Prying Open the Black Box

ICE conceals the breadth of its detention network by limiting access, but recent immigration reporting shows that information can and will emerge if we keep looking.

Last Wednesday, a federal judge denied an asylum claim for the family of Liam Conejo Ramos, the five-year-old boy in the floppy blue bunny hat whose photo went viral when he was detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier this year. Liam, whose family is appealing the ruling, became the face of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, and the detention facility where he and his father were held, Dilley Immigration Processing Center, quickly became the subject of increased scrutiny—and reporting—by ProPublica, New York, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Texas Tribune, and the Marshall Project, among other publications.

The war in Iran, a brewing energy crisis, and fallout from the Epstein files have pushed immigration from the headlines since ICE agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti during protests in Minnesota in January. Early this month, Trump fired Kristi Noem, whose retaliatory and self-aggrandizing approach to running the Department of Homeland Security had grown increasingly controversial, and replaced her with Senator Markwayne Mullin. At his confirmation hearing last week, Mullin struck a milder tone, telling senators that his goal for the next six months will be that DHS isn’t “in the lead story every day.”