Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

In the year since the Trump administration has ramped up its mass-deportation campaign, members of Congress have attempted various things to rein in ICE or conduct oversight, often to little avail. The number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention has increased by over 75 percent in just one year, hitting a record 73,000 in mid-January.

House Rep. Joaquin Castro, meanwhile, has set to work quietly attempting to spring people from those cages. And he’s been more effective than most.

Castro has become a regular at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, a notorious family detention center in South Texas that was closed by the Biden administration after years of scandal and subsequently reopened by the Trump administration. Most recently, Castro helped release the “mariachi teens,” the teenage-brother mariachi stars who visited the White House last summer and were released from ICE detention just a few days ago. He greeted them and the rest of their family at the center as they walked out.

The children and families at Dilley are often held under excruciating conditions, but their numbers are declining: Since Castro’s first trip, in January, the population at the center has dropped from 1,100 to just 450. I called Castro to understand what’s been effective about his efforts. This interview has been edited for clarity.

Alexander Sammon: When you heard that Dilley was going to be reopened, what was your reaction?

Joaquin Castro: Obviously I was very concerned, because I’ve seen kids in detention before with families, and also unaccompanied minors, and you can see the trauma in their eyes, what I think for many of them will be life-lasting trauma. That’s what we’ve seen at Dilley.

Is it in your district?

No, it’s [Republican Rep.] Tony Gonzales’ district. It’s probably 40 minutes from the southern part of my district.

How bad are the conditions there?

This administration has made it worse by not providing education for almost a year. From April of last year through March, there were no education services, no classroom instruction. So a lot of these kids are going crazy because there’s not much for them to do, and they’re not learning. A lot of them had excelled in school: We talked to a boy that had just won a spelling bee, for example. And they’re also not getting the medical treatment they need. Then there’s worms in the food, and dirty water.

It’s called family detention, but when you have a father and mother that come in with kids, they don’t let the dad stay with the kids. The dads have to stay separately. So they’re still separating families within the detention center.

And you lay the blame with the administration?

A lot of the focus has been on ICE, and I understand that. But these private contractors, like CoreCivic, are making tens or hundreds of millions of dollars off these things. And they’re the ones that are supposed to be in charge of the food, the medical care, the education. And they have utterly failed.

When I first went in January and visited Liam Ramos and his dad, there were 1,100 people, all with different medical needs, food allergies, lactose intolerance, people having issues with sleep because the lights never fully go out. They aren’t getting much consideration at all from CoreCivic.

(“We don’t cut corners on care, staff or training, which meets, and in many cases exceeds, our government partners’ standards,” a spokesman for CoreCivic said in a statement.)

The Trump administration has run roughshod over Congress in general, and oversight of the Department of Homeland Security has been nearly impossible. There has been plenty of talk about how nothing can be done. What’s different about your approach?

Showing up at those places is half the battle, really. Because even if nobody is released, when they know that members of Congress are showing up, they clean the place up. Everybody gets better food for the day. It improves behavior. And that makes a difference for the people that are suffering through it.

I was told by ICE, on that first visit, that they don’t send anybody with a criminal record to Dilley. So all those 1,100 people sitting there at the time in that trailer prison, none of them had a criminal record. Which is very different from the story the president has been telling.

If it’s not in your district, how did you get involved in the first place?

My own grandmother came here as an orphan when she was 6 or 7 years old. It’s just a very personal thing to me, because I think about her and her story.

And how do you get involved in individual cases?

I could show you my Instagram or my Facebook messages and certainly our emails, where somebody will write me desperately, often in Spanish, saying, “My daughter is in there with her kids, my granddaughter, my husband …” And I’m pained because we can’t work on every single case and obviously can’t get every person out. We do try to contact everyone that reaches out to us and see how we can be helpful.

Popular in News & Politics

Markwayne Mullin’s Confirmation Hearing Was the Funniest in Ages—and Might Have a Stunning Outcome

These detention centers are often in Republican districts, and oftentimes the Republican representative from that area won’t even call them back, won’t even hear them out.

How have you been able to succeed on this? Is it the New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani method, where you call Donald Trump and request releases of specific people?

No, we’ve really worked through ICE. We’ve maintained a working relationship with them, because at the end of the day, you’re going to have to deal with them. I don’t want to confuse that with support for what they’re doing.

So the first thing is showing up, and they know you’re coming, and you’re bringing the attention to what they’re doing. And then it’s making the case that these people shouldn’t be there. And that’s an ensemble effort, because it’s not just me. It’s public outcry. ICE received over 100,000 public inquiries on Liam Ramos. (Castro has vowed to fight the latest decision to deport Ramos.)

What is your vision for Dilley?

I don’t believe that these kids belong in that trailer prison. My goal is to close it.

Get the best of news and politics

© Slate