U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement halted “all movement” at a detention center in Texas for families and quarantined some migrants there after medical staff confirmed two detainees had “active measles infections,” the Department of Homeland Security said Sunday.
The measles cases at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center were detected Friday, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to CBS News. The ICE facility houses parents and children taken into federal custody over alleged violations of immigration law. It is located in south Texas, roughly an hour drive from San Antonio.
“ICE Health Services Corps 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,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin said medical officials were monitoring detainees and taking “appropriate and active steps to prevent further infection.”
“All detainees are being provided with proper medical care,” she added.
Before McLaughlin’s statement on Sunday, immigration lawyers had reported concerns about a potential measles outbreak at the Dilley center.
Neha Desai, a lawyer for the California-based National Center of Youth Law, which represents children in U.S. immigration custody, said she hopes the measles infections at Dilley are not used to “unnecessarily” prevent lawmakers and attorneys from inspecting the detention center in the near future, citing broader concerns about the facility.
“In the meantime, 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.”
In 2025, the United States saw the most measles cases in decades. Overall, the nation recorded more than 2,200 measles cases, including 762 people in a West Texas outbreak, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Two young children died and 99 people were hospitalized, according to state data.
Dilley is the detention complex where ICE had been holding 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, both detained in Minnesota during an operation that garnered widespread outcry, until the family was released over the weekend due to a court ruling. Liam and his father returned to Minnesota on Sunday.
ICE’s detention population has ballooned under the second Trump administration, which has vowed to stage a deportation crackdown of unprecedented proportions.
ICE is currently holding more than 70,000 individuals facing deportation in detention centers across the U.S., according to government data obtained by CBS News. The vast majority are single adults accused of being in the U.S. illegally. The number is a massive jump from a year ago, when ICE was holding around 40,000 detainees.
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