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McALLEN, Texas: The Trump administration resumed family detention of immigrants last week in a South Texas facility after a Biden-era pause, a legal nonprofit group providing services to migrant families said Wednesday.

At the same time, the Department of Justice dropped a civil rights lawsuit it filed last year against the national nonprofit Southwest Key Programs alleging its employees had sexually abused unaccompanied minors who were housed in its shelters after entering the country illegally.

Fourteen immigrant families with children as young as one year old were in the detention facility in Karnes County, Texas, about 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) southeast of San Antonio, according to RAICES, which provides services to families at the center. The families are originally from Colombia, Romania, Iran, Angola, Russia, Armenia, Turkiye and Brazil.
Faisal Al-Juburi, the organization’s chief external affairs officer, said the families had been detained in the US near the Mexican and Canadian borders. Some were in the US for as little as 20 days and others for as long as about 10 years, Al-Juburi said. The nonprofit provided service to adult detainees at the center prior to last week’s shift in the center’s detention population when the adult detainees were moved out.
Both the Obama administration and Trump’s first administration detained families until their immigration cases played out. Trump severely curbed asylum and forcibly separated children from their parents at the border in a policy widely denounced as inhumane.
The practice of family detention was largely halted, but not abolished, during the Biden administration, which briefly considered restarting it in 2023.
US Customs and Immigration Enforcement did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday.
Geo Group, the private corporation that operates the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center, said the facility can hold up to 1,328 people in a statement issued Monday. It said its contract with the federal government runs through August 2029 and will generate about $79 million in revenue in its first year.
It’s the second facility planned for family detention. Last week, CoreCivic, a company that operates detention centers, announced it entered into a contract with ICE to hold immigrant families at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, with a capacity of 2,400 people.
Immigration advocates expressed concern for the welfare of children held in detention.
Dr. Alan Shapiro is a cofounder and chief strategy officer for Terra Firma National, which works to provide immigrant children and families access to health care and legal representation. Shapiro visited family detention centers under the first Trump administration and said detained children experienced behavioral regression, anger and thoughts of self-harm.
“We also heard about suicidal ideation and suicidal attempts from children in the facility themselves and other significant mental health concerns, including self-harm and eating disorders that were not present prior to detention,” Shapiro said.

Sexual abuse of migrant kids

In dropping the civil rights lawsuit it filed last year against the national nonprofit Southwest Key Programs, the US Department of Health and Human Services  lleging its employees had sexually abused unaccompanied minors who were housed in its shelters after entering the country illegally, according to a court filing on Wednesday.
The department decided to drop the lawsuit after the US Department of Health and Human Services stopped the placement of unaccompanied migrant children in shelters operated by Southwest Key and initiated a review of its grants with the organization, HHS said in a press release on Wednesday. The health department said it has moved all children in Southwest Key shelters to other shelters.
“For too long, pernicious actors have exploited such children both before and after they enter the United States,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said in the release.
“Today’s action is a significant step toward ending this appalling abuse of innocents.”
Austin, Texas-based nonprofit Southwest Key contracts with the federal government to care for young migrants arriving in the US without parents or legal guardians, and has operated 27 shelters in Texas, Arizona and California. It is the largest provider of shelter to unaccompanied minor children.
The US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit in July 2024 in the Western District of Texas alleging a “pattern” of “severe or pervasive sexual harassment” going back to at least 2015 in the network of Southwest Key shelters.
The complaint included alleged cases of “severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos, entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, sexual comments and gestures.”
Lawyers representing the Justice Department and Southwest Key submitted a joint motion for dismissal on Wednesday, the court record shows.
While Southwest Key did not immediately respond to a request for comment, it had previously sought to have the case dismissed and denied the allegations of sexual assault of children.
“Southwest Key takes pride in its record of providing safe shelter care, and it vehemently denies the allegations that there is any ‘pattern or practice’ of sexual abuse, harassment or misconduct at its facilities, or that it ‘failed to take reasonable, appropriate, and sufficient action to prevent, detect, and respond to sexual abuse and harassment of the children entrusted to its care,’” it wrote in a court filing last year.
The plans to dismiss the case were first reported by Bloomberg. In that story, the news outlet reported that an attorney for Southwest Key had reached out to the Justice Department and asked it to dismiss the matter, saying the case could hinder the crackdown on illegal immigration by President Donald Trump’s administration.
The abrupt reversal by the Justice Department comes at a time when Attorney General Pam Bondi has made combatting illegal immigration take priority over other initiatives that were pursued during President Joe Biden’s administration.
In response to the Justice Department’s decision, the National Center for Youth Law sent a letter to United States District Court Judge Alan D. Albright seeking to intervene in the case, in a bid to keep the case against Southwest Key alive.
The center asked Albright to delay a ruling on the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss by 30 days and allow it to file an intervening motion “on behalf of intervenors whose interests are no longer protected by the United States,” according to the letter written by the center’s co-director of litigation, David Hinojosa.
“Until today, the United States has faithfully sought to uphold the rule of law by prosecuting claims and seeking relief that would help both protect unaccompanied children and compensate them for their damages,” Hinojosa wrote.
“Countless children now risk being denied any recourse for the terrible harms suffered while in the care of Southwest Key.”
The court record shows Albright accepted the joint motion to dismiss and ordered the case closed.
The National Center for Youth Law also wrote a letter to Republican Senator Chuck Grassley urging him to call on the Justice Department to explain its reasons for dropping the lawsuit and identify who made the decision.
“Given your history of advocating for the safety of unaccompanied children, we respectfully request your office’s continued leadership to protect these children and hold accountable all entities — public or private — that jeopardize their welfare,” wrote Johnathan Smith, the center’s chief of staff and general counsel.
Grassley’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

PANAMA CITY: They crossed oceans to get to the US, fleeing conflict, religious persecution, poverty and government crackdowns in countries such as Afghanistan, Somalia, Cameroon, China, Pakistan and Iran.
After flying to Central and South America, they bused through countries where they didn’t speak the language and walked through unfamiliar jungle to get to the US-Mexico border.
Within days, they were detained and put on military aircraft that flew nearly 300 of them to Panama as US President Donald Trump sought to accelerate deportations to more complicated destinations.
Panama was supposed to be a stopover. But for those unwilling to return home — mostly out of well-founded fear — Panama sent them to a guarded camp without access to lawyers in the same Darién jungle many had crossed months earlier on their way north.
Over the past week, under legal pressure, the Panamanian government dropped them off at a bus station in the capital with 30 days to figure out where they will go next.
“It feels like the whole world is crushing down on me. It’s like everything is stopping,” said Isha Len, a 29-year-old from Cameroon. “I risked everything, my life, everything, crossing the Darién Gap, just to be sent back.”
Here are the stories that some of the deportees told The Associated Press:
Isha Len, 29, Cameroon
After conflict broke out in her small town, Len crossed Cameroon by car and minibus, then a fisherman friend carried her four hours by boat to Nigeria.
Len, a schoolteacher, flew to Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she said authorities detained her for a month in the airport. From there, she wound north through South America by bus, following other migrants until they reached the Darién Gap.
She walked days through the dangerous jungle that divides Colombia and Panama before boarding buses that carried her through Central America. After being kidnapped for days by a gang in Guatemala, she crossed into southern Mexico, where she took a boat along the Pacific coast to evade authorities. After she landed, she rode eight hours to Mexico City, continuing on by bus and car to Tijuana.
She crossed the US border and presented herself to American authorities.
Artemis Ghasemzadeh, 27, Iran
Artemis Ghasemzadeh left her country in January, fleeing after converting from Islam to Christianity – something that could cost Ghasemzadeh her life in Iran. She flew to Dubai, where she stayed two weeks and then took a flight to South Korea.
From there she flew to Mexico City, staying there for three weeks before going to Tijuana. She crossed the US border on Feb. 9, and was detained for five days, including her birthday.
“For changing your religion, your punishment is death,” she said. “We don’t know what will happen.”
Wang Qiu, 53, China
Wang Qiu said he left home after he was imprisoned for three years for speaking out about democracy and human rights issues.
He flew from Beijing to Cuba, then to the small South American country of Suriname. From there, he traveled by land: through Guyana, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, before trekking through the Darién Gap.
He moved up through Central America and Mexico before being detained after crossing into the US in San Diego.
Qamar Abdi, 19, Somalia
Qamar Abdi, left for the US on Aug. 17, due to warfare between the government and militants of Al-Shabab, which the US recognizes as a terrorist group.
She hopped from buses to shared cars for nearly a month until she reached South Africa. From there, she flew to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and spent the next six months riding buses north.
When she arrived at the northern tip of Colombia, she traveled six days through the Darién Gap, landing in Panama on New Year’s Day.
She took buses to the southern Mexican border city of Tapachula, where she was temporarily kidnapped and robbed by a gang. To avoid immigration authorities, she traveled hours packed on a boat with other migrants along Mexico’s Pacific coast, then took a bus to Mexico City. She spent two weeks there before driving to Tijuana, where she crossed into the US
Ebrahim Ghezelgechi, 36, Iran
Ebrahim Ghezelgechi fled Iran with his wife, Sahar; 10-year-old daughter, Aylin; and 11-year-old son, Sam, on Nov. 21.
The family flew to Brazil, then to Panama and finally Nicaragua. From there, they took buses north to Guatemala, then crossed into southern Mexico by boat. They road on top of trains and in buses and vans to get to Tijuana.
After Mexico authorities sent them back to the southern part of the country, they took a plane to the resort area of Los Cabos. There, they were detained, had their passports taken and were sent back south again.
They tried getting north a number of times, punted back by Mexican authorities, before eventually paying a driver to take them to Tijuana.
After crossing into the US, they were detained in San Diego for a week.
Samin Haider, 21, Pakistan
Samin Haider left for Dubai in 2023 after violence surged in his region of Parachinar, which borders Afghanistan and has been plagued for decades by conflicts between Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim communities.
Haider was there for 1 1/2 years before the United Arab Emirates canceled visas for Pakistanis.
Haider then flew to Mexico and traveled to the US-Mexico border with the hopes of seeking asylum.
Now deported to Panama, he still hopes to reach the US
Elham Ghaedi, 29, Iran
Elham Ghaedi left on Oct. 21, flying to Brazil and then to Venezuela’s capital Caracas.
She traveled to Colombia, where took a bus north and then walked five days through the Darién Gap.
She stayed 15 days in a migrant camp in southern Panama before taking a bus through Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and to Mexico’s southern border. There, migration authorities detained her for six days.
She traveled north to Mexico City, where she spent a month, before boarding a flight to Tijuana. US authorities detained her when she crossed to San Diego.
Hayatullah Omagh, 29, Afghanistan
Omagh fled Afghanistan in 2022 after the takeover of the Taliban because he identified as an atheist and was part of an ethnic minority, something that could put his life in danger.
He first went to Pakistan, where he got a visa for six months, and struggled to get a new one due to his Afghani passport.
He then went to Iran and worked there for 1 1/2 years. But the country wouldn’t accept him as a refugee.
He managed to get a visa to Brazil, which offered a number of Afghan people refuge after the rise of the Taliban, and flew to Sao Paulo in 2024.
Hoping to reunite with friends and family in the US, Omagh paid smugglers to move him north through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. He trekked through the Darién Gap, then took buses north through Central America to southern Mexico.
Mexican authorities detained him and dropped him back in southern Mexico a few times before he managed to take a flight to Mexico City and later to the US, where he was detained.
“After so much time, I’ve lost hope,” he said.