Advocates and Japanese American survivors call for closure of Dilley family detention center 

HOUSTON, United States (MNTV) – A group of immigration advocates, faith leaders, and Japanese American internment camp survivors completed a four-day, 45-mile pilgrimage to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, demanding the facility’s closure and an end to family and child detention by U.S. immigration authorities.

The march was organized by Free Families, a coalition that includes Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministries, Grassroots Leadership, and Tsuru for Solidarity — a group composed of Japanese American survivors and descendants of World War II incarceration camps. Participants said the pilgrimage was intended to confront what they describe as systemic family separation under current immigration enforcement.

The route itself carried symbolic weight. Marchers began at the former Crystal City internment site, where Japanese American families were imprisoned during World War II. They walked up to 12 miles per day before reaching the Dilley facility, where they held prayers, chanted, and placed origami cranes — folded by survivors and their descendants — on the facility fence as symbols of solidarity with detained children and families.

The Dilley center is the only federal facility in the United States that detains parents alongside their children. Located about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio, it has the capacity to hold up to 2,400 individuals. 

It opened in 2014 under the Department of Homeland Security, was closed during the Biden administration, and was reopened in March 2025 under the Trump administration through a contract with CoreCivic, a private corrections company.

Since reopening, advocacy groups report that the number of children in ICE custody has increased, with Dilley serving as the primary detention site. 

Protesters cited viral images of child detentions, clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement, and reports of medical and sanitation failures inside the facility. ICE has not publicly confirmed all of the allegations.

For the Japanese American survivors on the march, the connection between their history and the present was not abstract. Approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — many of them U.S. citizens — were forcibly relocated and imprisoned during World War II following the attack on Pearl Harbor. 

Survivors participating in the pilgrimage described the Dilley facility as a continuation of a pattern they know firsthand: state detention of communities deemed expendable.

The protest concluded with renewed demands to end family detention and expand protections for immigrant children and families.