Border Report Live

During a recent congressional oversight visit to a migrant detention facility that holds pregnant youth in San Benito, Texas, U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Oregon, says she didn’t see one child.
Dexter says she was told that there were seven youth at the facility, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. That includes two who are pregnant, two who have just given birth and three non-pregnant girls, she said.
But she says during her visit to the facility on Friday she didn’t actually see anyone, except for ORR management.
“Well, we didn’t see any girls, and we had given notice that we not just wanted to tour the facility, but we wanted to be able to speak with some of these young women who are being detained there,” Dexter told Border Report after her tour. “The question in my mind is, what are they hiding?”

The Carnalismo National Brown Berets RGV Chapter is continuing a tradition of helping farmworkers on the South Texas border as it rallies the community against what they call unlawful arrests and detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Residents unhappy border wall popped up so close to their new homesIn this episode of Border Report Live, chapter leader Elizabeth Rodriguez and member Denisse Carrion discuss how the Brown Berets are active in today’s political environment.
They spoke with South Texas correspondent Sandra Sanchez and host Rudy Mireles about providing protection form community members at protests, as well as providing education and information to those who might be affected by immigration policies during this Trump administration.
Modeled after the Black Panther Party, the Brown Berets were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Despite their appearance as a paramilitary organization, and being considered by many to be and extremist organization, Rodriguez says this group is more community-based. Their mission statement is: “We stand for education, community outreach and promoting unity for all those involved in a grassroots struggle.”

The 17th death of a migrant held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention so far this year raises serious concerns on oversight and how for-profit facilities are operating, Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher says.
Kocher joined South Texas correspondent Sandra Sanchez and host Rudy Mireles on the latest episode of Border Report Live to break down ICE detentions and deaths during this second Trump administration
Cuban-born Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, 27, died April 12 in a facility in Miami. He was found in his cell “in what appeared to be a suicide attempt,” ICE says.
The death came just one day after Mexican national Alejandro Cabrera Clemente, 49, died in a Louisiana ICE facility after being “found unresponsive,” ICE reports.

At least three days a week, Jesuit Catholic priest Brian Strassburger goes to Mexico to celebrate Mass and minister to asylum-seeking migrants in towns south of the border, and those living in migrant shelters.
In the latest episode of Border Report Live, Strassburger joined South Texas correspondent Sandra Sanchez and host Rudy Mireles live in the studio to talk about the people he serves in the Mexican border towns of Reynosa and Matamoros, and why he does it.
He says Mexican border towns are particularly dangerous for vulnerable populations, like families with small children, who he says are preyed upon by Mexican cartels and targets for kidnapping.
Since 2021, Strassburger has served the Rio Grande Valley region as part of the Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries.

A Venezuelan man pleaded his case to asylum officials on Thursday in an interview that his wife, a well-known doctor in South Texas, planned to attend until she was detained at the airport with the couple’s 5-year-old daughter.
Milenko Faria was interviewed at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices near Los Angeles, while his wife, Dr. Rubeliz Bolivar, entered her sixth day in immigration custody in Texas and was unable to attend the appointment they had been waiting for for more than 10 years.
Bolivar, who worked as a doctor in an area federally designated as medically underserved, was arrested by Border Patrol agents at McAllen International Airport on Saturday. She was with their American-born daughter, preparing to board a flight to join her husband and attend their asylum interview together.

Over 600 people signed up for a webinar on Wednesday evening to learn how to monitor and thwart U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expansion activities in local communities.
The “ICE Out Everywhere” free webinar was hosted by the nonprofit group States at the Core (STAC) and drew 600 people from 35 states, STAC co-director Jill Garvey told Border Report.
The “training is really a step beyond just documenting and responding to ICE in your neighborhood. It is thinking about all the other parts of the deportation machine,” Garvey said. “A big piece of this is the detention expansion — getting people oriented to this incredible push to expand incarceration of immigrants.”
The 90-minute free webinar also focused on derailing 287(g) immigration program agreements with local law enforcement agencies.

A new report by two nonprofits says that conditions at the nation’s largest migrant detention facility operating in South Texas are “inhumane.”
The report “A New Era of ICE Family Prisons” by Human Rights First, and Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, Inc. (RAICES) says the thousands of migrant families held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center outside San Antonio endure “inhumane conditions, routine mistreatment, and due process violations.”
Over 5,600 people were detained at the Dilley facility from April 2025 through February. The report is based on interviews with 35 families held in the facility during that time, as well as legal services providers.
The report also is based on more than 300 legal cases in which RAICES has represented asylum-seekers.

The parents of an 8-year-old girl who died in Border Patrol custody in 2023 in Harlingen, have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government with the help of several nonprofit organizations.
The Texas Civil Rights Project, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Texas A&M University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic on Friday filed the lawsuit on behalf of Mabel Estanislada Alvarez Benedicks and Rossel Doney Reyes, parents of Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez.
Anadith died on May 17, 2023 in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in Harlingen, eight days after the family crossed the Rio Grande into Brownsville, Texas from Mexico.
“Without access to adequate emergency medical care in CBP custody, Anadith’s health continued to decline until she could no longer breathe.
On May 17, 2023, Anadith died in her mother’s arms. Anadith’s death while in CBP custody was entirely preventable. CBP’s gross negligence directly caused her death,” the lawsuit contends.