Last week, Mother Jones published firsthand accounts of children and parents detained at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the nation’s only family detention center. The stories, which came from sworn oral declarations given to legal aid groups between July 2025 and February of this year, painted a bleak picture of life at the facility: wormy food, dangerously lacking medical and mental health care, water that makes children sick, nearly impossible sleeping conditions, and intimidating treatment by guards.

Now, dozens more sworn declarations included in a recent 361-page court filing reveal new details about life in the facility from January, February, and March of this year.

Detainees repeatedly said that guards threatened or intimidated them for participating in protests or filing grievances, in some cases destroying children’s letters and confiscating their art supplies.

Many of the detainees, whose declarations were translated into English by sworn interpreters, discussed the same issues that we highlighted in our first story. But they also talked about another trend: As media and political scrutiny of Dilley has increased—particularly since the arrival of 5-year-old Liam Ramos in January—so have threats of retribution against those who speak out. Detainees repeatedly said that guards threatened or intimidated them for participating in protests or filing grievances, in some cases destroying children’s letters and confiscating their art supplies. They recounted being hidden away from congressional delegations visiting the facility, or, conversely, receiving special treatment on the days that politicians and lawyers visited.

The Department of Homeland Security and CoreCivic, the private prison company that operates Dilley, have consistently said that the facility is a safe, family-friendly place where detainees have access to high-quality medical care, meals, clean water, and educational opportunities. DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story, but in the past has said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not destroy letters or confiscate art supplies. In an email, CoreCivic said that the facility has been the target of “baseless allegations” that “undermine the public-service centric work” of their staff.

We went through the detainees’ recent declarations and pulled out some particularly telling parts.

On Christmas they treated us so cruelly. They brought an ICE official in a Santa Claus outfit........

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