Hours after touring the Dilley detention center housing 5-year-old Minnesota boy Liam Ramos on Wednesday, San Antonio’s state and federal lawmakers gathered outside City Hall to update the public on his status — and to lay out their limited leverage for stopping such arrests under a Republican-controlled government.
Ramos, who was photographed looking tearful in a blue bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack as his father was being detained earlier this month, has quickly become the face of aggressive expulsion efforts that many Republican officials said would only apply to criminals.
The child’s family immigrated from Ecuador by claiming asylum at a U.S. port of entry, but he and his father are now being held in a family detention center roughly 80 miles southwest of San Antonio.
“We met with he and his father for about 30 minutes,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro told reporters. “His father said that Liam has been very depressed since he’s been at Dilley, that he hasn’t been eating well …. [he] has been sleeping a lot, he’s been asking about his family, his mom and his classmates, and saying that he wants to go be back in school.”
A federal judge said this week that Ramos and his father can’t be deported because they have a pending immigration case that still needs to be adjudicated.
But Democratic lawmakers who recently toured the facility said it’s full of children and families who have legal authority to be in the country, and yet are being held for months while the U.S. government tries to make its case against them.
They have no idea how long they’ll be there, the lawmakers said, and some report having been offered cash bribes to self-deport.
“The first thing I wanted to know was, ‘How many criminal convictions do y’all have? How bad are these folks?'” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett recalled of her conversations with facility staff during the visit. “[They said] ‘Oh, no, no, you can’t be here and have a record.'”
Crockett said that while the family detention facility existed before President Donald Trump took office, one employee told her that this administration’s push to meet deportation numbers has dramatically changed the way it’s being used.
“The difference is … they’re trying to prosecute these cases while keeping people in custody,” Crockett said. “That is not what they normally would do. That is what this administration has decided to do.”
Accounts of the conditions
Democratic lawmakers’ visit came just days after Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) was also at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, sharing pictures that made life there look relatively calm.
“To be frank, it is better and in better condition than some of our schools here in San Antonio,” Gonzales told the Associated Press. “And so there’s a school, there’s a church, there’s a place for them to play soccer, a big cafeteria.”
On Wednesday outside of City Hall, however, lawmakers said Americans are being lied to about the conditions and the status of the detainees.
Crockett said they visited a classroom, but that the kids reported they weren’t receiving any schooling. They had one set of clothing to wear during their stay, which their parents wash out at night and hung up to dry.
“I can’t tell you how many innocent, precious children we talked to. We talked to a 16-year-old … That kid had about four younger siblings and his mom. They had been there for eight months,” Crockett said.
“When we walked in, they gave us a packet, and it said the average detention time was 28 days,” she continued. “We didn’t meet anybody who had been there for less than probably two months.”
Castro said that Ramos was unfortunately just one of many the children and families withering away in the federal facility.
“There are no criminals in Dilley,” Castro said. “Donald Trump talked about arresting, in his own words, ‘criminal illegal aliens.’ [But] you don’t go to Dilley — a facility that right now has 1,100 people in it — if you’ve committed a crime. All of those people suffering there, and languishing there in that trauma.”
A shutdown over ICE?
Outside the detention center in Dilley, protestors have been pressuring lawmakers from both parties to do something about the growing number of families detained. Eventually on Wednesday, state troopers used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
This evening on the West Side of San Antonio, more community members gathered at a different ICE rally organized by Castro. Over the past couple of weeks, high school students across the city have staged walkouts.
And so far the optics of arresting children seems to be moving even some Republicans who’ve stood by Trump until now, state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (D-San Antonio) said on Wednesday.
“In the last 48 hours, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told the president, ‘You’re losing the narrative on immigration,” Martinez Fischer said. “Now we have a governor of this state who has now said we need to ‘recalibrate the tactics’ of [ICE] after [officers killed two people in] Minnesota.'”
One of the deaths was an ICE protestor who was shot in her car on Jan . 7 while trying to drive away from officers approaching her. The other was an intensive care nurse who appeared to be coming to someone’s aid when ICE officers pushed him to the ground and shot him on Jan. 24. Both were captured on video.
But U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) said the fight now turns to Capitol Hill, where just days ago it seemed like Congress would pass the spending bills it needed to keep the government funded after the end of this month.
Following the Minnesota deaths, he said, Democrats are now rejecting the funding bill for homeland security, which includes money for ICE, until changes are made to the agencies’ policies.
“Republicans could just say, ‘Okay, we’ll move forward 96% of the federal budget and have discussions with Democrats on common sense reforms to ICE and [Border Patrol],” Casar said. “But [Senate Majority Leader] John Thune is saying he’ll shut the whole thing down.”
In a nod to their confidence in the politics of the matter, nearly every elected Democrat in San Antonio, as well as Crockett, who is running for U.S. Senate, and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin), who is running for governor, were present at Wednesday’s press conference.
