South Texas Family Residential Center

Last updated
South Texas Family Residential Center
South Texas Family Residential Center
Location1925 W. Highway 85
Dilley, Texas, Frio County
United States, 78017 [1]
Coordinates 28°39′36″N99°11′20″W / 28.659966°N 99.188996°W / 28.659966; -99.188996
StatusOperational
Security classImmigration detention facility
Capacity2,400
Opened2014
Managed by CoreCivic (known as CCA - Corrections Corporation of America)
DirectorJanice Killian

The South Texas Family Residential Center is the largest immigrant detention center in the United States. Opened in December 2014 in Dilley, Texas, it has a capacity of 2,400 and is intended to detain mainly women and children from Central America. [2]

Contents

On June 12, 2015, it was reported that the facility was holding 1,735 people, approximately 1,000 of whom were children. [3] In filings dated September 30, 2018, the operator stated that the property was 100% full. By April 2019, there were 499 women and children in the facility. [4]

CoreCivic, previously called "Corrections Corporation of America", is seeking a license to operate the facility as a General Residential Operation but litigation was brought by Texas RioGrande Legal Aid on behalf of Grassroots Leadership and the detainees themselves to block the licensing by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. [5]

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced they will shut down the detention center on June 10, 2024. According to a memo from ICE, closing the costly facility will free up resources for more beds as the Biden administration begins implementing new border restrictions. [6]

Location and description

Approximate location in Texas TXMap-doton-Dilley.PNG
Approximate location in Texas

The site is located approximately 100 miles north of the Rio Grande and 70 miles southwest of San Antonio, southwest of Dilley, Texas, in Frio County. [2] The address is 1925 W. Highway 85, Dilley, Texas, United States, zip code 78017. [1]

The 50-acre site contains 80 small, tan-colored, two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottages in which the families will live. The cottages can house up to 8 people and contain bunk beds as well as baby cribs. They also have a flat-screen television. There is a kitchen, but cooking is not allowed in order to prevent fires. The cottages are connected by dirt roads.

There are also recreational and medical facilities, a school, trailer classrooms, a library, a basketball court, playgrounds, and email access. A cafeteria is open for 12 hours a day, but snacks can be obtained at any hour. [2]

The site was formerly a camp used by oilfield workers. [7]

Detainees

The South Texas Family Residential Center was at first only able to accommodate 480 people when the first group of residents arrive in December 2014 from a Border Patrol training camp located in Artesia, New Mexico. The capacity was 2,400 residents by May 2014 with a staff of 600. It was will eventually planned to have a capacity of 3,000. [2] [8] It is intended to detain mostly women and children from Central America. [9]

Administration

The facility opened in 2014 and is operated mainly by CoreCivic and Target Hospitality. [10] [11] [12] On June 10, 2024 CoreCivic received a notification from ICE stating their intention to terminate their contract as they move to close the facility due to high costs. [13]

Local sources indicated the United States Government pays approximately $19 million monthly to operate the facility.

The operating cost of the facility will be $296 per person per day according to a statement made to reporters by an official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The warden is Janice Killian.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raymondville, Texas</span> City in and county seat of Willacy County, Texas, United States

Raymondville is a city in and the county seat of Willacy County, Texas, United States. The population was 10,236 at the 2020 census. It may be included as part of the Brownsville–Harlingen–Raymondville and the Matamoros–Brownsville metropolitan areas.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from cross-border crime and undocumented immigration that threaten national security and public safety.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CoreCivic</span> U.S. prison-operating company

CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), is a company that owns and manages private prisons and detention centers and operates others on a concession basis. Co-founded in 1983 in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas W. Beasley, Robert Crants, and T. Don Hutto, it received investments from the Tennessee Valley Authority, Vanderbilt University, and Jack C. Massey, the founder of Hospital Corporation of America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GEO Group</span> American institutional facilities company

The GEO Group, Inc. (GEO) is a publicly traded C corporation that invests in private prisons and mental health facilities in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida, the company's facilities include illegal immigration detention centers, minimum security detention centers, and mental-health and residential-treatment facilities. It also operates government-owned facilities pursuant to management contracts. As of December 31, 2021, the company managed and/or owned 86,000 beds at 106 facilities. In 2019, agencies of the federal government of the United States generated 53% of the company's revenues. Up until 2021 the company was designated as a real estate investment trust, at which time the board of directors elected to reclassify as a C corporation under the stated goal of reducing the company's debt.

The T. Don Hutto Residential Center is a guarded, fenced-in, multi-purpose center currently used to detain non-US citizens awaiting the outcome of their immigration status. The center is located at 1001 Welch Street in the city of Taylor, Texas, within Williamson County. Formerly a medium-security state prison, it is operated by the CoreCivic under contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency through an ICE Intergovernmental Service Agreement (IGA) with Williamson County, Texas. In 2006, Hutto became an immigrant-detention facility detaining immigrant families. The facility was turned into a women's detention center in 2009.

The San Diego Correctional Facility is a minimum / medium security federal prison for men, managed by Corrections Corporation of America under contract with the United States Marshals Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility was established in 1993 as the nation’s first publicly owned and privately operated adult secure correctional facility and is currently operated by the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation. This special non-profit, quasi-public detention facility was developed for use by the United States Marshal Service (USMS) in the Northeast and was later extended to include the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2005 to 2008 and again starting in 2019. Beginning in October 2011, the facility began serving the United States Navy, housing Navy personnel who have been placed in the custody of the General Court-Martial Convening Authority (GCMC). The facility operates at maximum security utilizing an architectural and high-tech design and construction containment system. A $47 million expansion was completed in December 2006 and increased the maximum occupancy from 300 all-male housing to its current capacity of 770 including a 40-bed unit for female detainees. It is the corporation's only facility.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immigration detention in the United States</span>

The United States government holds tens of thousands of immigrants in detention under the control of Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Willacy County Correctional Center is a closed detention center located on the east side of Route 77, at the edge of Raymondville City, Willacy County, Texas, United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adelanto Detention Center</span> Privately operated federal prison

Adelanto Detention Facility is a privately operated immigration detention center in Adelanto, San Bernardino County, California. Owned and operated by the GEO Group, it consists of two separate facilities: East, which was an existing prison purchased in June 2010 from the City of Adelanto with a capacity of about 600 inmates, and the newly built West expansion completed in August 2012 with another 700 beds. After an additional expansion in 2015, the facility's capacity houses up to 1,940 immigrant detainees of all classification levels, with the average stay of 30 days.

Cibola County Correctional Center is a privately owned minimum-security prison, located at 2000 Cibola Loop in Milan, Cibola County, New Mexico.

The Eloy Detention Center is a private prison located in Eloy, Pinal County, Arizona, owned and operated by CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America, under contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ursula (detention center)</span> Detention facility

Ursula is the colloquial name for the Central Processing Center, the largest U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention center for undocumented immigrants. The facility is a retrofitted warehouse that can hold more than 1,000 people. It was opened in 2014 on W. Ursula Avenue in McAllen, Texas. In June 2018, it gained notoriety for the practice of keeping children in large cages made of chain-link fencing.

Family detention is the detention of multiple family members together in an immigration detention context. In the U.S. they are referred to as family detention camps,family detention centers, or family detention facilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trump administration migrant detentions</span> 2019–2020 political controversy

The Trump administration has detained migrants attempting to enter the United States at the United States–Mexico border. Government reports from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General in May 2019 and July 2019 found that migrants had been detained under conditions that failed federal standards. These conditions have included prolonged detention, overcrowding, and poor hygiene and food standards.

The Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex, is a privately owned and operated managed prison located in Florence, Pinal County, Arizona. The facility is run by Corrections Corporation of America and houses prisoners for the United States Marshals Service (USMS), TransCor America LLC, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Pascua Yaqui Tribe, United States Air Force, City of Coolidge, and City of Mesa. The majority are awaiting the resolution of their trials. The current population is male and female.

The COVID-19 pandemic in U.S. immigration detention has been covered extensively since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. More than 38,000 people were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the time of the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States. ICE's response to the outbreak in detention facilities has been widely characterized as substandard and dangerous. Harmful practices have been reported in numerous facilities managed by third-party private contractors with ICE. For example, reports found that HDQ Neutral disinfectant was used over 50 times per day in un-ventilated areas, which caused pain, bleeding, and severe illness to numerous people held in Adelanto Detention Center, a private prison managed by GEO Group Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Immigration policy of the Joe Biden administration</span>

Joe Biden's immigration policy initially focused on reversing many of the immigration policies of the previous Trump administration, before implementing stricter enforcement mechanisms later in his first term.

Berks County Residential Center (BCRC), also known as Berks Family Residential Center and as the Berks County detention center, is a 96-bed immigration detention center in Leesport, Berks County, Pennsylvania, operated by Berks County on contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The center operated as a family detention center from March 2001 to March 2021.

References

  1. 1 2 "CCA" . Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "South Texas immigration detention center set to open". CBS News. 15 December 2014. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  3. ↑ Hennessy-Fiske, Molly (June 25, 2019). "Immigrant families in detention: A look inside one holding center". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  4. ↑ Small, Julie (April 13, 2019). "Detention Beds for Immigrant Families Nearly Empty Amid Surge in Border Crossings". KQED. Retrieved April 14, 2019.
  5. ↑ "Judge Halts Child Care License for Dilley Detention Center". The Texas Observer. 2 June 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  6. ↑ "US to close costly Texas immigration detention center and reroute funds". Yahoo News. 2024-06-10. Retrieved 2024-06-11.
  7. ↑ "Largest Detention Center in U.S. Opens". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  8. ↑ "South Texas Family Residential Center - About the Center" . Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  9. ↑ Garbus, Martin (March 24, 2019). "Fleeing threats to her children, a Honduran woman now faces a tough fight for asylum". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  10. ↑ "Largest family detention center for immigrants opens in Texas". Reuters. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  11. ↑ Anusha Ghosh Roy (15 December 2014). "New residential immigration center makes history" . Retrieved 19 December 2014.
  12. ↑ Editor, Joshua Fineman, SA News (2024-06-10). "Target Hospitality plunges amid report Biden plans to close Dilley detention center | Seeking Alpha". seekingalpha.com. Retrieved 2024-06-11.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ↑ Inc, CoreCivic (2024-06-10). "CoreCivic Receives Termination Notice From U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement At South Texas Family Residential Center". GlobeNewswire News Room. Retrieved 2024-06-11.{{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.