After immigration officials arrested him at the US border with his wife and children and landed him at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in South Texas, Alexey began counting the days.
“Okay, 20 days. We will wait and pray that you will please release us after these 20 days.”
The U.S. does not have to hold minors longer than that, Russian asylum-seekers have been told under a decades-old legal agreement meant to protect children from the harms of detention.
But 20 days came and went. Alexei and his wife, who asked to be identified only by their first names for fear of deportation, watched as their 5-year-old twins were unwrapped in a remote, prison-like facility. When he contacted an ICE official and asked why the deadline had been ignored, the official told him to take it up with his boss.
“Who is that?” Alexey asked.
“Trump.”
The official refused to give the president’s phone number. When Alexey followed up with a written complaint, another ICE official responded in writing that the court agreement that established the 20-day rule “no longer applies.”
That is not true. But since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, officials have regularly violated the limit, according to data collected by court-appointed monitors and shared with NBC News and NBC Dallas-Fort Worth. Children like Alexie’s twins are confined for weeks or months in conditions that advocates say are traumatic and harmful to development.
According to statistics, as of January, more than 900 children were kept in family detention for more than 20 days. Approximately 270 of those children were restricted for more than twice as long.
Lawyers representing the families in Delhi say the longer stays reflect the Trump administration’s broader strategy to use detention as a deterrent, pressuring parents to give up asylum claims rather than continue fighting their cases. As days turned into weeks — and weeks turned into months — they say, the psychological and developmental toll deepened on children trapped inside a facility where detainees complained of spoiled food, lax medical care and limited education.
Vilma Bautista Torres, who fled Honduras in 2021 and sought asylum in the US, said she and her 9-year-old son Kenek spent more than 80 days in Delhi before being released on parole last week. Kenek, who has severe autism, became increasingly distraught and distressed as the weeks dragged on without access to treatment, beating herself up, crying through the night and begging herself to return to her school in Louisiana.
In another case, Habiba Soliman, 18, and her four younger siblings — including twin 5-year-olds — have been detained in Delhi for more than nine months with their mother as they fight in court to return to their adopted home in Colorado rather than be deported to Egypt.
“This place broke something in us — I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to fix it,” Soliman said in a phone call from the facility last week.
The 20-day limit was established in a 1985 class-action lawsuit, Flores v. Meese accused the federal government of holding immigrant children in unsafe conditions. The case dragged on for more than a decade before the landmark 1997 ruling that established nationwide minimum standards for juvenile detention.
Under the Flores settlement agreement, children can be held only for as long as is reasonably necessary to arrange their speedy release or deportation — a process federal courts have interpreted as no longer than 20 days. But immigration advocates say the Department of Homeland Security’s pursuit of that limit has been inconsistent since last year. Some families are released within days; Others remain in detention for months with little explanation for the disparity.
At the same time, the Trump administration is fighting in court to overturn Flores, which prompts immigrants to bring children to the U.S. for faster release, spurs surges at border crossings and limits the government’s ability to detain and remove families. A federal judge rejected that legal challenge in August; The administration appealed.
In a statement, DHS attacked the Flores settlement as an “illegal left-wing tool and a waste of valuable US taxpayer-funded resources.” The department has dismissed allegations of poor care in Delhi as “mainstream media lies”, writing in February that the facility is “designed to ensure the comfort of families in custody and take care of all their needs”.
CoreCivic, which operates Dilly under a federal contract from which the company expects to earn $180 million annually, said it is not responsible for how long the children are held. It quoted reporters from last month’s statement defending the quality of housing, food and medical care provided at the facility. “Nothing is more important to CoreCivic than the health and safety of the people in our care,” the statement said.
Becky Volozin, a senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law and a member of the legal team responsible for enforcing the Flores settlement, said she and her colleagues have documented a significant decline in juveniles who have stayed beyond 20 days. Parents often report that school-aged children wet the bed again, suck their thumbs, and experience frequent night terrors. Some withdraw and despair.
“One parent told us their 5-year-old child said, ‘Are we bad people? Are they going to kill us here?'” Volozin said. “These kids are experiencing that as time goes on.”
Children caught in ICE detention
Lawyers for the families held in Delhi argue that in many cases there is no justification for arresting them in the first place. Lived in the US for many months or years without incident, regularly checking in with immigration officials while pursuing asylum or other relief. Few were arrested at immigration recruits — encounters that may have led to continued monitoring of outside detention rather than detention in previous years.
“Where is the danger to public safety?” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, which helped bring the original Flores case. “Where is the threat presented by a 5-year-old, a 13-year-old, a 14-year-old? None.”
Bautista Torres said the nearly three months she and her 9-year-old spent in Delhi were the hardest they had ever endured.
Her son, Kenek, has stage 3 autism — the most severe classification — and relies on special schooling and daily therapy to control his emotions and behavior. In Delhi, those supports disappeared, he said. He struggled to understand where he was or why he couldn’t leave. The lights were burning all night and the constant noise of patrolling guards made him restless and afraid. The unfamiliar food on his plate was often untouched.
