Emergency calls placed over several months from a migrant detention facility in South Texas reveal multiple medical emergencies involving pregnant women and young children, raising renewed concerns from advocates about conditions at the site.
Audio recordings of 911 calls obtained by ABC News show staff at the South Texas Family Residential Center requesting ambulances for detainees experiencing seizures, fainting episodes and respiratory distress. The calls, made to emergency dispatchers in Frio County, span from October 2025 through February 2026.
In one call from January, a staff member asked for immediate medical help for a toddler.
“I’m calling for a little kid going through respiratory distress,” the caller told dispatchers.
Other calls documented requests for ambulances for a 6-year-old boy suffering from extreme fatigue and a high fever, a 14-month-old child struggling to breathe, and a 22-month-old with both a fever and dangerously low oxygen levels.
“We need an ambulance,” one caller said in another recording. “We have a child with a high fever.”
Immigrant advocates, physicians and lawmakers have recently intensified scrutiny of conditions at the Dilley facility, which is used to detain migrant families.
ABC News recently spoke with a couple who said their 1-year-old daughter contracted both COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus during a 60-day detention at the center. The parents alleged that medical staff initially dismissed the child’s symptoms.
Concerns have also been raised by Joaquin Castro, who visited a 5-year-old child detained at the facility with his father. Castro later highlighted the case of a two-month-old infant whose condition he said required urgent attention. Following his comments, staff at the detention center placed additional calls to Frio County authorities regarding the infant.
In one recording, a caller asked authorities to check on the baby’s welfare.
“Hi, I’m calling about a child that is at the detention center, a baby that is very sick, and I want to know if you guys can go do a child wellness check,” the caller said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the country’s migrant detention facilities, has pushed back against criticism of conditions at the center.
In a statement, DHS said detainees have continuous access to medical care from on-site professionals, including physicians, pediatricians, nurses and mental health specialists.
“The truth is this facility provided proper medical care for all detainees including access to a pediatrician,” Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said. She added that families in detention have the option to voluntarily leave the United States using the government’s CBP Home program, which offers a free flight home and financial assistance.
