Trump Administration Revives Detention of Immigrant Families

Two facilities in South Texas are being readied for undocumented parents and their children. One site began receiving them earlier this month.

For decades, detaining undocumented immigrant families has been a contentious enforcement tactic. Critics of “family detention” have said young children suffer in confinement. Proponents say that locking families up while they await likely deportation sends a stark message about the consequences of entering the United States illegally.

Now, after falling out of use under the Biden administration, family detention is being resurrected by President Trump, as his administration marches forward on its promise to crackdown on immigrants.

Families have begun to arrive in recent days at a detention facility in South Texas, and immigration lawyers are expecting more to be brought in the coming days. A second detention center, also in South Texas, is being readied for families.

Each of the facilities is being set up to hold thousands of people. At one site, lawyers say, multiple families are being detained in rooms with four to eight bunk beds and shared bathroom facilities.

Family detention was used during the previous Trump administration and during the Obama administration, and children were provided some medical care and some educational instruction. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, said the same services would be offered at the reopened facilities.

Most of those families previously detained were Central Americans who had recently crossed the southern border, and many were expected to be swiftly deported, unless they sought asylum and expressed credible fear of returning to their home countries.