Backed by a $45 billion federal expansion, a largely privatized detention system is incarcerating thousands of children and families, often for weeks or months at a time.
As a mother and former U.S. diplomat defending international human rights under Democrat and Republican administrations over decades, I’ve witnessed the immense and dehumanizing toll that rights-abusing governments exact on children.
I’ve met young escapees from North Korea who shared horrific accounts of generational punishment inflicted by one of the world’s most repressive regimes. I’ve heard firsthand accounts from Ukrainian youth subjected to Russian re-education and abduction after Putin’s 2022 further invasion. I’ve met teenage girls from Gaza, who described the severe impact of Israeli collective punishment and blockades on their physical and mental well-being, nearly a decade before the Oct. 7 attacks.
Returning home to my two strong-willed daughters, I drew some comfort that they would not have to bear witness at home to the kind of injustice I witnessed overseas—until now.
As we ramp up for Mother’s Day in the United States, children in this country are being locked up in immigration detention—not just as policy, but as part of a growing, for-profit system. American tax dollars are subsidizing this extension of collective punishment to the youngest among us, including babies and toddlers, here at home.
Making it possible is the $45 billion cash infusion U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received from Congress last year for detention operations. Over 90 percent of facilities are privately run.
One ICE corporate partner, CoreCivic, reported $2.5 billion in 2025 revenue, including $180 million from its Dilley Immigration Processing facility, the sole destination for U.S. warehousing of families. Dilley is where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was sent after ICE agents detained him and his father outside their Minnesota home—galvanizing Americans aghast by the image of a child in a bunny hat taken into federal custody.
But Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were not alone. This month, Human Rights First and RAICES published a new report, “A New Era of ICE Family Prisons,” documenting the unjust, prolonged and abusive detention of over 5,600 children and parents at Dilley since the Trump administration reopened it in April 2025.
Extensive interviews of detained families reveal patterns of harm and denial of due process that shock the conscience and demand accountability. Mothers fleeing Russian or Chinese repression reported forced separation from their children or ICE threats to send their children to foster care as a means of pressuring them to return home to certain harm. Other families reported denial of essential medical care; lack of access to clean water; and cruel indifference when medical crises occurred.
The median age of children of families we interviewed at Dilley is 7, and their median detention period was nearly two months, though some were held for 180 days or more. Child detainees reported despair, fear, sleep deprivation, and physical and mental health afflictions, compounded by lack of schooling. Those children now face the prospect of indefinite detention due to the Trump administration’s ongoing defiance of court orders regarding the Flores Settlement Agreement mandating release of children and their parents from immigration custody within 20 days and minimum standards of care.
Meanwhile, 121 pregnant, postpartum and nursing women were detained in ICE custody as of February 2026. Our reporting describes the harrowing experience of one Haitian mother detained at Dilley, whom Customs and Border Protection arrested and separated from her nursing infant, a U.S. citizen. Although her baby stopped eating and was allergic to formula alternatives, ICE refused to facilitate transfer of the mother’s breastmilk outside the facility to feed her baby. That mother and child were separated for over 100 days, as of March.
Documenting these harms is not enough, which is why Human Rights First and RAICES put forth a straightforward, four-point plan to redress rights violations underwritten by our tax dollars:
- Close Dilley and any other DHS facilities intended to incarcerate children and their parents.
- Cease separation of parents from their children or threats of separation as a means of pressuring parents into abandoning their legal claims.
- Adopt community-based and non-carceral alternatives for families, which are far more cost effective and humane and ensure high rates of compliance.
- Create strong legislative protections to prohibit family detention, treat children and adults with dignity, and ensure minimum basic health and safety protections for those in DHS custody.
Immigration policy reform is polarized, but drawing the line on detaining children and their parents for profit shouldn’t be.
This Mother’s Day, let’s remind Congress that children belong in school, not detention, and with their moms and dads. Together, we can shutter the Dilley facility, and let immigrant families live their lives in dignity.
