Emergency calls that had been positioned in current months from a South Texas family detention center and obtained by ABC Information reveal a collection of medical emergencies involving pregnant ladies and younger kids that advocates say underscore their issues concerning the sprawling ICE facility.
The 911 audio calls from Frio County, relationship from October 2025 by way of February 2026, doc medical workers on the South Texas Household Residential Heart in Dilley requesting ambulances for migrant detainees experiencing seizures, fainting and respiratory misery.
In a single name from January, a workers member requested help for a 17-month-old little one.
“I am calling for a little bit child going by way of respiratory misery,” the caller informed dispatchers.
In different calls, medical workers requested for ambulances for a 6-year-old boy with lethargy and a excessive fever, a 14-month-old in respiratory misery, and a 22-month-old with a fever and low oxygen ranges.
“We’d like an ambulance,” one caller stated. “We’ve a baby with a excessive fever.”
Immigrant advocates, medical professionals and lawmakers have raised issues in current weeks about circumstances on the South Texas facility.
This aerial photograph reveals the South Texas Household Residential Heart in Dilley, Texas, Jan. 28, 2026.
Moises Avila/AFP through Getty Pictures
ABC Information lately interviewed a couple who stated their 1-year-old daughter contracted COVID-19 and RSV throughout their 60-day detention. The household alleges medical workers at Dilley dismissed their daughter’s signs.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who visited 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos whereas he was detained with his father at Dilley, additionally lately raised issues a few 2-month-old toddler earlier than the kid’s launch. After Castro’s statements, detention middle staffers made a number of calls to Frio County concerning the toddler.
“Hello, I am calling a few little one that’s on the detention middle, a child that may be very sick, and I need to know when you guys can go do a baby wellness test,” one caller stated.
The highest medical official on the Division of Homeland Safety, which operates the nation’s migrant detention facilities, disputed any suggestion that detainees are being denied correct care.
“These allegations of unlawful aliens being denied correct medical care in ICE custody are FALSE,” DHS Chief Medical Officer Dr. Sean Conley informed ABC Information in an announcement. “It’s each coverage and longstanding apply for aliens to obtain well timed and applicable medical care from the second they enter ICE custody. This consists of medical, dental, ladies’s well being, psychological well being providers, any wanted observe up medical appointments, in addition to 24-hour emergency care. That is higher, extra responsive healthcare than many aliens have ever obtained of their complete lives.”
“As detention capability expands, ICE continues to recruit healthcare professionals and work with its contractors to take care of requirements in staffing and the care supplied,” the assertion stated.
DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis stated final week that detainees at Dilley have “ongoing entry to on-site medical professionals, together with physicians, pediatricians, nurses, and psychological well being care suppliers.”
“The reality is that this facility supplied correct medical look after all detainees together with entry to a pediatrician,” Bis stated. “The very fact is being in detention is a alternative. We encourage all mother and father to take management of their departure by utilizing the CBP Dwelling app and receiving a free flight residence and $2,600.
Data of 911 calls reviewed by ABC Information additionally element emergencies involving pregnant detainees. One name stories a lady experiencing a seizure, whereas one other describes a lady three months pregnant who had misplaced consciousness.
“She is non-responsive. They discovered her on the bottom,” a workers member informed the dispatcher.
“We’ve a middle-aged girl pregnant and he or she’s seizing,” a medical staffer stated in one other name.
As of final month, there have been about 1,400 individuals being held at Dilley, together with kids and fogeys, in response to RAICES, an immigrant authorized advocacy group. The ability was closed in the course of the Biden administration and reopened final 12 months because the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement measures elevated.
Dr. Anita Patel, a board-certified pediatrician who lately despatched a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem calling for the discharge of all kids at Dilley, stated detained households “are usually not receiving the usual of care.”
“What’s clearly evident is that they don’t have any potential to acknowledge doubtlessly deadly or emergent conditions, they usually don’t have any scientific acumen to say when one thing is a medical emergency,” Dr. Patel stated of the calls.
“What I’m listening to from households and what we’re witnessing is a human rights disaster,” she informed ABC Information. “They do not have entry to medical care, they do not have entry to applicable vitamin; all of those commonplace humanitarian insurance policies said by the U.N. all the way in which right down to legal guidelines are usually not being adopted.”
