Inside Texas’s ICE detention network: families, fear and the cost of mass deportation

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, immigration arrests in the United States have risen sharply. More than 610,000 people have passed through detention centres operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in under two years, and the pace is still accelerating: nearly 51,000 arrests were recorded in August 2026 alone, the highest monthly total of Trump’s second term. This report examines who is being held, the conditions they face, and how the administration’s mass-deportation drive is disrupting families living in the United States. Valérie Defert and Pierrick Laurent investigate in Texas, a central hub of the expanding detention network.

In Texas, where a large share of the US detention system is concentrated, our reporters spent several weeks tracing what happens after an ICE arrest. They travelled to Dilley, south of San Antonio, home to the country’s largest family detention centre. The facility can hold up to 2,400 people, including parents and children. ICE does not allow journalists inside. Since Trump returned to power, more than 6,200 minors have been detained by the agency, including at least 500 infants and children aged three or younger.

The reporters interviewed a Venezuelan family whose mother, Maria Betania, and two children were taken into custody while heading to a school bus stop. They spent 17 days in Dilley before a federal judge ordered their release.

In San Antonio, a pastor meets weekly with relatives of detainees. She estimates that roughly one in four families in her congregation has had a loved one arrested and then deported.

One of those detained is Jefferson, a Venezuelan asylum seeker and father of two. Speaking by video from inside the Don Hutto detention centre, he described months separated from his family and denounced the living conditions and limited access to health care inside the facility. Deaths in ICE custody have increased sharply: at least 57 people have died since Trump returned to the White House. Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights say the mortality rate had already more than doubled during the first 500 days of his second term.

The policy has also created a major market for private companies that operate parts of the detention system. In Dilley, a contract reviewed by the Houston Chronicle provides for a monthly payment of $13.1 million to maintain capacity for up to 2,400 people. The network is expected to expand further: $45 billion has been allocated to increase detention capacity through 2029.

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