Harrowing 911 calls from ICE detention heart reveal kids unable to breathe, struggling seizures and damaged bones: report

Emergency crews have been dispatched to a sprawling immigration detention center holding a growing number of immigrant families with young children, including infants, nearly a dozen times over the last six months.

Staff at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in rural Texas have dialed 911 to report children with severe fever, broken bones, respiratory distress, seizures, plunging oxygen levels and other medical emergencies, including a pregnant woman who passed out, according to 911 call logs and audio reviewed by NBC News and ProPublica.

In at least three cases, children were transferred more than an hour away to a pediatric hospital in San Antonio equipped to treat complex or life-threatening conditions, according to the logs reviewed by NBC.

The call logs follow growing scrutiny into conditions at the family detention center at Dilley, a sprawling, fenced-in facility run by private prison firm CoreCivic roughly 70 miles south of San Antonio.

Liam Conejo Ramos, a five-year-old from Minnesota, was detained there with his father last month after their arrest in suburban Minneapolis, an incident captured in a now-viral image of the preschooler standing in his frozen driveway. Liam grew ill and became lethargic in custody, according to his father and members of Congress who visited the family.

The detention center has also recently come under fire after the hospitalization of two infants at the facility, including a two-year-old girl whose parents say was denied medicine as her health rapidly deteriorated after they arrived there.

Last month, a two-month-old boy with bronchitis was deported to Mexico with his mother and sister shortly after he was released from a hospital during their stint at Dilley.

ICE also confirmed at least two measles cases inside the facility last month after lawyers representing immigrants inside raised alarms over the possibility of an outbreak and a wave of reported illnesses among children.

The number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody has exploded since Trump returned to the White House, with more than 60,000 people being held at any given point inside detention centers across the country.

The federal government does not publicly disclose information about children in immigration custody, though data from advocacy groups, attorneys and investigative news organizations suggest that a growing number of those detainees are children.

The compound first opened during Barack Obama’s administration to support the wave of families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, though Joe Biden’s administration stopped holding families at the facility in 2021.

President Donald Trump’s administration reopened the facility as law enforcement agencies began pursuing immigrants with families who have spent years living in the country’s interior.

In a statement to NBC News, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, for the private prison contractor that operates the facility, said no child “has been denied medical treatment or experienced a delayed medical assessment.”

Homeland Security officials have also repeatedly defended medical care provided to detained immigrants.

In a lengthy statement this week to “debunk” reports about conditions at the facility, ICE said the agency provides “the best healthcare illegal aliens have received in their entire lives” in most cases.

The agency’s acting director Todd Lyons said the facility is “designed specifically to house family units together in a safe, structured and appropriate environment.”

“What’s important for people to remember is that ICE detains to deport — so detention is not punitive, and Dilley is not a ‘correctional center’ or anything like that,” he said. “It’s a place where families who have been in the U.S. illegally can get medical care, educational services, recreational opportunities and essential daily living needs while they await deportation.”

Attorneys representing the family of 18-month old Amalia and her parents, who were released from Dilley hours after a lawsuit was filed earlier this month, called her detention “outrageous.”

Amalia became so “gravely ill” while inside that she was hospitalized for 10 days with life-threatening respiratory illnesses, according to the lawsuit. Staff at the detention center then withheld her medication after returning her to the facility, lawyers said.

“ICE continued to detain Baby Amalia during a measles outbreak and in a setting where she was exposed to other infectious viruses,” Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, told The Independent this month. “Hundreds of children and families remain detained and at risk at Dilley. This is unconscionable.”

“Detaining immigrant children in inhumane and degrading conditions is illegal, unconstitutional, and un-American,” she added. “Children and families at Dilley must be released.”

Source: independent.co.uk