Texas
Privately run immigration detention center that previously held families plans to reopen
A private prison company has signed an agreement to reopen an immigrant detention facility in Texas that previously held families with children for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the business said Wednesday.
Nashville-based CoreCivic announced the contract with ICE and the city of Dilley regarding the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center, located about 85 miles (135 kilometers) north of Laredo and the Mexico border.
The center was used during the administration of President Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s first presidency. But President Joe Biden phased out family detention in 2021, and CoreCivic said the facility was idled in 2024.
“We do acknowledge that we anticipate housing families” at Dilley, CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin told The Associated Press.
CoreCivic said in a statement that the facility “was purpose-built for ICE in 2014 to provide an appropriate setting for a family population.” The new contract runs through at least March 2030.
ICE officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking information about who will be held at Dilley and how soon.
The agency — which mostly detains immigrants at privately operated detention facilities, its own processing centers and local prisons and jails — entered this year with zero facilities geared toward families, who last year accounted for about one-third of arrivals on the southern border.
The Trump administration has expanded the detention of migrants to military bases including Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, via flights out of Army installations at El Paso, Texas, as it promises to ramp up mass deportations.
Private detention contractors with longstanding ties to ICE, including CoreCivic and GEO Group, say they offer less expensive options than the military for an array of immigrant detention services and transportation including international flights.
During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children, including Army installations at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Goodfellow Air Force Base.
In 2014, Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families crossing the border illegally.
Colorado
Boy missing for 7 years found after mom is arrested during a burglary investigation
DENVER (AP) — A boy who was allegedly taken by his mother, who didn’t have custody, seven years ago from Atlanta was found last month in Colorado after she was arrested in an unrelated incident in suburban Denver, authorities said Wednesday.
Rabia Khalid, 40, was arrested Feb. 23 after sheriff’s deputies were asked to investigate a suspected burglary taking place at a vacant home that was for sale, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said. The deputies found two children in a vehicle outside and a man and a woman coming out of the home who initially told them they were working for a realtor, it said in a press release.
Deputies, working with dispatchers, eventually determined that the woman was Khalid, who had an active warrant related to the 2017 disappearance of her son, Abdul Aziz Khan, who is now 14. The case was featured on Netflix’s “Unsolved Mysteries,” according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which had been helping look for the boy. Khan was the older of the two children found in the vehicle, it said.
Khalid along with the man were arrested on charges including second-degree kidnapping, forgery, and identity theft.
Khalid’s lawyer, Kyle Sawyer, said he was still reviewing all the information related to the case but said he would be adamantly defending Khalid.
The boy and the younger child, whose identity hasn’t been released, were taken into protective custody and decisions about where they will be placed will be made by the court, the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office said the boy’s family is asking for privacy at this time, but they expressed their gratitude in a statement.
“We’re overwhelmed with joy that Aziz has finally been found. We want to thank everyone for their support over the last seven years,” they said.
Idaho
Firing squad could become state’s main execution method
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Death by firing squad could become Idaho’s primary method of execution under a bill headed to the governor’s desk this week.
The Idaho Senate passed the bill on Wednesday, and it will take effect next year if it is signed by Gov. Brad Little.
Firing-squad executions have been a back-up method in Idaho since 2023, available only if prison officials are unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.
Rep. Doug Ricks, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation was spurred by Idaho’s botched attempt to execute Thomas Eugene Creech last year, when execution team members were unable to find a suitable vein for an IV line. He suggested shooting someone was more effective and humane than other execution methods. He speculated that the state could use a machine or “electronic triggering methods” that would eliminate the need for human volunteers to pull the triggers.
“One thing about this method, it’s pretty sure,” Ricks said during a hearing on the bill last month. “It’s not going to be something that gets done part way.”
Four other states — Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah — also allow the use of firing squads in certain circumstances, but the method has rarely been used in recent history. South Carolina is expected to put the first person to death by firing squad in the U.S. in 15 years, with the planned execution of Brad Sigmon set for Friday.
The Federal Defender Services of Idaho, which represents many of the people on the Idaho’s death row, declined to comment on the bill.
Idaho Department of Correction officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The prison recently finished remodeling its lethal injection chamber to add a space where execution team members can use more invasive methods of inserting an IV line deep into the body near the heart if they can’t successfully place an IV line in the condemned person’s arms or legs.
Republican Sen. Daniel Foreman, a retired police officer and former Air Force veteran who served in combat, was the only Republican to debate against the bill on Wednesday. He said he has seen shooting deaths, and that they are “anything but humane.”
“The consequences of a botched firing execution are more graphic, more mentally, psychologically devastating” than other botched execution methods, Foreman said.
Privately run immigration detention center that previously held families plans to reopen
A private prison company has signed an agreement to reopen an immigrant detention facility in Texas that previously held families with children for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the business said Wednesday.
Nashville-based CoreCivic announced the contract with ICE and the city of Dilley regarding the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center, located about 85 miles (135 kilometers) north of Laredo and the Mexico border.
The center was used during the administration of President Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s first presidency. But President Joe Biden phased out family detention in 2021, and CoreCivic said the facility was idled in 2024.
“We do acknowledge that we anticipate housing families” at Dilley, CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin told The Associated Press.
CoreCivic said in a statement that the facility “was purpose-built for ICE in 2014 to provide an appropriate setting for a family population.” The new contract runs through at least March 2030.
ICE officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking information about who will be held at Dilley and how soon.
The agency — which mostly detains immigrants at privately operated detention facilities, its own processing centers and local prisons and jails — entered this year with zero facilities geared toward families, who last year accounted for about one-third of arrivals on the southern border.
The Trump administration has expanded the detention of migrants to military bases including Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, via flights out of Army installations at El Paso, Texas, as it promises to ramp up mass deportations.
Private detention contractors with longstanding ties to ICE, including CoreCivic and GEO Group, say they offer less expensive options than the military for an array of immigrant detention services and transportation including international flights.
During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children, including Army installations at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Goodfellow Air Force Base.
In 2014, Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families crossing the border illegally.
Colorado
Boy missing for 7 years found after mom is arrested during a burglary investigation
DENVER (AP) — A boy who was allegedly taken by his mother, who didn’t have custody, seven years ago from Atlanta was found last month in Colorado after she was arrested in an unrelated incident in suburban Denver, authorities said Wednesday.
Rabia Khalid, 40, was arrested Feb. 23 after sheriff’s deputies were asked to investigate a suspected burglary taking place at a vacant home that was for sale, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said. The deputies found two children in a vehicle outside and a man and a woman coming out of the home who initially told them they were working for a realtor, it said in a press release.
Deputies, working with dispatchers, eventually determined that the woman was Khalid, who had an active warrant related to the 2017 disappearance of her son, Abdul Aziz Khan, who is now 14. The case was featured on Netflix’s “Unsolved Mysteries,” according to the U.S. Marshals Service, which had been helping look for the boy. Khan was the older of the two children found in the vehicle, it said.
Khalid along with the man were arrested on charges including second-degree kidnapping, forgery, and identity theft.
Khalid’s lawyer, Kyle Sawyer, said he was still reviewing all the information related to the case but said he would be adamantly defending Khalid.
The boy and the younger child, whose identity hasn’t been released, were taken into protective custody and decisions about where they will be placed will be made by the court, the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office said the boy’s family is asking for privacy at this time, but they expressed their gratitude in a statement.
“We’re overwhelmed with joy that Aziz has finally been found. We want to thank everyone for their support over the last seven years,” they said.
Idaho
Firing squad could become state’s main execution method
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Death by firing squad could become Idaho’s primary method of execution under a bill headed to the governor’s desk this week.
The Idaho Senate passed the bill on Wednesday, and it will take effect next year if it is signed by Gov. Brad Little.
Firing-squad executions have been a back-up method in Idaho since 2023, available only if prison officials are unable to obtain lethal injection drugs.
Rep. Doug Ricks, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation was spurred by Idaho’s botched attempt to execute Thomas Eugene Creech last year, when execution team members were unable to find a suitable vein for an IV line. He suggested shooting someone was more effective and humane than other execution methods. He speculated that the state could use a machine or “electronic triggering methods” that would eliminate the need for human volunteers to pull the triggers.
“One thing about this method, it’s pretty sure,” Ricks said during a hearing on the bill last month. “It’s not going to be something that gets done part way.”
Four other states — Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah — also allow the use of firing squads in certain circumstances, but the method has rarely been used in recent history. South Carolina is expected to put the first person to death by firing squad in the U.S. in 15 years, with the planned execution of Brad Sigmon set for Friday.
The Federal Defender Services of Idaho, which represents many of the people on the Idaho’s death row, declined to comment on the bill.
Idaho Department of Correction officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The prison recently finished remodeling its lethal injection chamber to add a space where execution team members can use more invasive methods of inserting an IV line deep into the body near the heart if they can’t successfully place an IV line in the condemned person’s arms or legs.
Republican Sen. Daniel Foreman, a retired police officer and former Air Force veteran who served in combat, was the only Republican to debate against the bill on Wednesday. He said he has seen shooting deaths, and that they are “anything but humane.”
“The consequences of a botched firing execution are more graphic, more mentally, psychologically devastating” than other botched execution methods, Foreman said.
