Castro Continues Push to Shut Down the Dilley Trailer Prison
Leads Congressional Oversight Visit with Democratic Women’s Caucus
Hollywood Stars Mark Ruffalo, Ms. Rachel, Ilana Glazer, Busy Philipps, Cynthia Nixon, Jessica Alba, Ximena Sariñana Join Push
DILLEY, TX — Today, Congressman Joaquin Castro (TX-20) and members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, including Reps. Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03), Lizzie Fletcher (TX-07), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), and Luz Rivas (CA-29) conducted a congressional oversight visit to the Dilley Trailer Prison in South Texas. Actors Mark Ruffalo, Ilana Glazer, Busy Philipps, Cynthia Nixon, Jessica Alba, Ximena Sariñana and prominent educator Ms. Rachel joined the push to shut down Dilley. In addition, countless lawmakers joined the push on social media, highlighting a letter signed by 111 House Democrats from earlier this month calling for the closure of the facility.
Watch press conference here.
The group was joined by Dr. Anita K. Patel, MD, critical care specialist and associate professor of pediatrics in Washington, D.C., for a press conference in San Antonio, where Congressman Castro delivered the following remarks:
Thank you for your incredible work in bringing the nation's attention to the horrors at the Dilley Detention Center, what I call the Dilley Trailer Prison. It's an honor to be here today and to have inspected Dilley today with members of the Democratic Women's Caucus who have joined us in San Antonio and in Dilley for this inspection, and also with Dr. Patel, a pediatrician who has been very outspoken about the lasting trauma, both physical and mental, to the children, especially who were imprisoned at Dilley.
Recently, as many of you know, there were 110 of us in Congress who came together to demand that the Dilley Detention Center be shut down. We know that it's possible because it's been done before, during the Biden Administration.
The trauma, physical and mental, on those children will be harsh and long-lasting. Every single day that a child spends in Dilley, they are traumatized. And over the past several months—this was the seventh time that I've been to Dilley—I've seen it in their faces, as some of them are stone-faced, others are sobbing and clinging to their parents or begging to get out. The parents themselves are often despondent. There are just very sad and horrible stories about medical care that's either denied or delayed, legal processes that people are not only unfamiliar with but also, they're in legal limbo.
Remember, this is a system where you have young kids who will sometimes have to represent themselves in front of judges in court. Something that in the United States even a convicted killer doesn't have to do, because they get legal representation. And so today it was no different.
Unfortunately, the numbers at Dilley have gone up. There are now more than 500 people there. The last time we were there, the numbers were probably about 100 less. There are now more children there than there were before. They were 96 in May. They're now at 112. I believe that is the result of the ICE surge that we've seen over the last month or so. We've seen these raids on the street, we've seen families that have been torn apart on the street and brutality on the street. The result of that is that more families and more children are now imprisoned at Dilley.
Remember, every time a child is put into the Dilley detention center, somebody in America makes more money. We have commodified child imprisonment in our nation. CoreCivic is a private prison company whose investors include some of the largest asset managers in this country. That includes asset managers that manage firefighter pension funds and public teacher pension funds and so forth. They are making money. The more kids that are put in Dilley.
And then finally, a few quick stories because I told you there was incredible human trauma. I talked to a woman who had recently had a heart procedure done. She had had heart trouble before she went to Dilley, and then when she was there, it worsened. She had a heart procedure done, a kind of operation, and she was not given the follow-up appointment that she was supposed to have—she was not given the proper medication that she was supposed to have because of that heart situation.
We talked to another young woman, who a 16-year-old girl actually who was there with her father. She spoke about spending two days at the San Antonio Processing Center, Crosspoint. She mentioned that in that room where people are detained, that there are cameras that can see the entire room, and not only is there a camera in the main room, there's a camera that's pointed at the place where people use the restroom. That's how dehumanizing the situation is for folks.
There were folks that have lost custody of their kids because they've been detained at Dilley. They've lost their apartments. Some over the past have told me that they've lost their homes. There's another story of a woman, actually that same girl who was on her way to church with a friend here in San Antonio, and they took her to Crosspoint, the processing center. They told her dad that they were going to send her out of state if he didn't come pick her up. Then he could come pick her up and take her home. When he showed up to pick her up, they took him in as well, and now they're both in that trailer prison. This has been a system that has been duplicitous, that has made it a routine to lie not only to the detainees but also to the public and even to members of Congress.