Immigrant households protested Saturday inside a detention facility close to San Antonio the place federal authorities despatched 5-year-old Ecuadorian boy Liam Conejo Ramos and his father after detaining them in Minneapolis final week.
Aerial images captured by the Related Press present mother and father and youngsters on the South Texas Household Residential Heart in Dilley holding indicators studying “Libertad para los niños,” or “Liberty for the youngsters” as they’re surveyed by guards. The lockup is situated an hour southwest of the Alamo Metropolis.
“The message we wish to ship is for them to deal with us with dignity and based on the regulation. We’re immigrants with kids, not criminals,” Maria Alejandra Montoya Sanchez, 31, informed the AP in a telephone interview from the Dilley website. She and her 9-year-old daughter have been confined there since October.
Division of Homeland Safety officers didn’t reply to the AP’s request for remark.
In movies shared on social media platform X, immigration legal professional Eric Lee mentioned detainees have been protesting the therapy of Ramos, whose detention triggered a nationwide uproar.
Within the video clips, Lee explains he was ejected from the detention middle whereas visiting a shopper held there. Within the footage, inmates can he heard chanting “Allow us to go!” and “Libertad!” because the legal professional movies from the car parking zone. Ultimately, a detention middle worker calls for that he depart the premises altogether.
In one of many movies, Lee relates that he’d spoken to folks inside the power through telephone and discovered that round 80% of detainees, or a complete of 1,500 folks, participated within the demonstration.
“Guards try to bodily block folks from protesting — from becoming a member of the protest,” Lee says within the clip. “They’ve closed off a gate between two separate components of the power to stop one other part of the detention middle from becoming a member of the protest. Up alongside the freeway and on the roads, you possibly can nonetheless see ICE, [Customs and Border Patrol] and county sheriffs’ autos touring to this.”
As he closes out the video, Lee says he hopes the crackdown on the prisoners received’t flip violent.
ICE brokers despatched Ramos and his father to Dilley after detaining them exterior their Minneapolis dwelling. Household and neighbors keep brokers used the kid as “bait” to persuade his mom to open the door — an account ICE officers deny.
The South Texas Household Residential Heart is the one household detention middle at present working within the U.S. Though the Biden White Home shuttered it in 2024, President Donald Trump ordered it reopened when he returned for a second time period.
Court docket testimony filed by immigrant advocacy group RAICES in July reported that Dilley detainees voiced considerations about lack of heath care, clear consuming water and the absence of sufficient meals. One detainee mentioned her 9-month-old son misplaced greater than 9 kilos through the first month of the household’s detention.
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This text seems in household detention middle, South Texas, Liam Conejo Ramos, Minneapolis 5-year-old, Immigrant protest, South Texas Household Residential Heart, Division of Homeland Safety, Immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE, and Trump.
