‘It’s hard to know what day it is’: families tell of grim Ice detention in Texas

At the South Texas Family Residential Center, guards allegedly refer to detained immigrant families as “inmates”, spouses aren’t allowed to hold hands, and children don’t know where they can kick around a ball without getting in trouble, according to a stark court filing.

Yet those are minor indignities compared with accounts given to outside monitors of a lack of clean drinking water, sleep, healthy food, privacy, hygiene supplies and appropriate healthcare. Alongside government admissions of what attorneys called “prolonged unexplained detention” at the facility in the remote town of Dilley, Texas anxiety levels for detainees are high.

“It is hard to know what day it is because we have been at Dilley for so long,” one 35-year-old parent told watchdogs who had been sent in to assess the conditions.

Legal experts made a barrage of allegations about illegal deprivations, violations of basic detention standards and humanitarian concerns at the only known Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) center in the US currently holding immigrant families, as initially detailed in part one of the Guardian’s report.

“My main question is: when can I get out of here?” asked an 11-year-old child who had already been detained at Dilley for 53 days, far longer than the general 20-day legal limit for immigrant children in unlicensed facilities, according to the filing in federal court in Los Angeles.

The detainees’ accounts were published earlier this month by attorneys acting as outside monitors for standards of child detention, who visited Dilley four times since it reopened as a family detention facility after Donald Trump returned to the White House with his mass deportation agenda.

The center is run for Ice by the private corrections and detention company CoreCivic, which declined requests for comment on conditions at Dilley and referred the Guardian to Ice, which then referred on to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), from which the Guardian also requested comment but none was forthcoming.

However, CoreCivic, in response to similar allegations made by detainees at a different facility, in California, company spokesperson Brian Todd said that all its facilities “operate with a significant amount of oversight and accountability, including being monitored by federal officials on a daily basis, to ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for every individual”.

Families held at Dilley gave accounts of their experiences, with their names and countries of origin redacted in the publicly available court documents. Some described a “prison-like” environment, even though immigration proceedings are civil matters in the US, not criminal. Detainees spoke of the many rules they endure under lock and key.

“I got in trouble for touching my mom,” one 13-year-old said. “The lady [staff member] said: ‘You can’t touch her.’ And I said: ‘But she’s my mom.’ And she said: ‘You can’t touch her.’”

The Dilley center is surrounded by a metal perimeter fence.

Within, families live in “isolated, cell-like trailers”.

“I tried to sit outside to look at the moon and stars one time, but they wouldn’t let me,” the 13-year-old said.

Adults lamented the struggle to parent and comfort their children without autonomy over their lives, unable to fulfill a kid’s simple requests, like going to a playground to break the monotony, or providing a banana to eat.

“It feels so hard to be a good mother here, where there is so much stress and we have so little control over what happens to us,” said one parent, adding: “I am doing all I can to be strong for my children and take care of them. They do not understand why we have to be in this prison. It is impossible to be a good parent in this place.”

Detainees described a lack of potable water, even when it’s supposedly filtered.

“We just don’t trust that the water is cleanly dispensed and sometimes the water really smells bad. Maybe that is why so many people here are sick,” said one parent.

The paid commissary sells bottled water, but its cost – over a dollar per bottle – is out of reach for many of the families. One parent, who had been detained at Dilley for 42 days, said the available free water “has a strong smell of bleach”. The parent bought bottled water for their toddler but could not afford more for personal consumption. “The staff here will not drink the water, but we do not have any other choice,” the parent told the visiting attorneys, according to the court filing.

The 11-year-old who had been detained for 53 days and asked when they could get out, described the food as “the same, the same, the same”. Another family said they “eat just enough to survive”.

“I don’t eat a lot here and I’ve lost weight since being at this center. I usually do not want to eat because I feel so much anxiety,” a 16-year-old said.

Similarly, a 14-year-old already detained for 54 days with their seven-year-old brother said “the chicken tastes like plastic” and “if I don’t like the food that day, I usually just have bread and water and that’s it”. Their brother had stopped eating, they said, and “my parents had to almost beg the medical staff to give him PediaSure”, a nutritional drink for children.

“Being here has affected my little brother a lot,” the 14-year-old added. “He doesn’t sleep well. He cries all night. Yesterday he had an attack where he would not stop crying from 7pm to 9pm, and he was outside the room crying that he didn’t want to go back in, and he wanted to be free.”

Several families described their children falling behind on their education and development. The onsite school consists mainly of coloring, drawing, painting and doing basic worksheets, with only one hour a day of class for each age group, they said. Many of the children got so bored they stopped attending.

“My parents are so worried for me that we are not studying or able to do anything to support our future here,” said a 13-year-old.

In terms of health, families described inadequate care and medical staff who downplayed illnesses or even disabilities, according to the filing. One nine-year-old with autism was so sensitive to cleaning chemicals and other odors in the bathrooms that he would vomit when he entered.

“Because he would not want to go in there, he would hold it and hold it, and then eventually he would pee his pants. Some days, I would need to change his clothes five or six times,” his parent said, describing the ordeal as “heartbreaking”. The boy started soiling himself and “was in the bathroom crying and yelling and hitting himself”. They had to resort to diapers for the first time since he was two, the court document said.

Meanwhile sleep was chronically elusive for many. One family described frequent checks by guards.

“They come in and out of the room without knocking. Some are polite, but others barge in without warning … They do not turn off the lights at night. It is difficult for my son to sleep because of the lights and … the staff talk on very loud walkie-talkies throughout the night.”

When they did sleep, some families also reported that children suffered from nightmares, but when they went to see the resident mental health staff, they were just told to pray, do breathing exercises and participate in activities.

“The psychologist did not ask what the nightmares were about,” said a parent, whose sons aged eight and 10 were having “so many” bad dreams. “She didn’t check if the boys were thinking about hurting themselves or if they had thoughts about wanting to die. She just said nightmares are normal.”

Part 1: Children left short of clean water and sleep amid ‘prolonged’ detention by Ice, watchdog groups allege