5,600 immigrants<\/a>, more than half of them children, who have been detained at the sprawling Texas facility since it reopened last year. In recent months, human rights advocates, pediatricians and lawmakers have all called on the Trump administration to shut down the facility \u2013 and to stop incarcerating children.<\/p>\nOlivia was apprehended with her mother and two younger siblings in November. Then they were separated, reunited at Dilley and separated again after ICE agreed to release them, but not her. Since then, Olivia has grown increasingly listless as the days pass.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the Guardian over video call, she recounted her day-to-day life.<\/p>\n
12am: sleepless nights<\/h2>\n The nights, Olivia said, are the hardest.<\/p>\n
During the first weeks after her arrest, she would scream in her sleep, but now she struggles to sleep much at all. \u201cAt night, when no one is paying attention, everyone is asleep, that\u2019s when I can cry,\u201d she said. So she paces, and she cries until she\u2019s too exhausted to keep her eyes open.<\/p>\n
Usually, this is at about 3am.<\/p>\n
Not long afterwards, the nightmares begin. Sometimes she thinks about her brother Manuel, who drowned when he was eight years old, during her family\u2019s journey from South America to the US. She, her mother and her younger siblings \u2013 Manuel, Estefania and Joel \u2013 had fled political persecution in DRC, stopped over in South America, and completed their long journey to the US in December 2022.<\/p>\n
She feels sad that she and her family been through so much, kept fighting to survive, kept going even after they lost Manuel \u2013 only to end up at Dilley.<\/p>\n
Other times, she wakes up thinking about everything that has happened since her family was apprehended.<\/p>\n
Five months ago, she was living in Maine, with her mother; Joel, who is now 17; and Estefania, 14, awaiting a final decision on her family\u2019s asylum case. Olivia had recently graduated high school, and completed a certification to become a nurse\u2019s assistant.<\/p>\n
After the family\u2019s asylum case was denied, and their lawyer appealed the decision, but in the meantime the family decided to leave the US and seek asylum in Canada. They were almost immediately detained at the northern border.<\/p>\n
Olivia\u2019s mother and siblings were sent straight to Dilley \u2013 a former medium-security prison 70 miles (113km) south of San Antonio. But because Olivia was 19, legally an adult, authorities separated her from her family and moved her from one detention center to another, and then another. She was made to wear an orange jumpsuit \u2013 just like in the crime procedurals she used to watch on TV.<\/p>\n
Immigration officials wouldn\u2019t answer her questions about where she was, or where her family was. In nightmares now, her mind flashes back to her time at those detention centers and the shackles she had to wear for long stretches. During a call with the Guardian, she stood up to show the scars they left on her wrists and ankles.<\/p>\nDetainees at the South Texas Family Residential Center wave signs during a demonstration in Dilley in January.<\/span> Photograph: Brenda Baza\u0301n\/AP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAnd she thinks about the cold. The third facility where she was held, somewhere in New York, she calls \u201cthe fridge\u201d. Officials had confiscated her coat, so she was wearing only one layer. \u201cI had never felt as cold as I did in this place,\u201d she said. Now at Dilley, she sleeps with a coat on, even on warm nights, because she still hasn\u2019t been able to escape the feeling that she\u2019s going to freeze.<\/p>\n
Eventually, she too ended up at Dilley; but she was held separately from her family, along with about 225 other single, adult women. A mental health professional who evaluated her there, as part of her immigration case, said that she presented with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder.<\/p>\n
6am: \u2018Another day passes\u2019<\/h2>\n Most of Olivia\u2019s mornings at Dilley start in the same way: she wakes up at around 6am to eat breakfast. Usually, it\u2019s pancakes or bread, a boiled egg, milk and some coffee. It\u2019s not great, but it\u2019s better than what they get for lunch or dinner, so she tries to eat at least a little bit.<\/p>\n
Then she goes back to sleep for a few more hours, until 11am or noon. When she wakes up, she usually has a headache. She needs contact lenses but her prescription expired about a month ago, and she hasn\u2019t been able to see an optometrist, so she\u2019s constantly straining to see. The harsh lights at the detention center makes it worse.<\/p>\n
Some days, she passes the whole day in bed \u2013 she has little energy or motivation to get up.<\/p>\n
There are a few days when she manages to walk around, or chat with some of the other young women at the facility. It was one such day, during her <\/strong>second week at Dilley, that she discovered that her mother and siblings were being held in a different part of the same detention center.<\/p>\nAnother girl had invited her to walk to the library together. That\u2019s when she heard <\/strong>a distant voice, calling: \u201cOlivia! Olivia!\u201d She couldn\u2019t see well without her contact lenses, but she recognized the voice: \u201cI told my friend that I had heard my sister\u2019s voice, and she said that that could not be possible.\u201d<\/p>\nBut Olivia couldn\u2019t let it go. So her friend helped her locate a family counselor, who confirmed it: her mother and siblings were indeed at Dilley. The next day, she was able to visit with them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hugged, my mother cried, and we talked about things that had happened to us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe cried a lot, but at the end we laughed because we were together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olivia found out that every day since she\u2019d arrived at Dilley, Estefania would go outside and yell out her sister\u2019s name \u2013 just in case. It was a stroke of luck that Olivia heard her.<\/p>\n
After that, the officials at Dilley offered them an hour together on weekdays and three or four hours on Saturdays. The rest of the time, Olivia was alone.<\/p>\n
She often cried after seeing them. She worried about Estefania, a bubbly and active teen who loved to make art who, since coming to Dilley, had lost interest in drawing. She was angry that Joel, a promising football player who was planning to enroll in college in the fall, had suddenly changed into someone who seemed almost too grown-up for his age.<\/p>\n
When lawyers were able to secure her mother and siblings release in mid-March, Olivia said it was the \u201chappiest day of my life\u201d. But the day after that was the saddest. She didn\u2019t know when she\u2019d be able to see them again.<\/p>\n
The Department of Homeland Security said it was within policy to shackle Olivia. The agency also denied separating families, despite being informed that Olivia had been separated from hers.<\/p>\n
2pm: \u2018I feel a huge emptiness inside\u2019<\/h2>\n Now that her family is gone, the afternoons tend to drag on even more.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a small TV in her room, which she shares with another woman. Sometimes they watch movies, or the news. Olivia prefers to watch crime procedurals or hospital dramas (her favorite is The Good Doctor) but her roommate only speaks Spanish so usually they settle on telenovelas.<\/p>\n
Early on, she made a few friends who would invite her to play volleyball or soccer in the yard, but she stopped because she got worried about injuring herself and having to deal with the medical system at the facility. And besides, most of the other young people she knew have been released. \u201cAs time went by, people were leaving, and I started to lose my mind,\u201d she said. \u201cBasically, I stopped doing things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several times, Olivia said, immigration officials have come to her, told her that she has a deportation order, and asked her to sign papers consenting to her deportation. None of it made sense, because Olivia has a \u201cstay of removal\u201d \u2013 which means she can\u2019t be deported \u2013 while her asylum case is being appealed.<\/p>\n
In a comment to the Guardian the DHS said: \u201cBeing in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure.\u201d It urged immigrants to self-deport using the agency\u2019s app.<\/p>\n
Olivia\u2019s appeal process could take a year \u2013 and she doesn\u2019t know how much longer she can bear being detained at Dilley.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel a huge emptiness inside,\u201d she said. She struggles to eat \u2013 she doesn\u2019t have an appetite, and the food doesn\u2019t taste very good either. She has lost about 20lbs (9kg) since arriving at Dilley.<\/p>\nA painting of Olivia, done by her uncle.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Olivia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nIn a report<\/a> published last week, the legal services non-profit Ra\u00edces and advocacy group Human Rights First documented \u201cwidespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm inflicted on families\u201d incarcerated at Dilley. Nearly 4,000 medical professionals sent a letter to Donald Trump calling for the release of all children held at the facility, writing that detention was causing \u201cpredictable, severe, and lasting harm\u201d to their health.<\/p>\nIn a statement sent to the Guardian, DHS denied the poor conditions at Dilley detailed in the report. Detainees said they found hair, worms, bugs, dead flies in their meals.<\/p>\n
At about 2pm every day, however, Olivia feels a pang in her belly. Back in Maine, that\u2019s when she used to get back from her shift working at a hospital cafeteria. \u201c<\/strong>I would take a shower, and my mother would cook my favorite food, which is an African dish of grilled pork chops and a vegetable. And I\u2019d drink mango juice,\u201d she said. Those were her favourite afternoons.<\/p>\nThe best days now are the ones when she gets to speak with her family over video calls. Joel shares Bible verses with her. Her sister cries a lot, but she also imagines all the things they\u2019ll get to do once Olivia is released. And her mother, she can tell, just feels bad.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother is a typical African mother and has a lot of restrictions. You can\u2019t do this, you can\u2019t do that,\u201d she said, laughing. But nowadays she tells Olivia she can do whatever she wants with her life. Olivia thinks she feels guilty for everything her children have had to endure.<\/p>\n
To spare her mother, Olivia has mostly avoided talking about how bad she has been feeling. She didn\u2019t tell her mother that she was one of very few Black people in her part of the facility, and that the other detainees would often make racist comments about her hair. She didn\u2019t share that one time, when her roommate became really sick, some of the other detainees told her she had better hope the girl didn\u2019t die \u2013 \u201cbecause she was in a room with a Black person and if she died they would blame me\u201d, Olivia said.<\/p>\n
7pm: thinking of Maine<\/h2>\n On some evenings, she reads through messages from her friends back in Maine. She had a huge social circle, and a WhatsApp group chat with about 30 people. Now a couple of them are in regular touch, and send her letters with updates and Bible verses. \u201cHonestly, it\u2019s not a very good feeling to talk to my friends because I see that everybody has gone on with their lives and my life is interrupted,\u201d she said. \u201cA friend of mine is pregnant. And there\u2019s going to be a baby shower, which I would not be able to attend.\u201d<\/p>\n
If she were in Maine now, she might have been starting a new job as a nurse\u2019s assistant. Eventually, she wants to become a nurse and work with children. She and her friends had also made plans to travel, to visit one US state per year until they had toured the whole country.<\/p>\n
Now she thinks, instead, about when she\u2019ll escape Dilley\u2019s sprawling beige landscape of flat dormitory buildings and trailers.<\/p>\n
As soon as she\u2019s back in Maine, she\u2019ll head to the eastern shore, to her favorite island off the coast. \u201cI used to go there when I was sad, and have an ice cream,\u201d she said. \u201cI want to see that place again, and be in nature.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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