“They make everything look good while you visit, but the facilities have gotten more grim over the years,” the San Antonio Democrat said on a media call.
He noted that personnel at the privately run detention facility an hour southeast of San Antonio had moved the inmates into its courtyard ahead of his tour, where they played ping pong and cornhole.
Despite the whitewashing attempt, the congressman said he observed “terrible” conditions at the site, which is used to house migrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as part of the Trump White House’s anti-immigrant crackdown. Those included eight beds packed into a small, unsanitary cell and broken or seemingly never-used phone booths purportedly used to give inmates contact with the outside world.
He also noted that private-prison company GEO Group, the camp’s operator, starts serving breakfast at 4:30 a.m., which he called a “punitive measure.”
“It’s a system that benefits from a kind of misery, but also a Lord of the Flies mentality that seems to pervade ICE right now,” Castro said of the network of for-profit detention centers.
Recent reports of grim conditions inside the Karnes facility and a similar detention site in the town of Dilley include diarrhea-inducing tap water, substandard medical care, traumatized children refusing to eat and inmates fighting over access to clean water.
Castro said ICE officials told him there are more than 800 men and 300 women — both recent arrivals and longtime U.S. residents — in the “completely full” Karnes camp. Unlike in the neighboring Dilley family detention center, there are no children.
The congressman pledged to visit the Dilley facility and also attend upcoming immigration court hearings. Over recent months, ICE agents have conducted arrests of people showing up to immigration court to legally plead their cases for U.S. citizenship or legal resident status.
On the call, Castro also condemned the practices ICE has used to deter lawful oversight of detention centers, such as a new 7-day notice rule for congressional visits and ICE agents’ use of disguises to conceal their identities.
“When I walked into the facility, one of the first people that I saw there was somebody who was wearing a mask … and also wearing what looked to be a kind of blond costume wig,” Castro said. “When I say these facilities have become less transparent and more secretive, I think it applies not only to the policies and what’s going on there when elected officials are not visiting, but also to the personnel, to the very people that are working there.”
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This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 6, 2025.