In a Friday afternoon Instagram video, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro said Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials refused to let him meet with a 5-year-old boy detained inside the Dilley immigrant detention center southwest of San Antonio.
Immigration agents picked up the boy, Liam Tadeo, along with his father a few days ago in Austin during a traffic stop, said Castro, an Alamo City Democrat. The pair were on their way to a soccer game.
Castro said ICE denied his visit with him at Dilley’s South Texas Immigrant Processing Center, located an hour from San Antonio, because Tadeo’s father didn’t provide permission. However, the congressman said his staff obtained permission from the boy’s mother.
Castro called ICE’s denial “shady stuff.” He pledged to return to Dilley next Friday with another congressional delegation to visit with Tadeo and his dad.
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, an Austin Democrat, has drawn parallels between Tadeo’s arrest and ICE’s highly publicized capture of another 5-year-old named Liam earlier this year in Minnesota. Photos of Liam Ramos, a preschooler taken into custody by agents while he wore a Spider-Man backpack and bunny hat, stoked international outrage. That child also ended up in the Dilley prison camp before his eventual release.
“Liam [Tadeo] should be starting kindergarten this week, but instead he’s sitting in a trailer prison in Dilley, Texas,” Casar said in an online video shared Thursday.
“I’m calling for the immediate release of Liam, the immediate release of all of these kids, and for the closure of the Dilley trailer prison, because kids should be playing soccer, going to school, living their lives, not being arrested on the streets,” Casar said.
Though ICE officials refused to let Castro visit with Tadeo, the congressman said that he was able to visit with Jesús Bracho, a San Antonio father who maintains that he was released from ICE custody to lure his 9-year-old daughter into custody with him.
The family members were detained on July 1, 2026, on the far West Side near Loop 410 and U.S. Highway 90. Katherine is a student at Bonnie Ellison Elementary School — which is in Northside ISD.
Castro said he met both with Bracho and his daughter and that Bracho was moved to tears with guilt for feeling he was the reason his daughter was in prison.
Today’s total number of detainees at the Dilley site is 586, including 445 single adult females, 37 mothers, 25 fathers and 79 children.
The number of children there has dropped since Castro’s last visit, which took place in July with a delegation of other House members, including U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Massachusetts.
“I believe there are violations of civil rights, of human rights, and that’s why I believe Dilley should be shut down,” Castro said.
For months, Dilley’s overseers have prohibited video calls at the facility, according to Castro. He added that one mother complained to him that her family hasn’t been able to see her face in months.
Additionally, the 75-cent-per-minute cost for phone calls is prohibitive, Castro said. Talton, the private company operating the prison’s phone system, solely serves the immigrant corrections market, and its website claims it’s “empowering noncitizen’s [sic] through technology.”
Privacy concerns are a recurring issue regarding communications at the facility, Castro added. A poster advertising the ability to call a rape hotline for anonymously reporting misconduct by prison employees is not truly anonymous, the congressman said, noting that users must enter a personal identification number before they can use it.
Further, detainees must purchase a Proton email account, which ICE employees set up on behalf of inmates, enabling them to record their login information, Castro said. Many of the emails also bounce back, according to the congressman.
Prison personnel also pat down female detainees in an area without cameras, Castro said.
“I’m telling y’all, ICE is getting worse,” Castro said.
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