Detained families at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley demonstrated Saturday behind facility fences, protesting detention conditions and the transfer of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from Minnesota.
Aerial photographs showed children and parents wearing jackets against the winter cold while holding hand-lettered signs reading “Libertad para los niños,” or “Liberty for the kids.” Families could be heard chanting “Libertad!” and “Let us go!” according to Eric Lee, an immigration attorney who was at the facility for a client visit.
Up to 80 percent of the facility’s approximately 1,200 detainees participated in the demonstration, Lee told reporters. About a third of those held at the facility are children.
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The protest occurred approximately 30 minutes after guards ordered attorneys to leave the facility, Lee said. Guards appeared concerned by the developing situation, he reported.
Maria Alejandra Montoya Sanchez, 31, who has been detained at Dilley with her 9-year-old daughter since October, told The Associated Press by phone from inside the facility that detainees wanted to send a message. “We’re immigrants, with children, not criminals,” Sanchez said. “The message we want to send is for them to treat us with dignity and according to the law.”
The demonstration followed the transfer of Liam Conejo Ramos and his father Adrian Alexander Conejo Arias to Dilley. The pair were detained by immigration officials outside their home in Minnesota on Tuesday. Detainees said the protest was triggered in part by news of that detention and broader immigration enforcement activities, according to Lee.
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Lee described conditions at the facility as difficult, alleging that drinking water is often undrinkable and that meals have contained contaminants. He characterized the facility as one where families would not want to keep children “for even 15 minutes.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not released an official statement regarding the demonstration. Attempts to reach facility operators for comment were unsuccessful.
The South Texas Family Residential Center is located in Dilley, approximately 70 miles south of San Antonio. The facility is one of several immigration detention centers in Texas, which has the highest concentration of such facilities in the United States.
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