated by private prison company CoreCivic under an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Immigrant rights groups say conditions inside Dilley are harmful and unlawful. A recent report from Human Rights First and RAICES says more than 5,600 people — including parents, children, toddlers and newborns — were held there between April 2025 and February 2026. The groups allege families were detained for months, denied meaningful access to asylum protections, pressured to give up claims, and subjected to threats, poor medical care, inadequate education and psychological harm.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security reject those allegations. Officials say Dilley is safe, humane and family-friendly, and that people held there receive food, medical care, recreation, education and access to phones and legal services. DHS has also argued that some families in custody present immigration-enforcement or national security concerns.
The dispute is sharpened by the Flores settlement, a long-running court agreement that generally limits how long children can be held in immigration custody and requires that they be kept in safe and sanitary conditions.
Warner, a Canadian citizen who lives in Kingsville, Texas, said she believed she was following the law while her immigration case was pending. She said she, her husband and daughter were returning from a baby shower in Raymondville when they stopped at the Sarita Border Patrol checkpoint.
“We didn’t go to Mexico or anything like that,” Warner said. “We just went south of the checkpoint.”
She said agents asked her husband if he was American, scanned her identification, then pulled the family aside. Warner said she believed her documents were in order.
“My status was pending with a lawful presence,” she said. “I was not in the country illegally.”
Warner said she and her daughter were held for more than five hours at the checkpoint, then transferred late at night to a processing center in McAllen. She said they arrived there around 1 a.m.
“They were telling me that we are going to be deported one way or another,” Warner said, “and we can do it the easy way or the hard way.”
After five days in McAllen, Warner said she and her daughter were transferred to Dilley. She said families there included people from Venezuela, Egypt, El Salvador, Russia and other countries.
Warner said the facility did not resemble a child-centered residential setting.
“It is a prison,” she said. “It’s not like being in prison. It’s prison. There’s guards everywhere. They wake you up at 6 a.m. You can’t turn the lights out. You’re in a room with 12 bunk beds.”
Warner said her daughter, who is on the autism spectrum, struggled in the facility. She said children were not allowed stuffed animals or familiar comfort items from home.
“They’re stripped of all of their comfort and all of the things that give them stability,” Warner said.
She said her daughter developed chemical burns from detergent used at the facility and that she had to push for treatment. Warner also said she had to fight for basic accommodations, including noise-canceling headphones and a weighted blanket.
“There was absolutely zero accommodations for special needs children,” she said.
Warner also criticized the education provided inside the facility.
“It’s not school,” she said. “It’s facilitated by a guard.”
She said the experience was confusing and frightening, especially for families without lawyers, money or English-language fluency.
“Most people were terrified and exhausted,” Warner said. “A lot of them didn’t speak English, so it was really difficult for them to navigate the paperwork and navigate their situations.”
Warner said she was eventually released after her family raised money through crowdfunding. She said the bond was $8,500 for her and $1,500 for her daughter, on top of legal costs. But release did not mean freedom from ICE supervision. Warner said she was fitted with an ankle monitor and must attend regular ICE check-ins.
“It was bittersweet,” she said. “I felt like it wasn’t real until I got in the car and we were driving away. I needed the facility to be in my rearview mirror.”
Warner said her daughter is now back home in Kingsville and doing better, surrounded by her pets, her bed and the only home she has known. But Warner said the fear of detention has not gone away.
“My biggest fear is definitely being re-incarcerated,” she said.
For immigrant rights advocates, Warner’s account reflects a broader problem with family detention. For ICE and DHS, Dilley remains a lawful and necessary tool for immigration enforcement. But Warner said people should understand what the facility felt like from the inside.
“It’s not an immigration residential facility,” she said. “The paperwork says 'inmate.' It’s a prison.”
ERCOT and Data Centers
Texas grid operators are preparing for an influx of data centers. In the first quarter of this year alone, nearly 200 proposed data centers and other large energy users requested to join the grid.
But many of these projects may never come to fruition.
Houston Public Media’s Natalie Weber tells us the state’s electric grid manager ERCOT is looking to weed out some speculative projects.
