AMY GOODMAN: In Dilley, Texas, two protesters were arrested Wednesday as demonstrators rallied outside ICE’s South Texas Family Residential Center, where the Trump administration is detaining children, including Liam Ramos, the 5-year-old from Minnesota who was detained last week after coming home from preschool. Images of Liam went viral after he was picked up while still wearing his Spider-Man backpack and a blue hat with bunny ears. He’s being detained with his father. According to the family’s lawyer, Liam’s father is a legal asylum seeker who’s followed proper protocols and has no criminal record.

On Wednesday, Texas Democratic Congressmember Joaquin Castro met with Liam and his father. Castro spoke after their meeting.

REP. JOAQUIN CASTRO: Liam Ramos should be released immediately. I would first like to describe to you my — our meeting — we met with he and his father for about 30 minutes — how that meeting went. We sat in what was the courtroom. You can see from the picture that I posted that he was lying in his father’s arms. His father said that Liam has been very depressed since he’s been at Dilley, that he hasn’t been eating well. I was concerned with — you see how he appears in that photo — with his energy. He seemed lethargic. He said, his father said, that Liam has been sleeping a lot, that he’s been asking about his family, his mom and his classmates and saying that he wants to go be back in school with his classmates. He’s asked about his backpack and his cap that he was wearing when they picked him up in Minnesota. I let him know that his school and his community, his family and our country love him, and we’re praying for him.

AMY GOODMAN: Texas Democratic Congressmember Joaquin Castro visited the ICE jail in Dilley just days after hundreds of detained immigrant families held a protest inside demanding the release of Liam and other detained children. Protesters held signs reading “Libertad para los niños,” or “Liberty for the kids.”

The immigration attorney Eric Lee was attempting to meet with clients inside Dilley when the protest broke out. He posted this video from just outside.

SECURITY: Put away your camera!

ERIC LEE: I’m outside.

SECURITY: Phones aren’t allowed!

ERIC LEE: I’m outside. It doesn’t say out here.

SECURITY: Get out of the premises now!

ERIC LEE: And I’ve just been ordered to leave the premises. I’ve just been ordered to leave the premises, and she’s yelling at me right now, so. … I’m outside of the Dilley facility here in South Texas. There’s a demonstration of detainees taking place inside right now. We were all asked to leave. There’s a drone flying up ahead right now. It’s an extremely bizarre situation. You can hear them shouting.

DETAINEES: Let us out! Let us out!

ERIC LEE: Can you hear that?

DETAINEES: Let us out! Let us out! Let us out!

ERIC LEE: They’re shouting, “Let us out! Let us out!”

AMY GOODMAN: A video from immigration attorney Eric Lee recorded Saturday outside ICE’s South Texas Family jail in Dilley. He’s joining us now from San Antonio along with Javier Hidalgo, legal director at RAICES, an organization that provides legal support for immigrant families in Texas.

Eric, let’s begin with you. We just saw you outside this jail, the detention center. Can you explain who’s inside? And also talk about this visit yesterday — you were there, as well, yesterday, I understand, outside — of Joaquin Castro, who’s with Liam’s dad and Liam, who’s — the dad holding Liam. He says he is very depressed and is just laying there.

ERIC LEE: Well, I represent a family of six. It’s a mother and her five children, two 5-year-old twins, who have been there for over eight months. That’s almost a fifth of their young lives. Their last name is El Gamal. There’s also a 9-year-old, a 16-year-old, an 18-year-old. The conditions in this facility are abysmal.

But I think there’s another point to be made about the overall situation, because, yes, the Democrats are holding their press conferences. It’s a midterm election year. We all know that they do this every time there’s some horrific crime perpetrated against immigrants, whether it’s family separation in 2018 and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s teary-eyed photo op, and then they go away, and nothing changes.

Dilley was opened by the Obama administration in 2014. It’s been filled up with hundreds of children and their parents. Oh, the Biden administration kept it open for three-and-a-half — I believe three-and-a-half years of his term. Obviously, Trump is making everything worse. The conditions are deplorable. They’re getting worse and worse.

But it’s very important, as this protest movement develops across this country, as the calls for more demonstrations grow and grow, as calls for a general strike grow, the Democratic Party is as equally responsible as Trump for creating the infrastructure of mass family and adult detention in this country, and it is necessary that this protest movement stay a hundred miles away from the Democratic Party and develop its orientation to the working class. That’s the only way that Dilley is going to be shut down, that the families inside, like my clients, are going to be freed. And that has got to be rule number one with these protests as they develop going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m wondering, Javier Hidalgo, if you can describe the conditions inside, as we hear this painful cry of children and parents, “Let us out! Let us out!”

JAVIER HIDALGO: Yeah. The conditions are — imagine you were in a jail. And imagine it was a jail that was probably conditioned worse than any jail that our criminal justice system would put someone in. Now, imagine you’re in there with your child, watching your child deteriorate day after day. And it’s a jail that no one else — no one in there has actually done anything wrong, right? Because no criminals are in immigrant detention. They can’t be. They would be in our criminal justice system, right? And every day, the guards there are saying, “Well, if you want this to end, just give up your case.” Right? And so, imagine that condition. Imagine being there with a breastfeeding child under the age of 1, and the water that they give you to mix with formula smells so bad that your child won’t take it down. Right? That’s the type of conditions. Lack of medical care is constant.

And let me just say, my context for this — right? — is our organization has been working providing legal services to families in family detention since Obama opened them in 2014 in some form. Right? We’ve been documenting these harms. These harms aren’t new. It’s almost as — it’s a tool that just keeps getting recycled and used.

But the conditions are just horrific, and it’s unimaginable. And you almost have to go and see it. It’s — I can describe it in and out, right? Lack of adequate food. We often hear about food with, like, bugs or worms in it, half-frozen food being given, guards yelling at parents if their kids are making too much noise or they’re asking for an extra apple.

Yesterday, when the Congress folks tried to meet, we understood from the clients that we were meeting with that same day — right? — that they were pretty much locked in their rooms, except to be escorted to meet with us in legal visitation. And they were locked in their rooms, and the guards just tossed crayons on the floor for the kids to play with to keep them busy. There’s no educational resources. You know, what they are given is laughable.

And some of the things that are new are a lot of these families, which this hasn’t happened all that often in the recent years that they’ve used family detention — we’re seeing a lot of families that have been here in our communities for a long time, taken into detention centers while they’re still trying to process their case. You’re talking about kids who have been going to school, understand the difference between, like, a rigorous academic curriculum, and they’re given coloring packets, right? And so, that’s the level of conditions.

And despite all the protections that exist — and let me say, there’s very few protections that exist — ICE has taken a position that they don’t actually apply because they don’t want them to anymore. And they’re just ignoring them and flattering them. So, you have families in there that are in there up towards a hundred days, upwards of a hundred days, as high as Eric’s client, who has been there an unimaginable amount of time, right?

AMY GOODMAN: So — 

JAVIER HIDALGO: And so — yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask — let me ask Eric Lee about this family, that they have been there for many months. What about the Flores decision, where children aren’t supposed to be detained longer than 20 days?

ERIC LEE: Well, this family has been persecuted by Stephen Miller and Donald Trump and the White House. They are the wife and child of the individual who carried out the attack on a peaceful demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, in June. The White House Twitter and the fascists who run their Twitter page called for the family to be illegally deported, using cynical emojis. A federal judge shut that down. But they have not been released, because this government is persecuting them, not for anything that they did, but for something that somebody else did. And in this country — that is not supposed to happen in a democracy. That’s what happens in police state dictatorships. That’s what Videla did in Argentina, punish opponents of the — perceived opponents of the regime, or criminals, etc., etc.

The Flores settlement essentially presents families with a sort of Sophie’s choice. What is a 5-year-old supposed to do? They’re supposed to agree to leave their mother, especially under conditions where they’ve essentially just lost their father, for all intents and purposes? That is not a choice that these kids are really going to make. And in my client’s situation, given the level of vitriol with which the government has pursued them, they cannot go back to their home country of Egypt. They will be killed or arrested if they go there.

One final point I would make about this family, an immigration judge ruled that they are a significant flight risk, and denied them bond on that basis, citing, among other reasons, a, quote, “lack of property and assets.” That immigration judge made that ruling independently about each of these children. A child, a 5-year-old child, is in detention in this country because of a lack of property and assets. That’s how the immigration system works in this country.

AMY GOODMAN: Eric — Eric, we’re showing the picture of the 5-year-old. What’s the 5-year-old’s name? It’s a drawing of stick figures in a cage.

ERIC LEE: Yes. So, for privacy reasons, I’m not going to reveal the children’s names, but this is a drawing that the 5-year-old girl gave me in person over the weekend in Dilley, and it’s expressive of the feelings. She told me that she has nightmares every night where she is being chased by an animal and she cannot get away because she’s in a cage. This is a deliberate policy to ruin these children’s lives. They will never fully recover.

AMY GOODMAN: The 18-year-old — the 18-year-old child, she’s separated from the others?

ERIC LEE: That’s right. Habiba Soliman is her name, since she’s now turned 18. She turned 18 — all of these children had a birthday in this detention center. Imagine that wonderful celebration. She has been separated from her family and, not only that, denied visitation rights and denied religious accommodations as a practicing Muslim, based on retribution for her decision to speak out to the media last week. That’s correct.

AMY GOODMAN: Also being held at Dilley at this immigration jail is a 7-year-old named Diana Crespo. She and her parents were detained in the parking lot of a hospital in Portland, Oregon, two weeks ago. Her parents were trying to get help for the second grader, who has a — who had a long-lasting nose bleed, but they never made it inside the hospital. The Oregon Nurses Association condemned what happened, saying, quote, “No parent should ever be forced to weigh their child’s health against the risk of detention.” Can you describe her situation, Eric? And then Javier to talk about the examples of this, but start with Eric.

ERIC LEE: I can’t speak to another minor’s situation, just for privacy reasons. But I will say that this is happening all over the country. This administration is going around. It’s basically private army of state assassins, and that’s what they are, that they’re killing American citizens at point-blank range in Minneapolis, you know, almost on a weekly basis, and separating families.

And again, there’s nothing new about a federal policy of family separation. The Obama administration did that to millions of families. The Biden administration did so, too. But this is — this is a deliberate policy, as Stephen Miller calls it “remigration,” with its root in all of the sort of fascist doctrines of the late 19th and 20th centuries coming back again.

And the population of this country, on the anniversary of our revolution, where the Declaration says there’s a right of revolution when the government violates the rights of the population, we have a right to alter or abolish it. And that, I think, is the way forward in these next weeks and months.

AMY GOODMAN: Javier Hidalgo, if you could talk about this particular place, Dilley, also Karnes, in Texas, home to the only immigrant detention centers in the country that hold children and their parents, so virtually any family that’s arrested anywhere — and maybe you could address the Oregon family — are deported and sent to Texas, is that right?

JAVIER HIDALGO: Yes. But let me make a point. Very recently, there were three family detention centers in the country. There was also one in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians got that closed. It’s possible to get these closed, right? And so, I do want to make that point. So, now there’s two. We hear rumors that there’s intent to open another. You know, it takes an appetite from the community to get them shut down, among other things.

Karnes and Dilley right now are the only detention centers that we understand are able to detain children. And that really just comes from the contracts that ICE has with the private prison companies that run these places, right? And the local municipalities, right? And so, there’s really nothing else that stops them from doing that, other than money and the contracts and how they set that up. Right now they’re not detaining families in Karnes. This year — last year, when they did start, restart detaining families, they started detaining them at Karnes, and then they had to reopen Dilley, because Dilley had functionally been shut down. And even, really, before they were fully reopened, but open enough, in April, they shifted, because they can, in theory, hold more families in the Dilley detention jail, right? I keep saying “detention center.” It’s a jail.

The families that you see there — the example from Oregon, we’re not working directly with her, to my knowledge. Her story is exactly the same of so many families, right? We want, as a country, our community members to participate in our institutions, go to hospitals when they’re sick, go to their immigration court hearings, go to, you know, any other appointments that they have. And so many families that we’re working with get arrested at those things. Like, they walk into, essentially, a trap, right? They’ve done nothing wrong, other than showing up where they’re supposed to show up, when they’re supposed to be there. And they’re here now, right?

And they come here. What’s scary about this situation is, they’re not going to get the adequate medical care. We were just contacted by a horrified doctor — right? — where — and this is not new. I’ve had this happen multiple times. When an actual medical professional sees the condition of the children that are coming out of there, they’re horrified, because it’s just medical neglect on the inside, right? And I fear for any child that needs that kind of medical attention. And there are many.

And just a point on the Flores protections, you know, that is a settlement from the 1980s that was never intended to be the everlasting source of protections. It’s written into that settlement that these protections — you know, the settlement is good until they’re codified into — through rulemaking. That’s never happened, regardless of who’s been — you know, whatever administration has been here. And so, what we have is this settlement that just sits there, that’s the only source, and it’s inadequate. And reform is inadequate. It just needs to get shut down. There’s no purpose other than to punish and harm families. And that’s not — it’s not OK.

AMY GOODMAN: Javier Hidalgo, we want to thank you so much for being with us, legal director at RAICES, and Eric Lee, immigration attorney representing a mother and her five kids, as well as other immigrants jailed at ICE’s South Texas ICE jail in Dilley, Texas. They were speaking to us from San Antonio.

Coming up, we go to Newark, New Jersey. We’ll be joined by Congresswoman LaMonica McIver, facing 17 years in prison allegedly for assaulting a federal officer outside an ICE jail, Delaney Hall, in Newark as ICE agents were arresting Mayor Ras Baraka. She has vehemently denied the charges against her. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Streets of Minneapolis,” an excerpt from the new song by Bruce Springsteen. He said Wednesday, “I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis.” We’ll hear more of the song later in the broadcast.