ICE Arrests a 5-Year-Old on His Way to a Soccer Game and Sends Him to the Country’s Only Family Detention Camp — a Federal Judge Appoints Outside Monitors, and ICE Blocks a Congressman From Visiting the Boy

August 24, 2026

On August 16, 2026, federal immigration agents stopped Victor Martinez Nieto in Austin, Texas, as he drove his five-year-old son, Liam Tadeo, to a soccer game. Video of the stop shows the crying child holding his handcuffed father's hand. Both were taken to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley — the only family detention facility in the United States, run under contract by the private prison company CoreCivic. Liam was supposed to start kindergarten that week. It was the second time in 2026 that a five-year-old named Liam was taken to Dilley. In January, ICE agents detained Liam Conejo Ramos on his walk home from preschool in Columbia Heights, Minnesota; a federal judge ordered him and his father released at the end of that month. The August arrest landed in the middle of a widening fight over the facility. The Texas Tribune reported on August 12 that federal data showed many children at Dilley had been held 100 days or longer, far past the 20-day limit set by the Flores settlement, and that in the first year after the camp reopened in March 2025 the administration held roughly 3,000 children there, more than half of them beyond 20 days. On August 18, Chief U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee appointed a special master, Andrea Sheridan Ordin, and an independent monitor, Dr. Paul Wise, with authority to inspect facilities, review records and interview detainees — citing minors confined for 50, 91 and even 323 days. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who had led 111 House Democrats in a late-July letter demanding DHS shut Dilley down and terminate the CoreCivic contract, tried to visit Liam Tadeo and was turned away: ICE said the boy's father had not given permission, though Castro's office said it had obtained the mother's. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, demanded the release of Liam and of at least 112 children then held at the camp. DHS and CoreCivic have said Dilley meets federal detention standards and undergoes regular audits.