Hollywood Heavyweights Join Call to Shut Down Dilley Immigration Detention Center

A growing chorus of Hollywood stars and activists is turning up the heat on the federal government and private prison operator CoreCivic to shut down the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. The facility, used to detain children and families after ICE raids, has been repeatedly exposed for unsafe, neglectful, and abusive conditions.

The petition, first announced late last month and now boasting more than 215,000 signatures, includes high-profile names such as Jodie Foster, Spike Lee, Ben Stiller, Janelle Monáe, Edward Norton, and Ava DuVernay. Alongside artists, physicians and advocacy groups have joined the call, emphasizing the urgent need to end family detention.

“Children held in immigration detention endure trauma, neglect and conditions that violate basic standards of health, safety, dignity and human rights,” the petition states. It cites documented abuses including denial of clean water, contaminated food, inadequate medical care, family separations, and retaliation against detainees protesting poor conditions. “Children belong in schools and on playgrounds, not in detention centers.”

The Dilley center has been under scrutiny for years. Recent reports revealed outbreaks of measles, contaminated food and water, and severe mistreatment of detainees. The facility gained national attention when a 5-year-old boy, Liam Conejo Ramos, was detained alongside his father; images of the child with a Spider-Man backpack went viral, sparking outrage.

Lawmakers are also pressing for change. Representatives Joaquin Castro and Greg Casar, along with the advocacy group Families Belong Together, have condemned the facility’s conditions and called for its immediate closure. Castro highlighted the worsening medical conditions of detainees due to inadequate care, a claim repeatedly denied by the Department of Homeland Security.

More than 6,000 children are currently detained nationwide, and Castro and Casar support legislation to ban such facilities in the future. Carly Pérez Fernández, communications director at Detention Watch Network, stressed the urgency of the petition to the Hollywood Reporter: “Childhood is a fleeting period of time that has a tremendous impact on setting the foundation for a person’s lifelong well-being—it must be protected.”

The wave of support continues to grow, with a second round of signatories including musicians, actors, activists, and public figures like Megan Rapinoe, Jesse Williams, and Tarana Burke.

This swelling coalition shines a spotlight on the ongoing abuses within the immigration detention system and demands accountability and humane treatment for vulnerable families. The message is clear: family detention centers like Dilley have no place in a just society.

For the full list of signatories and to add your name, visit the petition page linked in the original report by the Hollywood Reporter.