Until two years ago, the small Texas town of Dilley was famous for its watermelons - but now the town of more than 3,800 people is famous for being home to America’s largest immigration detention centre.
The only detainees at the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Centre are undocumented women and children, mostly from Central America.
Locals here note the irony of the sprawling 55-acre site being only a few kilometres down the road from the town’s welcome sign, emblazoned with the motto: “A slice of the good life”.
Jonathan Ryan from the Refugee and Immigrant Centre for Education and Legal Services has been critical of the centre, and has compared it to Australia's centre on Nauru.
The streets of Dilley (SBS) Source: SBS
“What we are recreating is something actually very similar to Nauru, here in south Texas, in the desert,” he told SBS.
“Our government is constructing giant for-profit detention centres that serve the purpose of warehousing women and children for profit, in an attempt to send a deterrent message to refugees from Central America, from all over the world, that they’re not welcome here in the United States.”
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The Obama government built the centre in response to what the administration called a “humanitarian crisis” in 2014.
Critics noted that the US Department of Homeland Security oversaw the asylum applications of women and children, not social services, and that President Barack Obama had deported more immigrants than any other US president in history.
The facility was built in just over three months and was managed by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) on a four year, $1.3 billion fixed contract.
The company was paid regardless of how full the facility was or how many beds were slept in each night.
The large complex and town in Texas (SBS) Source: SBS
“How many millions and billions of dollars are we throwing away in the name of preserving a security that really is not strengthened by these fear tactics, by sealing ourselves up from the rest of the world?,” Mr Ryan said.
“It’s been America’s openness, it’s been our robust immigration system that’s kept us not just strong, but safe.
“These people are refugees fleeing the most dangerous countries in the world, outside of Syria and Afghanistan.”
Indefinite detention ended at the centre in 2015, when a federal court judge in California found the Department of Homeland Security had “wholly failed” to provide “safe and sanitary” conditions for children.
“What we are recreating is something actually very similar to Nauru, here in south Texas, in the desert.”
Now, most women and children are driven from the centre in a caged bus within 20 days of arriving and dropped off at the San Antonio bus terminal.
Speaking little or no English, the families were left to live in the community until the courts assessed their applications and claims.
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'I miss them a lot'
Yanira Lopez made the journey from Guatemala two years ago.
Her relatives were murdered by one of the country’s notorious drug gangs, who had tried to forcibly recruit her oldest son.
She walked with her three children across the US-Mexico border and claimed asylum.
“It’s very hard for me to remember what happened,” Ms Lopez told SBS.
“This whole journey was very difficult for me because I never planned to come to this country, I was happy in my country and I wanted to be around my family.
“I miss them a lot.”
Ms Lopez said she was separated from her children during her detention, and claimed that staples and other objects were often found in the food served at the centre.
She said staff showed little empathy.
“It was very hard, they just didn’t seem to care,” she said.
“Coming here and being mistreated was very, very frustrating because I left the family I love behind and I miss them a lot.”
Her children are enrolled in school and Ms Lopez was now “the house mum” at Mennonite House in San Antonio, which has welcomed 14,000 former detainees over the past year.
Volunteers wait to meet the daily detention centre bus drop offs with smiles and bottled water.
Families are taken to the house and given traditional food, clean clothes and place to sleep.
Many children arrive wearing detention centre ID tags pinned to their clothes.
Their mothers are fitted with ankle braclets, monitored by the Department of Homeland Security until their applications are approved or they are deported.
“Politicians, pundits and others have been devastatingly successful in characterising those refugees who have come looking for protection as economic migrants and as our presidential candidate Donald Trump has said, rapists and murderers,” Mr Ryan said.
“The true harm to the United States of 9/11 terrorism has been it’s shock to the character and spirit of the American citizen.
Mennonite House in San Antonio (SBS) Source: SBS
“We have forgotten in some respects that we are the strongest, most powerful, some might argue greatest nation in the history of the world."
Mr Ryan said there was no need to be scared of these people.
“To think that we are petrified or scared by the arrival of a few tens of thousand of refugees in a year – the number of refugees that arrive in Moldova or into Greece or into Turkey in a weekend – we, the greatest nation on earth, is now scared or women and children? Calling them the true threat to our national security?,” he said.
“This, in my opinion, is the greatest harm of terrorism in our country. It has made us forget who we are.
“The only people that suffer are those that always have (in the past), and it’s the refugees and immigrants on the bottom rung of our society, who make our meals, clean up after us who keep our society going and growing but who fail to receive the fundamental respect and acceptance of their neighbours.”
