A protest broke out Saturday at the ICE-run South Texas family detention complex in Dilley, where five-year-old Liam Ramos is being detained.

Immigration attorney Eric Lee said he was at the Dilley facility for a confidential visit with clients — an immigrant family of six, including five children — when guards began shouting for everyone in the waiting area to leave, citing what they described as “an incident.”

As the Michigan-based attorney walked toward his car, he said he heard what sounded like “hundreds of children” shouting, with voices he described as “high-pitched” and “urgent.” He said he could see children streaming from dormitory areas behind a chain-link fence and chanting “Libertad."

Lee said clients he later spoke with told him the protest was triggered by concerns over the treatment of Liam Conejo Ramos, a five-year-old who was taken into custody with his father in Minnesota earlier this week and transferred to the Dilley facility.

…

Lee described Saturday’s action inside the facility as a peaceful demonstration, not a riot, and said the show of solidarity carried risk for detained families.

Lee said the protest unfolded against what he described as harsh day-to-day conditions inside the Dilley detention center. He characterized the facility as “a horrible, horrible place,” alleging that drinking water is “putrid” and often undrinkable, and that meals have contained “bugs,” dirt, and debris.

“The guards are just as tough as the guards at the adult facilities. This is not a place that you would want to have your child be for even 15 minutes,” Lee said.

…

Texas Public Radio reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment on the disturbance and on Lee’s allegations regarding Liam Ramos’ treatment but had not received a response by Saturday evening.

Bolding added, archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20260126023037/https://www.tpr.org/border-immigration/2026-01-24/protest-breaks-out-at-dilley-immigration-detention-facility-holding-5-year-old-liam-ramos

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
      1·
      5 minutes ago

      This was one of the worst things I’ve ever seen our government do in my lifetime. Despite the efforts of the Biden administration, almost 1000 kids still have not been reunited with their parents, and it is doubtful they ever will. This was a massive human rights violation, almost certainly pushed by Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller, and this atrocity will need to be addressed at the future American Nuremberg Trials.

      Where are these children today?

      Here is the best round-up of recent information:

      A Look Back at the Family Separation Policy The Struggle to Uncover the Truth Behind the Trump Administration’s Wrongdoings

      In This Report, You Can: Review data and analyses regarding family separations in 2017 and 2018 (some family separations occurred outside the official zero-tolerance policy);

      Track the government’s posture on whether publicity would incite fear and deter migrants from crossing the border;

      See how flawed record-keeping led to hundreds of children not being reunified with their parents;

      Get a sense of the lack of communication that existed among government agencies, impeding reunification efforts; and

      Read how congressional leaders sought accountability and transparency from the administration.