Lawyer Says 5-Year-Old Twins Are Stuck In ICE Jail: ‘One Is Drawing Disturbing Images’

The detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, the largest detention center in the U.S. for children and families, describe nightmarish conditions: moldy food, contaminated drinking water and limited medical care.

In a letter sent to ProPublica, one child says the only medical advice they get from the doctors is to drink more water. “The worst thing is that it seems the water is what makes people sick here,” he wrote.

At least two cases of measles, a highly contagious and often deadly disease, have been detected in the facility, leading officials to lock down the jail.

“They are literally being treated as prisoners,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) said in a livestreamed video after visiting the facility. “This is a monstrous machine.”

But for many parents, keeping their kids in Dilley is preferable to the alternative: staying in detention — and possibly being deported — without them.

“You’re putting people into an impossible choice,” said Chris Godshall-Bennett, a Washington, D.C.-based civil and prisoner rights lawyer. “They can pursue the freedom of their children at the cost of their separation.”

Since Donald Trump returned to office, the number of children in immigration detention has skyrocketed. About 3,500 people have been held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center since it reopened last year. More than half of those have been children, including a 2-month-old infant.

Godshall-Bennett represents multiple clients at the center, including a woman who has been detained with her five children for nearly nine months. Her youngest kids are 5-year-old twins.

“The mental health toll that this has taken on them is profound,” Godshall-Bennett told HuffPost. “One of the twins is drawing fairly disturbing images, all black and gray with people behind bars.”

Like many people who are being held in detention, the family was seeking asylum, meaning they were afraid of being persecuted in their home country and were looking for safety in the United States. They had been in the U.S. on a tourist visa that expired while the asylum application was still pending. Asylum-seekers’ claims will likely be rejected if they leave the country, so staying past the visa expiration date is the only realistic option.

But Trump’s aggressive anti-immigrant policies have meant that even families seeking asylum run the risk of being sent to detention.

“Overstaying the visa is a technical violation,” Godshall-Bennett said. “These are people that normally wouldn’t be in immigration detention.”

Godshall-Bennett talked to HuffPost about how families are faring inside the notorious detention center, the legal issues at play, and how things have changed during Trump’s second term.

How much of all this is a departure from what was happening during previous administrations?

The Dilley Detention Center was opened during the Obama administration. The idea of detaining families is not new, and they built this detention center for them. It was shut down by the Biden administration and then reopened last year. The difference is one of scale, not fundamental policy. This has always been an aspect of immigration enforcement. The authority has always been there, but it’s been discretionary as to what extent they will actually use that authority.

These are groups of people that normally wouldn’t be an enforcement priority at all.

What would you say life is like inside the detention center for the women and children who are there?

I mean, it’s a jail. The kids are not in school and the parents have to try to parent their children in a facility that is not an appropriate place for children to be.

I know right now, given the measles outbreak, everyone is on lockdown and isolated.

It’s difficult to imagine what the long-term effects of having your first memories be of a place like that. Even when there’s nothing newsworthy happening, other than the fact they’re there, this place is wreaking havoc on these children’s lives.

It’s not a facility that is capable of giving a child everything they need, and I imagine that creates a great deal of stress for parents who have to navigate raising their children in a place that really shouldn’t have any children in it at all.

How much medical care are people getting? Are they letting the measles spread, or are there doctors able to get in there?

It’s my understanding that the two measles cases are being treated, and they put the facility on lockdown to prevent the spread. But I worry that there’s only so much you can do to contain things in a place like that.

You effectively are confining people to their cells, further isolating them from each other and further restricting their freedom in a place they didn’t even have to be in. It’s all because of a disease that has returned because of the policies of this administration and its support of vaccine skepticism. It’s kind of ridiculous that all of that is necessary when they created the problem in the first place.

My understanding is that there is medical care, but I’m always skeptical of everything the federal government says about this place.

It’s my understanding that there are very, very young children there. How common is that?

That’s its purpose; it’s not an aberration. My understanding is that there are a lot of kids there, many around the age of 5. They’re trapped there because their parents have been detained. And the parents are in immigration proceedings. It’s not a foregone conclusion that they need to be detained at all. But the administration is pursuing maximum detention policies, regardless of the individual circumstances.

If they weren’t pursuing maximum detention policies, then people could wait for their next hearings at home while their children are able to go to school?

There are a significant portion of people in removal proceedings who are seeking to remain in the country. They’re pursuing asylum or some other form of relief from removal, and so they are incentivized to go to their court dates and fight their case.

The two main reasons someone can be detained in immigration detention. One is that they’re dangerous, and it’s difficult to think of that applying to a place like Dilley, where they’re all children and their families. The other reason is flight risk, but these are people who have every incentive to go to their hearings. And there are lesser restrictions, like ankle monitors, if you’re really worried. But there’s no reason for it. It’s not a policy. It’s not required by law. It’s discretionary. But they’re doing it anyway.

What’s the legality behind holding children for so long? You mentioned you have clients who have been there for nine months.

The legality is almost irrelevant. But there are limitations on detention of children; they’re not supposed to hold them for very long. However, when you detain their parents, you force people into a situation where they might have a mechanism to get their children out, but they have to choose between that and separation.

One would hope that if the kids can’t be held, they’d release the parents as well. But that’s not been the case.

Even if you wanted to get your kids out, where would they go? Do they even have somebody to go to? And when you consider how rapidly they’re trying to remove people, if your family’s not with you, you could get removed and your kids don’t, and you could end up separated by borders as well. This is the horrible position that people are put in.

Do you get the sense that’s the intention of the federal government? To make it seem like the people are the ones deciding to be in detention with their families?

I’m sure that’s part of it. But I think it’s to maximize pain and distress by imposing detention. I think that’s true in general, but it’s especially true with people with families.

I’m sure that it’s meant to incentivize people to give up on their immigration cases and just leave. I’m sure the government would love that.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.