Detention Center in Dilley, Texas: Conditions, Measles, and Legal Fights

The detention center in Dilley, Texas — formally the South Texas Family Residential Center — is the largest immigration family detention facility in the United States, with a capacity of 2,400 people. It sits on a modular campus about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio, is operated by the private prison company CoreCivic under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and reopened in April 2025 after being shuttered the year before. Since reopening it has drawn sustained criticism over medical care, prolonged detention of children, and a measles outbreak inside the facility.

What the Facility Is and Who Runs It

The Dilley center opened in December 2014 and has held migrant families apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border for most of the decade since. The physical structures — dormitories, trailers, and modular buildings surrounded by fencing — are owned by Target Hospitality Corporation, which also provides food service, laundry, and security.¹ Day-to-day operations, including recreation, counseling, and medical care, are handled by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America.²

CoreCivic managed the site continuously from 2014 until August 2024, when the Biden administration terminated the contract and idled the facility. After the second Trump administration took office in January 2025, ICE moved to reopen it. In March 2025, CoreCivic announced a new amended intergovernmental services agreement with the City of Dilley and ICE, running through March 2030 with options for extension. At full activation the contract is expected to generate roughly $180 million in annual revenue for CoreCivic, medical services included.² Representative Adelita Grijalva put the monthly figure at $15 million after a May 2026 tour of the facility.³

Families started arriving again in April 2025. Between October 2025 and January 2026 the detained family population across ICE grew from 425 to 1,304, and nearly half of all children detained by ICE during the current administration have been held at Dilley.⁴⁵ A joint RAICES and Human Rights First report documented more than 5,600 people passing through Dilley between April 2025 and February 2026.⁶

How Long Families Are Being Held

The 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement requires the federal government to hold migrant children in the least restrictive setting appropriate, prioritize their release to family, and provide clean water, food, medical care, and sanitary conditions. Courts have generally read Flores to cap child detention at about 20 days. Dilley has been a focal point of Flores disputes since it opened.

Recent numbers indicate detention well beyond that window. A ProPublica analysis found that about 300 children sent to Dilley by the Trump administration have been held for over a month, with documented cases running 45, 50, 60, and more than 100 days, and one child held over eight months.⁷ Court filings by plaintiffs’ counsel in the Flores case, drawing on December 2025 and January 2026 data, showed nearly 600 children detained for more than 20 days, 121 for over 50 days, and 38 for over 100 days.⁸ A February 2026 academic report found that the average stay for families with a “credible threat of return” reached 136 days in December 2025.⁴

ICE told the court that from November 2025 through February 2026 Dilley was in “full compliance” with Flores, reporting no critical incidents, hospitalizations, or lockdowns. Plaintiffs’ attorneys called the facility “woefully out of compliance” and filed contradicting evidence.⁸

Conditions Inside

ProPublica reported in February 2026 that families are housed in shared rooms with hard metal bunks and that lights are left on around the clock. Parents and children described poor food quality, with multiple accounts of finding worms and mold in meals. One cafeteria offering was described as “a cup of yellowish stew and a hamburger patty in a plain bun.”⁷ Letters written by detained children in January 2026 echoed the accounts. A nine-year-old described the food as tasting like “cardboard,” and children reported crowded rooms shared by multiple families.⁹ Attorneys and advocates have described the tap water as foul-smelling and blamed it for stomach problems.¹⁰

Children have described a sense of constant surveillance. A nine-year-old told ProPublica, “there’s always, always an officer around, like, bothering me. I can’t go anywhere.” A fourteen-year-old wrote: “I have never felt so much fear to go to a place as I feel here. Since I got to this center, all you will feel is sadness and mostly depression.”¹¹

DHS has disputed these characterizations. Officials said detainees receive three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, and toiletries, and that “no one is denied medical care.” CoreCivic called health and safety a “top priority” and said allegations of poor drinking water are “patently false.”⁹¹⁰ A June 2017 DHS Office of Inspector General report, based on unannounced 2016 inspections when the facility held 1,190 detainees, found that Dilley “generally met” ICE’s family residential standards and made no recommendations.¹² Advocates argue conditions have deteriorated markedly under current population levels and policy.

Medical Care

Medical care has drawn the sharpest scrutiny. Since reopening in April 2025, at least 1,000 complaints of poor medical care have been lodged, according to the Texas Tribune.¹⁰ RAICES, the on-site legal aid provider, reported that clients raised medical concerns at least 700 times between August 2025 and early 2026, citing delays, dismissals, and lack of follow-up.⁷

Documented cases include a six-year-old with leukemia who had limited access to care while detained and a two-month-old boy hospitalized after choking on his own vomit and developing bronchitis. The infant was discharged and later deported.¹⁰ Children’s letters described being told by medical staff to drink water for illnesses, or that they were “old enough” to fight fevers without medication.⁷ NBC News obtained 911 audio and EMS logs showing that emergency crews responded to the facility at least 11 times since mid-September 2025 for children in medical distress, with conditions ranging from respiratory distress and seizures to high fevers and possible allergic reactions. Most children were taken to Frio Regional Hospital, and at least three cases required transfer to a specialized pediatric hospital in San Antonio, more than an hour away. One 17-month-old girl with pneumonia, COVID-19, and RSV spent over a week at Methodist Children’s Hospital in San Antonio.¹³

Schooling

Classes at the facility are limited to 12 students per session, last one hour, use mixed age groups, and are assigned first-come-first-served. Children described lessons as boring or aimed at much younger students, and one student alleged an instructor used a social studies lesson to question him about immigration policy. Others reported little or no schooling at all. DHS maintained that children have access to teachers, classrooms, and curriculum booklets.⁷⁹

The January 2026 Measles Outbreak

In late January 2026, two detainees at Dilley tested positive for active measles infections. Federal officials halted all movement inside the center, placed some migrants under quarantine, and canceled in-person legal visits. The facility housed more than 1,400 people at the time, including infants as young as two months old.¹⁴ Health experts warned that shared sleeping quarters and communal dining made further spread likely.¹⁵ Representative Joaquin Castro and legal advocates called for the facility to be shut down or for uninfected detainees to be moved to sites with better medical capacity.

Legal Fights and Political Pushback

In May 2025, the federal government filed a motion to terminate the Flores Settlement altogether. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee denied that motion on August 15, 2025. The government appealed to the Ninth Circuit, where briefing was complete and the government was seeking expedited oral argument as of early 2026.¹⁶ Separately, in July 2025 President Trump signed a legislative package appropriating $45 billion over four years for detention expansion, with provisions that could allow indefinite family detention and potentially bypass Flores protections.¹⁷

On May 5, 2026, Representative Grijalva, Representative Castro, and other House Democrats toured Dilley. Grijalva reported observing “inhumane treatment, neglect, and a complete disregard for basic human dignity.” The delegation spoke with a mother unable to get medical updates on her infant in intensive care and a father whose son had a heart murmur.³ The lawmakers called on DHS to release detained families, close the facility, increase congressional oversight, pause additional ICE hiring, and halt further detention expansion.¹⁸

The administration has resisted such oversight. ICE issued a policy in June 2025 requiring at least 72 hours’ notice for congressional visits and asserted that field offices are exempt from oversight laws. The administration also eliminated the Office of the Immigration Ombudsman and the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, both of which had previously played oversight roles for immigration detention.¹⁹

Amnesty International launched a public campaign in May 2026 calling Dilley “cruel, dangerous, and inhumane” and urging supporters to write to the Secretary of Homeland Security demanding the facility’s immediate closure. Amnesty identified Dilley as the only migrant family detention facility in the country and alleged that most families are deported without speaking to an attorney or appearing before a judge, citing alarming weight loss in infants, family separation during detention, and denial of medical care.²⁰ An April 2026 joint report from RAICES and Human Rights First described “inhumane conditions, routine mistreatment, and due process violations” and called for permanent closure.⁶

Dilley and the Wider Expansion of Family Detention

Dilley is one of two family detention centers currently operating in the United States. The other is the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Karnes City, Texas, operated by the GEO Group with a capacity of roughly 830 beds. Both were reopened in March 2025 after the Biden administration had closed or repurposed them, and together they represent about 3,230 beds of family detention capacity.¹⁷ A third facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania, was historically used for family detention but is no longer operational for that purpose.

The Trump administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2027 includes funding for up to 30,000 family detention beds and a broader expansion to over 100,000 total immigration detention beds, funded at $45 billion. The administration has used no-bid contracts citing “compelling urgency” to bypass competitive bidding for much of the buildout.¹⁹ Dilley, as the largest existing family site and the focus of active Flores litigation, will remain central to how those plans play out.

1
PR Newswire. Target Hospitality Provides Update on South Texas Family Residential Center
2
CoreCivic. CoreCivic Announces Resumption of Operations at South Texas Family Residential Center
3
Office of Rep. Grijalva. Rep. Grijalva Visits Dilley Detention Center
4
ASU Center for Education Policy. The Scars of Family Detention and Separation in the U.S. Immigration System
5
The Marshall Project. ICE Kids Detention Over 6,200
6
Human Rights First. A New Era of ICE Family Prisons
7
ProPublica. Life Inside ICE Dilley Children
8
Children’s Rights. Flores Counsel Responds to Federal Status Report
9
ProPublica. ICE Dilley Children Letters
10
Texas Tribune. ICE Detention Deaths Texas
11
Democracy Now. ProPublica Report on ICE Dilley Children
12
DHS Office of Inspector General. Results of OIG FY 2016 Spot Inspections of ICE Family Detention Facilities
13
NBC News. 911 Calls From Kids Struggling to Breathe at ICE Detention in Texas
14
Texas Tribune. Measles at Dilley Immigrant Detention Facility
15
STAT News. Measles Outbreak at Immigration Detention Center Was Preventable
16
Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Flores Settlement
17
Forum Together. Family Detention Under the Second Trump Administration
18
FWD.us. House Democrats Call for Release of Families and Children From Dilley
19
Brennan Center for Justice. Budget Bill Massively Increases Funding for Immigration Detention
20
Amnesty International. USA: Shut Down Migrant Family Detention Center