A nine-year-old Colombian girl detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Centre in Texas has exposed the grim reality of family detention in a handwritten plea to the outside world.
In a letter written after 113 days in custody, nearly six times the legal limit for minors, Maria Antonia said she had been travelling on a tourist visa to visit the United States when ICE agents stopped her flight and questioned her alone for two hours and later transferred to the Dilley Centre in late 2025.
The girl wrote that she fainted twice in custody, missed school, and begged to be sent home, and was used as 'bait' to detain her mother, writing: 'ICE used me to catch my mom, and now I am in jail.'
The claims have renewed attention on US immigration detention rules for minors.
The letter forms part of a larger collection of handwritten notes obtained by investigative news organisationProPublicafrom children and families at Dilley. The letters were collected in mid-January 2026 and removed from the facility by a released detainee with parental consent.
ProPublica's reporting indicates that, in early February, more than 750 families were being held at the centre, nearly half of whom included children. Dilley is the only U.S. immigration facility that detains entire families together.
Under theFlores Settlement Agreement, a longstanding 1997 legal framework governing the treatment of minors in immigration custody, children are generally not to be held in detention for more than 20 days and must be released to suitable caregivers or sponsors unless special circumstances exist.
Yet,data compiledby ProPublica suggests that dozens of children at Dilley have been held well beyond that period, with many reporting confinement of several months.
Letters from detained children show that prolonged confinement has become a distressing reality, especially since the Trump administration resumed and expanded family detention in 2025.
According to government data cited byThe Washington Post, ICE booked around 3,800 minors into family detention in 2025, including many who had lived in the US for years prior to detention.
Source: International Business Times UK
