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corecivic
'Monstrous': ICE Deports 2-Month-Old Juan Nicolás Hours After Hospitalization
"To unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous," said US Rep. Joaquin Castro.
Feb 18, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported 2-month-old Juan Nicolás to Mexico—along with his 16-month-old sister, mother, and father—following the infant's hospitalization for respiratory issues and vomiting, which he suffered after spending more than three weeks in a Texas detention center run by the notorious private prison firm CoreCivic.
Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who has been pushing the Trump administration to release Juan and his family, confirmed late Tuesday that they were deported after speaking with the family's attorney, who told the lawmaker that ICE removed them from the US "with only the money that they had in their commissary—a total of $190." Castro wrote that "to unnecessarily deport a sick baby and his entire family is heinous."
"My staff and I are in contact with Juan’s family," Castro added. "We are laser-focused on tracking them down, holding ICE accountable for this monstrous action, demanding specific details on their whereabouts and well-being, and ensuring their safety."
According to Migrant Insider's Pablo Manríquez, Juan Nicolás "has been fighting respiratory illness in a facility where measles recently walked through the door, where mothers report struggling to get clean water for formula, where sick children cycle through ibuprofen and basic antibiotics until they deteriorate badly enough that someone finally calls an ambulance."
"Which is what happened Monday night. An ambulance came," Manríquez wrote. "It was, depending on how you look at it, either a rescue or an admission of guilt."
Juan's mother told Castro that the baby is suffering from bronchitis. "We are all deeply concerned that Juan and his mom will be deported and that Juan’s health will continue to deteriorate," the Texas Democrat wrote Tuesday afternoon. "His life is in danger because of ICE’s monstrous cruelty."
Univision journalist Lidia Terrazas crossed into Mexico and located Juan and his family in the hours following their deportation. The reporter later posted a photo with Juan on Instagram.
🚨BREAKING: The great @LidiaTerrazas has found Juan Nicolás, the two-month-old ICE deported today to Mexico.
Update coming tomorrow at https://t.co/HpQYb2bjiA https://t.co/enYyUH0KzO pic.twitter.com/vP2tqMqvNd
— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) February 18, 2026
The number of children held in ICE detention has skyrocketed during President Donald Trump's second White House term, rising more than sixfold. A recent analysis by The Marshall Project found that "on some days, ICE held 400 children or more."
"They are literally being treated as prisoners," Castro said after spending more than two hours inside the CoreCivic facility in Dilley, Texas last month. "This is a monstrous machine."
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Private Prison Firm GEO Group Reports Record $254 Million Profit After New ICE Contracts
"Trump’s donors are making money from this violent separation of our immigrant families," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib. "This is corruption."
Feb 13, 2026
Private prison company GEO Group on Thursday reported a company record of $254 million in profit last year—a roughly 700% increase over 2024—driven by asset sales and contracts with the Trump administration to build several new US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities across the US.
GEO Group secured approximately $520 million in new or expanded contracts in 2025, based on annualized revenue, according to company founder and executive chairman George Zoley.
"This represents the largest amount of new business we have won in a single year in our company's history," Zoley said during an earnings call on Thursday. "We have entered into new contracts to house ICE detainees at four facilities totaling approximately 6,000 beds."
Those facilities are: Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey; North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan; Folkston Processing Center at the D. Ray James Correctional Institution in Georgia; and a so-called "deportation depot" at the Baker Correctional Institution in Sanderson, Florida.
"The census across our active ICE facilities has continued to steadily increase from the third quarter at approximately 22,000 to presently approximately 24,000, which is the highest level of ICE populations we have ever had," Zoley said. "This past year, we also significantly expanded the delivery of our secure transportation services on behalf of both ICE and the US Marshals Service, valued at approximately $60 million in incremental annualized revenue."
"We continue to be optimistic about the importance and growth potential of the ICE contract," he added. "The new two-year contract includes pricing for 361,000 participants in year one and 465,000 participants in year two. With the capital investment we made in 2025, we believe we have the capability in scaling monitoring devices and case management services to achieve those significantly increased participation levels and far beyond if desired by ICE."
The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed last July by President Donald Trump contained a massive increase in funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE's parent agency, including about $45 billion for expanding immigrant detention capacity.
Days after Trump's 2024 reelection—which private prison companies funded to the tune of over $1 million—Zoley hailed the "unprecedented opportunity" of the incoming administration's mass deportation campaign.
“The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our company’s [and] country’s history, and the opportunity that it will bring,” he beamed.
Unlike state prisons or county and local jails, which are accountable to oversight agencies, privately operated ICE detention centers are not subject to state regulation or inspection. These facilities are plagued by a history of abuse, often sexual in nature, and sometimes alleged deadly medical neglect—problems that carried over from previous administrations.
Thirty-two people died in ICE custody last year, the agency's deadliest in two decades. Most of these deaths reportedly occurred in privately operated detention centers, and 10 immigrants died in GEO Group facilities, according to data collected by attorney and independent journalist Andrew Free.
GEO Group's earnings call came just days after three detainees at one of the company's facilities in Washington state filed a lawsuit accusing two guards there of sexually assaulting and beating them, and then trying to cover it up. The company has been previously sued for alleged inadequate medical care, wrongful deaths, and forced labor.
This, in a system in which immigrant detention is meant to be nonpunitive and in which only a tiny fraction of those detained have been charged or convicted of any violent crime, according to a leaked DHS document exposed earlier this week.
Another private prison company, CoreCivic, on Thursday reported $116.5 million in 2025 profits, a nearly 70% increase from the previous year. The operator of ICE facilities including the notorious Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas—which detainees describe as a measles-infested "living hell" where they’ve been served moldy food full of worms and forced to drink putrid water—said it expects 2026 to be even more profitable.
Some private prison investors expressed frustration that ICE isn't jailing enough people to generate even more revenue.
"One of the big questions, I think... has been the pace of detention by ICE, that it's been below what people... thought [it] was going to be," Joseph Gomes of NOBLE Capital Markets, Inc. said on Thursday's CoreCivic earnings call. "I think... people thought we'd be at that 100,000 level. We're at... a little over 70,000."
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Measles Outbreak at ICE Center Holding 400 Kids Called 'Predictable Outcome' of Trump Policies
One doctor warned that the outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately."
Feb 02, 2026
Public health experts and immigrant advocates sounded the alarm Sunday over a measles outbreak at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement internment center in Texas where roughly 1,200 people, including over 400 children, are being held.
Texas officials confirmed Saturday that two detainees at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, located about 75 miles (120 km) southwest of San Antonio, are infected with measles.
"Medical staff is continuing to monitor the detainees' conditions and will take appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection," the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement. "All detainees are being provided with proper medical care."
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Sunday that ICE "immediately took steps to quarantine and control further spread and infection, ceasing all movement within the facility and quarantining all individuals suspected of making contact with the infected."
Responding to the development, Dr. Lee Rogers of UT Health San Antonio wrote in a letter to Texas state health officials that the Dilley outbreak "will become an epidemic if we don't act immediately" by establishing "a single public health incident command center."
"Viruses are not political," Rogers stressed. "They do not care about one's immigration status. Measles will spread if we allow uncertainty and delay to substitute for reasoned public health action."
Dr. Benjamin Mateus took aim at the Trump administration's wider policy of "criminalizing immigrant families and confining children in camps," which he called a form of "colonial policy" from which disease is the "predictable outcome."
Measles is a highly contagious viral disease that can kill or cause serious complications, particularly among unvaccinated people. The United States declared measles eliminated in 2000, but declining vaccination fueled by misinformation has driven a resurgence in the disease, and public health experts warn that the US is close to following Canada, which lost its elimination status late last year.
Many experts blame this deadly and preventable setback on the vaccine-averse policies and practices of the Trump administration, particularly at the Department of Health and Human Services, led by vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
US measles cases this year already exceed the total for the whole of 2023 and 2024 combined, and it is only January. Yikes.
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— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) January 29, 2026 at 12:29 PM
Critics also slammed ICE's recent halt on payments to third-party providers of detainee healthcare services.
Immigrant advocates had previously warned of a potential measles outbreak at the Dilley lockup. Neha Desai, an attorney at the Oakland, California-based National Center of Youth Law, told CBS News that authorities could use the outbreak as a pretext for preventing lawyers and lawmakers from inspecting the facility.
"We are deeply concerned for the physical and the mental health of every family detained at Dilley," Desai said. "It is important to remember that no family needs to be detained—this is a choice that the administration is making."
Run by ICE and private prison profiteer CoreCivic, the Dilley Immigration Processing Center has been plagued by reports of poor health and hygiene conditions. The facility is accused of providing inadequate medical care for children.
Detainees—who include people legally seeking asylum in the US—report prison-like conditions and say they've been served moldy food infested with worms and forced to drink putrid water. Some have described the facility as "truly a living hell."
The internment center has made headlines not only for its harsh conditions, but also for its high-profile detainees, including Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old abducted by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month and held along with his father at the facility before a judge ordered their release last week. The child's health deteriorated while he was at Dilley.
On Sunday, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization—held a protest outside the Dilley lockup, demanding its closure.
"Migrant detention centers in America are a moral failure,” LULAC national president Roman Palomares said in a statement. "When a nation that calls itself a beacon of freedom detains children behind razor wire, separates families from their communities, and holds them in isolated conditions, we have crossed a dangerous line."
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