‘Unify to Dilley’ Inspires Hundreds to Converge Outside CoreCivic's Family Concentration Camp

DILLEY, Texas—‘Unify to Dilley’ attendees gathered on the side of the road just outside of this small South Texas community on April 18, 2026, with three key demands: shut down the concentration camp; end family detention entirely; and release everyone inside by Mother’s Day.

The rural complex operated by CoreCivic (motto: "Better the Public Good") has been in and out of spotlight for years due to allegations of human rights abuses. It is a key and controversial node in a growing federal deportation-industrial complex under President Donald Trump.

This weekend's call came from the Blue Bunny Brigade in the Rio Grande Valley weeks after the high-profile fight for the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father. It was Liam’s blue bunny hat that inspired the group’s name and come to illustrate so many protest signs and banners.

“We cannot remain silent anymore,” Chriselda Vera told Deceleration outside the camp. “This is horrible what's happening to children, children and innocent people. They have no business being detained.”

Liam Ramos, for instance, was in the U.S. with his father, who his attorneys insist was adhering to all U.S. legal requirements while seeking an active claim of asylum. But, as Roxana Rojas wrote at ICE Watch this week, the Trump administration has been quickly changing the rules around asylum and naturalization as they seek to ramp up deportations to a goal of 1 million per year.

On Saturday, hundreds from around the state, representing possibly dozens of organizations, responded to the call from the Brigade. They came from Brownsville, Houston, Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio. Deceleration met one family from Colorado at the service station down the road from the facility, the two children hurriedly marking up a protest sign on the hood of the car. They said they had arrived the day before to try to help a Colorado Springs woman and her children, all of whom have been languishing inside the Dilley facility for 10 months. The elder daughter was later invited to read a letter from their former neighbor at the protest.

El Gamal, whose family was ordered released months ago by a federal judge, relayed through the letter that she in the midst of a medical emergency that is being neglected by her for-profit overseers. That she feared leaving her children orphans.

Related Video: ‘Faithful Neighbors at Dilley Fighting for Hayam El Gamal’

Texas state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, now running for Texas Governor, suggested other state attorneys general would be prosecuting the CoreCivic operation for child abuse. Not in Texas.

“Prison companies only exist to make profit. That is their job. And 100 percent of those profits are paid for by the taxpayer,” Hinojosa said.“ The shame is that our elected leaders allow it to happen. And here in Texas it is happening in a big, big way because [Texas Governor] Greg Abbott has taken tens of thousands of dollars from the private prison companies.”

In a parking lot in South San Antonio on Saturday morning, concerned residents filled up several cars and prepared to convoy down the Dilley, roughly an hour to the south.

Asked what motivated them to take the trip, one told Deceleration:

"This is one of the atrocities of the Trump Administration. ... We're tearing apart families, people who are doing the right thing."

The Dilley complex, once closed by President Joe Biden, was reopened after President Donald Trump returned to office. Since that time, the number of children in detention has skyrocketed, the Marshal Project has found.

The practice inspired Reverend Dianne Garcia of the Iglesia Christiana Roca de Refugio to participate recently in a 90-mile walk from Dilley to San Antonio in protest.

Garcia provided the opening prayer at 'Unify to Dilley' surrounded by banners decrying the practice of imprisoning children.

Another speaker, Vox Rose of San Antonio Unity, reminded attendees of the increased levels of abuse, isolation, and deportation faced by Black detainees, while urging them on to deeper levels of action.

“This is the same fight Black folks have been fighting since slave patrols," Rose said. "We're not begging humanity from inhumane machines. We expose it. We confront it. And we dismantle it. Starting with closing this Dilley trailer park prison forever."

Rep. Hinojosa lambasted the for-profit facility and cast her campaign as part of what she described as a desperately needed "moral reckoning" that voters can help make reality.

“At a time when we have witnessed unspeakable atrocities against children—using children for profit, using children for sex, using children for war, using children for power—it is time to say no, to make a moral stand,” Hinojosa said. 

“Because if we cannot do it for our children, then I don't know if we can do it for anyone. I don't know, if we can save ourselves.”