Rep. Maxine Dexter, an Oregon Democrat and former critical care physician, detailed her concerns in an 8 May letter to federal refugee and health officials after visiting the San Benito site late last month. During the tour, she said she was blocked from speaking with or even seeing any of the children. When local immigration attorneys arranged interviews with two girls, those minors were reportedly spoken to harshly by Office of Refugee Resettlement staff and became too frightened to speak with the lawmaker. Dexter has not received answers to her questions regarding the facility’s operations or the location of the transferred youth.
Dexter said she found conflicting accounts of how many children were being held at the time of her visit. One immigration attorney receiving a daily census reported 11 children on the day of the trip, while facility officials told Dexter there were only seven. A few weeks earlier, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro reported seeing 17 children at the same location. Facility staff told Dexter that departures were handled on a “case by case” basis but did not clarify whether the missing children had been moved to foster care, transferred to other facilities, or returned to their home countries.
“Where have all of these kids gone? Because there used to be many, many more,” Dexter said. She noted that a representative from the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Washington office was present during the tour but did not answer her questions. Dexter said she kept asking, trying new ways to find answers, but was repeatedly met with silence. “Our experience has been, we’ll keep asking, and no one answers,” she said.
Jonathan White, who previously worked on children’s programs at the Office of Refugee Resettlement under the Obama and Trump administrations, told The Guardian that the agency’s case management system could definitively track the minors. White said the most likely explanation is that the girls were moved back to their countries of origin, which would mean their U.S.-born infants are being deported alongside them.
“I suspect that in effect in this one narrow case the president’s executive order on birthright citizenship is already being in some ways enforced,” White said. He noted that prior to the current administration, such departures almost never happened because the children had to formally request an immigration court judge. When Dexter visited the Harlingen immigration court, more than half the children, all from Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities, had no legal representation.
The medical conditions at the San Benito facility have also drawn attention. About half of the pregnant children held at the site are reportedly pregnant as a result of rape, and Dexter said the high-risk nature of adolescent pregnancies requires specialized care that may be difficult to secure under Texas law. She noted that the state’s abortion ban and restrictions on reproductive healthcare have contributed to a local shortage of OB-GYNs. Dexter said she is concerned about how pregnancy or birth complications would be handled if they occur, particularly in emergency scenarios like ectopic pregnancies or partial pregnancy loss.
“There is a lack of OB-GYNs in the community in no small part because of the changes to these laws around reproductive healthcare,” Dexter said. “I’m very concerned about whether there is sufficient high-risk fair access, especially with these most marginalized children who don’t have the advocates and don’t have rights in the same way that others do.”
Facility staff told Dexter they had reduced the wait time for medical appointments from 15 days to five days since detentions were paused at the site in 2024 due to insufficient healthcare access. However, Dexter noted that the facility still lacked basic medical equipment like glucometers and Dopplers for monitoring high-risk pregnancies. There are no lactation specialists on staff, and mothers are reportedly sent back to class as early as two weeks after giving birth.
Staff told Dexter the children receive medical meals to meet their nutritional needs, but immigration attorneys dispute that account. “What we have heard from other folks who directly work with people who’ve been in this detention facility, and what we heard from the people giving the tour, was very different,” Dexter said.
Emily Hilliard, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that pregnant girls at the facility “have access to gynecologists and maternal-fetal medicine specialists who provide care for high-risk adolescent pregnancies, ensuring that children with complex medical needs can receive appropriate evaluation and treatment when necessary.”
Broader conditions across U.S. immigration detention centers have faced recent scrutiny. Detainees at multiple facilities have reported inadequate medical care, unsafe food, and outbreaks of infectious diseases. New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim said he was sprayed with pepper balls on Monday while visiting the Delaney Hall U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark, where detainees are currently on a hunger strike over poor conditions. New Jersey state health inspectors were denied full access to Delaney Hall last week, according to state officials.
Dexter said the lack of state-level oversight exacerbates the problem in Texas, noting that Gov. Greg Abbott has rescinded state oversight of facilities operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. “ORR is overseeing ORR, which is a recipe for disaster,” Dexter said. She added that the experience of being blocked from asking questions at the San Benito facility raises broader concerns about governmental transparency.
“The fact that there appears to have been some coercion or intimidation from talking with me just makes you wonder: ‘What are they hiding? Why do they not want transparency and accountability for what’s going on?’” she said.