Two-year-old held at ICE’s Dilley facility is sick, not eating, and reportedly denied care
Rep. Joaquin Castro calls for the immediate release of Kaleth and his mother, Joani, as families describe unsafe conditions inside the “trailer prison.”
A two-year-old child, Kaleth, is being held with his mother, Joani, at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, an ICE family detention facility. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a congressman from San Antonio, says Kaleth has a fever and is not eating the food served inside the detention center. Castro wrote that when Kaleth’s mother asked staff for help, she was told it was all “mental.” He called the situation “shameful” and said it “must stop.”
Castro has called on ICE to provide proper medical care to Kaleth and to release Kaleth and Joani immediately. He has also urged that the Dilley facility be shut down. In recent remarks about the site, Castro said the country has “made the decision to commodify child suffering,” and warned that investors are profiting from the imprisonment of children, including infants.
Families and advocates have criticized Dilley for years, describing problems with medical attention, food quality, hygiene supplies, sleep, and access to clean drinking water. Castro wrote that detainees have complained of food with mold and worms. The facility has also reported contagious disease concerns in the past, including measles cases earlier this year. For children in custody, basic delays—food quality, hydration, sanitation, and medical response—can quickly become serious.
The Dilley center is operated for ICE by the private detention company CoreCivic. A CoreCivic spokesperson has disputed past allegations about conditions, saying healthcare is available and that the health and safety of those in its care is the company’s top priority. But the recurring accounts from parents held there continue to describe a different reality: requests for help minimized, shortages treated as routine, and children left sick in an environment they cannot leave.
The immediate questions in Kaleth’s case are concrete: what medical evaluation has been performed, what treatment has been provided, and why a mother requesting help would be told the problem is “mental” rather than met with medical care. When a toddler has a fever and stops eating, the standard response is not dismissal—it is assessment, monitoring, and treatment. In detention, that responsibility belongs to the facility and the agency holding the child.
Castro’s demand is specific: provide proper medical care and release Kaleth and Joani immediately. It should not require public attention for a sick child to be taken seriously. It should require documentation, medical action, and accountability—on the record—until the child is safe and the family is out of custody.
ICE detention is putting children at risk while private contractors profit and accountability gets buried.
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A sick two-year-old should never be in ICE custody. This is state violence dressed up as “procedure” — medical care now.
Release Kaleth and Joani immediately — and shut down Dilley.
Unreal & disgusting they would do this to people, let alone children. How come Castro isn't doing more than wagging a finger at those people? Who is Americans Against ICE to force them to do the right thing? I absolutely hate folks saying, "Pay me, and we'll do more." This is not in the spirit of those children who were taken for $0 and kept there for money. Charging at their expense just isn't how we did things in the '60's. Yeah, I know it's 2026, but the *$()#*$ is getting unreal on Substack. Sorry, but I just had to say this, because I'm rather tired of it now.