Trump administration resumes detention of immigrant families in Texas

The Trump administration has resumed detaining immigrant families in the US state of Texas, according to the nonprofit immigrant family advocacy group, RAICES, in San Antonio.

The group revealed that 14 families with children as young as 1 year old are being held in a repurposed detention facility in Karnes County, 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio. RAICES said it is currently providing services at the facility to families from Angola, Armenia, Brazil, Colombia, Iran, Romania, Russia and Türkiye.

The organization said families being held are not just those who have recently crossed the southern border from Mexico.

"From what we know right now, there's evidence of apprehensions from the northern border, from Canada," Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for RAICES, said in a statement. "Also strong indications of interior enforcement, so families being swept up in some type of action across the United States and being brought into Karnes."

The Trump administration is also preparing to open a second immigrant family detention center in Dilley, 70 miles southwest of San Antonio, according to a report by NewsNation.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not released how many families will be housed at both detention centers, but said that families have been assigned to those facilities after illegally entering the US. The Justice Department already ruled cases in the facilities did not qualify for asylum and the families will be detained at those locations until they are deported back to their home countries.

Under former President Barack Obama's administration and Trump's first term in office, families were detained until their immigration cases were heard in court. Trump then curbed the asylum process, which forcibly separated children from parents at the border, which was denounced by human rights groups.

Former President Joe Biden halted family detentions but did not abolish the process. Trump, however, vowed to resume a harsher stance on immigration as he began his second term in January.

"This is about saving children, protecting children," Trump border czar Tom Homan told reporters earlier this week. "It's about getting back to enforcing the law and at the same time, protecting children, which the last administration didn't."

During the 2024 fiscal year, 49,000 migrant parents and children were removed from the US, according to the Washington Post. That number drastically increased from 2023, when 18,000 people were deported.