Families with children, including infants, are suffering in the cruel Dilley detention center in Texas, the only migrant family detention facility in the U.S. — all while being denied due process, medical care, and access to clean drinking water.
They are being held solely on account of their immigration status—which is not only cruel but also a violation of international law. Infants and children have experienced alarming weight loss and have been denied medical care. Lasting trauma is being inflicted daily.
Detaining children under any circumstances violates international law
Since President Trump reopened Dilley, more than half of the nearly 3,500 people held there have been minors.
No child should be held behind bars for being an immigrant. EVER. No child should live in fear of being brutally snatched out of their schools and communities. No parent should worry that their brave decision to flee home to provide a better life for their family in the U.S. could result in even more danger.
You can feel the urgency to act within these heartbreaking words from a child who was detained in Dilley:
“To this day, I don’t know what we did wrong to be detained… I feel like I’ll never get out of here. I just ask that you don’t forget about us.”
Help end family detention in the U.S.
Family detention is an inherently cruel practice that has a devastating impact on children’s lives. Any amount of detention can cause trauma in children and can compound the trauma that many children have already faced in the home countries that they fled, the fear they feel in their communities today, and the dangerous journeys they took to the U.S. Every day and every minute that a child is held in detention is consequential.
We’ve closed cruel detention centers before
Thanks to you, Amnesty has long exposed the inhumane conditions and abuse within detention centers and ultimately succeeded in shutting them down.
In 2021, our people power was critical to ending family detention during the Biden administration.
In June, your relentless advocacy helped close Alligator Alcatraz.
We must continue with even more tenacity until Dilley and other cruel facilities in the country are no more. If we make our opposition loud and clear, we can force Congress to respond again.
Demand Congress stop the inhumanity of family detention and close every cruel detention center in the country.