- - ICE is freeing some detained families despite vowing 'zero releases': Exclusive

Lauren Villagran, USA TODAYJanuary 20, 2026 at 11:23 AM

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Despite vowing "zero releases," the Trump administration has begun quietly releasing dozens of immigrant families from a Texas detention center after detaining but not deporting them.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released some 160 detained people – half of them minors – to a border shelter beginning Jan. 17, with plans to release as many as 100 to 150 per day over the next two to three weeks, according to the shelter director and other sources with direct knowledge of the releases.

The reason for the releases remains unclear, but the families hail from nearly a dozen countries including Iran, Russia, China, Vietnam, Venezuela, Guatemala and Mexico.

The sudden releases run counter to President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign, which seeks to remove millions of immigrants living in the country illegally.

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Pastor Mike Smith of the nonprofit Holding Institute, a shelter affiliated with the United Methodist Church and United Women in Faith, received the families on Saturday, Jan. 17, and Monday, Jan. 19, in Laredo, Texas.

Many of the parents had been detained by ICE with their children after attending their required immigration court hearings, Smith said. Several told him they had been detained for weeks, or more than a month.

A 1997 court order known as the Flores Settlement Agreement guides rules for detaining children, including with their families, and generally requires they not be held more than 20 days.

"They have strong family and community ties and employment that they want to go back to," Smith said.

The Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the releases.

Immigration arrests have surged over the past year, but Homeland Security, under Kristi Noem's leadership, has struggled to keep pace with deportations. The number of immigrants held in detention has ballooned as a result.

"What President Trump and our CBP agents and officers have been able to do in a single year is nothing short of extraordinary," Noem said in a Jan. 16 post on X, before ICE began the detention releases. "Once again, we have a record low number of encounters at the border and the 8th straight month of zero releases."

The administration's "zero releases" promise is central to the president's immigration enforcement strategy. Trump and Republicans skewered former President Joe Biden for releasing millions of immigrants into the country on humanitarian grounds.

To avoid releasing immigrants, the Trump administration last year suspended the right to seek asylum at the border and ordered immigration judges to refuse bond to detained immigrants, among other policy recommendations.

However, Smith confirmed to USA TODAY that, for months, ICE has also released individuals to them on occasion, typically those with extenuating circumstances, such as illness or medical need. But the numbers were low, in the single digits.

The recent releases appear to be the first on a larger scale under the Trump administration.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, in a Dec 4, 2019, file photo.

The releases also raise questions about the administration's motives, said Jennie Murray, president of the National Immigration Forum, which represents faith and law-enforcement organizations on immigration policy.

"Is there a capacity violation (such as overcrowding)? Or does the individual case prove the family shouldn't be deported?" she asked. "Hopefully, it's a sign the rule of law is working."

Detention traumatizes children, advocates say

ICE bused the first group of families to the Laredo shelter late Saturday, Jan. 17, from the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, which is operated by a private company, CoreCivic.

Smith said several detainees described overcrowding in some dormitories.

Some described being detained for an extended period with their children, shuffled between holding facilities, he said. Many of the adults, but not all, were outfitted with ankle monitors upon their release, he said. Many were similarly outfitted during the Biden administration.

A county worker collects shackles after migrants were loaded onto a plane for deportation at Kansas City International Airport on Nov. 18, 2025. ICE officers later used their own shackles to restrain the migrants during the flight.

As to the motivation behind the releases, Smith said, "My best hope is that there are officials in detention centers that are serving their better angels."

Migrant shelters along the border, often run by church communities, played a critical role during past years of high migration, offering a cot and a hot meal to migrants and families in need.

But dozens of refuges closed down last year after the Trump administration slashed their funding, amid unproven accusations the nonprofit and faith-based organizations were illegally harboring or trafficking migrants. At the same time, migration all but dried up at the Southwest border, so others shuttered because their services weren't needed.

The Trump administration reopened the Dilley family detention center, which lies about an hour south of San Antonio, after the Biden administration ended the practice of detaining immigrant families.

Child advocates have decried the long-term, traumatizing effects of detention on children's physical and mental well-being.

In 2025, the Trump administration sought to nullify the Flores settlement that protects children from prolonged detention, arguing it represents an outdated constraint on immigration enforcement. A federal judge in August 2025 denied the administration's request.

Detentions surge, led by immigrants without criminal records

More immigrants are being detained under Trump than at any point in American history since the internment of people of Japanese, Italian and German ancestry during World War II.

There were nearly 69,000 people in ICE detention, according ICE data published Jan. 7, 2026. The number has been climbing consistently since Trump took office. There were roughly 38,000 people in ICE detention in early January 2025 at the close of the Biden administration.

Congress last year authorized $45 billion in funding to expand ICE detention.

"The surge in spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill has really transformed who is being detained and why," said Murray, of the National Immigration Forum. "I'm not sure people understand that for the first time, noncriminal immigrants way outweigh the criminals in custody."

In recent months, most of the growth in the detained population is among immigrants without criminal charges or criminal records, according to Syracuse University researcher Austin Kocher.

ICE deported roughly 329,000 people in fiscal 2025, a 21% increase over the 271,000 people deported during the last full year of the Biden administration, Kocher's analysis of ICE data shows.

Smith said the people released to his shelter from detention were part of the communities they lived in, likely for years.

"These are people who were probably your neighbor and you didn't realize they were in the court system," he said. "They want to return to a sense of normalcy."

Lauren Villagran covers immigration for USA TODAY and can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ICE releases detained immigrant families despite 'zero releases' vow

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