An uprising broke out at an immigrant jail in southern Texas on Saturday, with around 1,000 immigrants detained in the facility — many of them children — chanting “Libertad” and “Let us go,” according to an attorney who witnessed the event.

The protest took place at South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, which closed in 2024 but was reopened by the Trump administration this year to detain immigrant families.

On Saturday, facility personnel abruptly ordered immigration attorneys who were present to leave, saying “an incident” had taken place. Michigan-based immigration attorney Eric Lee, who was among those forced to leave, said he could hear shouting that sounded “high-pitched” and “urgent,” indicating that he believed there were “hundreds of children” taking part in the uprising.

Lee later said his clients told him the protest began in response to the treatment of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old from Minnesota who was abducted, along with his father, by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents last week. The two were transferred to the jail, more than 1,300 miles from home, shortly after being detained.

School officials familiar with the incident say that an adult living in Liam’s home had begged for ICE agents to let Liam stay after his father was taken into custody.

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    Detention centers aren’t even jails. You can be there even if you didn’t commit any crime. Also conditions are far worse than jails.

    In my case it was a cramped room with no beds or such, about 40 people at certain times, and one single toilet without any door inside that room. “Crime” was being an asylum-seeker

    You stay anywhere between 2 days to 6 months and your family members may stay a different amount of time.

    Closest picture I could find later was this and google search is so bad nowadays I have to check my message history to find it again.

    Photo of migrant detention centers. Basically a cage with too many people inside

    That was the conditions in 2018. I don’t want to think 2026.

    I keep posting this picture here because it’s inhumane and nobody fucking cares outside of lemmy.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      58 minutes ago

      I’m so sorry and you’re right nobody deserves that.

      I didn’t mean to imply that anyone was being detained for commiting a crime. Just pointing out that the same groups that were making insane amounts of money via private prisons (which also often detained innocent people thanks to a broken justice system) are now making even more insane amounts of money by using their privately owned prisons as detention centers.

      They believe that profiting from unnecessary suffering is just being smart business men.

      Private Prison Contractors Spend Millions on Lobbying, Get Billions in Immigration Detention Contracts

      It’s a bleak and miserable time because some selfish people have intentionally made it that way, but I hope you know that plenty of people definitely care outside of Lemmy. The people who profit from this shit will never understand the strength of humanity because control and corruption through money is the only source of strength they’ve ever known. It’s why they fear equality and democracy. Fuck fascism, fuck oppression, and fuck the oligarchs who enable it!

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Anytime any republican does ANYTHING and says it’s “for the children”, I want you to remember this exact moment, and know that they are full of shit. THIS is how they treat children.

      • itistime@infosec.pub
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        2 hours ago

        I recently tracked down a 2a against tyranny type who I knew decades ago. I wanted to get his take on current events.

        He is in prison for child porn, so maybe you’re right.

    • baka@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 hours ago

      This problem is deeper than both parties, we also allowed children to be in concentration camps in Palestine… for decades. The US has been changing for the worse since Kennedy died… we need a revolution, against the slavers. not against our constitution.

      • Lucelu2@lemmy.zip
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        41 minutes ago

        The IDF used drones as well as their own automatic weapons to shoot small Palestinian children in the head on the regular. The medical volunteers would see them come in and they told the world about it.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      They just made a mistake, they had the wrong preposition. They mean they do things “to the children”. It makes a lot more sense after appling that correction.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        3 hours ago

        MAGAs are sociopaths, they don’t care about anybody but themselves, and that includes their children. Children are just tools to get what they want.

      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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        19 hours ago

        Nah, it’s not even that. They’ll toss their own children out in a heartbeat if they don’t follow in their parents’ footsteps. It’s not about children at all. That’s just another of their double speak lies.

  • xxce2AAb@feddit.dk
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    23 hours ago

    Can we just take a moment to answer a simple question: WHY ARE CHILDREN IN A “DETENTION CENTER” IN THE FIRST PLACE?

    • bearboiblake@pawb.social
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      8 hours ago

      You should blame the Democrats for not running a viable candidate. Harris was pro-genocide. Anyone who actually did vote for her is complicit in Israel’s genocide, whether they like that fact or not.

      • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 hours ago

        Since you volunteered your stance in this discussion, let me query you: what is your strategy by not voting in the 2025 us presidential election? What is your depth of understanding, and your resulting intent and desires for the present and future?

        • bearboiblake@pawb.social
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          5 hours ago

          I was not eligible to vote, I am European. I have the happy luxury of being able to say I have never voted to support a genocide.

          If I had been eligible, I would have voted for a third party candidate or not at all. I have values that I believe strongly in, such as always opposing genocide, which preclude me from voting for a pro-genocide candidate, and I refuse to accept anyone getting onto some kind of high horse over that.

          • Lucelu2@lemmy.zip
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            31 minutes ago

            likely your nation has a parliamentary type system. Ours does not. It really is a fact here that when you vote 3rd party, you are basically throwing out your vote with the benefit of feeling virtuous. 3 months later, your entire constitution is set on fire. But while you are oppressed by the ruling fascists, you can at least feel good about yourself for your ethical decision making. I am thinking all those virtuous citizens of Hungary… how well they think of themselves as they have to lick the Orban Boot on their necks. Or those Russians who love their Putin as he sends their sons to die.

          • AlfredoJohn@sh.itjust.works
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            2 hours ago

            So high and mighty of you but we did not have a viable 3rd party candidate that had any sort of reach that they could have won the election.

            We do not have the same system of governance in the US as most of europe does. Like I’m m glad you get more options with ranked choice voting but your plan would have done the same thing here as not voting and left you supporting genocide no matter how you want to try and spin it in your head.

            At least had we gotten a democrat president, challenges from the courts could of helped put pressure and had we at least had someone who is not threatening death to those who oppose them we could have worked from a local and state level government to apply pressures to the federal gov to stop supporting Isreal and their genocide. Now those alternatives are nearly impossible as none of the politicians here want to be the ones who start a civil war and get our civilians slaughtered by the US military generating more body counts than what we have already seen in Gaza.

            Im getting tired of this high and mighty attitude from Europeans like you when at the same time we all have seen significant rises in fascism and genocide support throughout European nations. I didnt see any of the European countries arresting Netanyahu when he flew through their airspace with an arrest warrant out over the actions of gaza? So europe’s lack of action is just as damning as any country in the west even if you have your own propaganda playing appeasement with stern wording in talks on your news and then a clear lack of follow through when it comes time to actually act.

            So no you dont get to wipe your hands and shift blame from the fact its all of us who haven’t been doing enough. The problem is everyone is getting so tribal no one will work together. You put out opinions and state why aren’t your groups doing more and when pressed about what you are doing that gives you any right to critique the actions others are doing you wipe your hands use your false cop out of well thats your sides fault not mine. So either put your fucking money where your mouth is or fuck right off until you learn how to be beneficial and supportive.

            Stop doing the uber wealthy’s biding of pitting all possible allies against each other with your little nationalist mentality as if prior to trump europe didnt support all this shit by spending and investing in US stocks and technologies funding the exact shit you see today. We are all complicit in one way or another its fucking impossible not to be with such an interconnected global economy and world, so you need to come to grips with that and start helping instead of acting like you’re above everyone else.

          • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 hours ago

            What are your intent and desires for the future, by protest voting? Do you have a clearly defined goal?

          • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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            3 hours ago

            In a two-party system, a vote for a third/ independent party is usually a vote for the worst candidate. It was certainly that way in 2024.

            Your protest vote becomes a self-inflicted injury, and they’re the worst kind.

      • JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 hours ago

        Democrats are controlled opposition who didn’t want to win so they can pretend they’re not complicit. The system churns away broken, working as intended.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 hours ago

          Yeah you’re right, Democrats didn’t want to win the presidential election. Give me a fucking break.

          • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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            3 hours ago

            they fucked around far too long with Biden, and Harris threw off a vibe that she had already won, very Clinton.

            It screams that the Democrats are living in a bubble and still are.

          • Cherries@lemmy.world
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            They sure as hell didn’t act like they wanted to win. Dancing around with Liz Cheney or promising stricter border control doesn’t exactly scream winning strategy to me. The Dems started out with the very popular idea of going after grocery chains that were gouging customers, but dropped that line of messaging after Kamala spoke with her brother in law who is an Uber exec.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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    23 hours ago

    I feel pretty comfortable telling anybody that reads the headline and doesn’t immediately side with the kidnapped children who are being forced to live in squalor: 🗣️🔊GO FUCK YOURSELF AND I HOPE YOU BURN IN HELL, YOU SACK OF NAZI DOG SHIT.

  • frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io
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    21 hours ago

    How long have those children been in there, huh? I was in juvie pretrial for actual crimes and got outdoor time, school sessions, group therapy. This place have any of that for non-criminal minors?

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      The whole operation is a money making scheme. They get about $100 per day from the government to detain a person. They are sweeping up as many as they can which clogs up the courts which means they can detain people even longer and make even more money.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      18 hours ago

      I guess it depends on if you trust the word of the private prison corporation that owns the facility and receives a federal contract to pack people in like sardines.

      This is just a guess, but I will go out on a limb and say that probably if any of that “exists” it’s just for show to check off some boxes on a form that tacks in a few more million to your contract. Like a classroom nobody uses or a recreational area the kids aren’t allowed to play in.

  • wuffah@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    Starting to sound an awful lot like capital ‘C’ Concentration Camps.

    Start watching for “deportation” to transition to torture, forced labor, and death by neglect (which has already happened in some cases.)

    • bearboiblake@pawb.social
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      8 hours ago

      Torture, forced labor and death by neglect are all already widespread, just look at Seacott.

      The bigger question is, what are you doing about it? There are nazi concentration camps on US soil and federal agents are executing white US citizens in the streets.

      Are you going to lie down and take that? Are you just gonna post online about it? Or are you going to join the fight against them, find a local activist group or protest, and arm yourself in preparation for the coming revolution?

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      18 hours ago

      What do you mean make it out? They’re being held in a private prison.

      https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/immigration/2026/01/25/541607/protest-breaks-out-at-south-texas-immigration-detention-facility-holding-5-year-old-liam-ramos/

      Lee described Saturday’s action inside the facility as a peaceful demonstration, not a riot, and said the show of solidarity carried risk for detained families.

      Lee said the protest unfolded against what he described as harsh day-to-day conditions inside the Dilley detention center. He characterized the facility as “a horrible, horrible place,” alleging that drinking water is “putrid” and often undrinkable, and that meals have contained “bugs,” dirt, and debris.

      “The guards are just as tough as the guards at the adult facilities. This is not a place that you would want to have your child be for even 15 minutes,” Lee said.

      Texas Public Radio reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment on the disturbance and on Lee’s allegations regarding Liam Ramos’ treatment but had not received a response by Saturday evening.

      The Dilley detention complex — known for years as the South Texas Family Residential Center — closed in 2024 and later reopened, as federal authorities expanded detention capacity for immigrant families, according to prior reporting and company statements.

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      22 hours ago

      Who here is implying these kids were doing anything violent vs just using free speech to protest?

      Who here seems to be the kind of person that sees somebody being abused and antagonized by an authority figure with the literal control of all of homeland Security and the entire federal government, and “for some reason,” (who’s to possibly say why🙄) their instinct is to join the authority figure antagonizing the victim and saying something like "you just going to stand there and take that ya pussy?’