New deal keeps open facility that detains immigrant families

Photo credit FILE - In this June 30, 2015, file photo, signs are seen at the entrance to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. The 2,400-bed detention facility that the Trump administration is using to detain immigrant mothers and children will now operate under an arrangement the U.S. government quietly reached with a private prison operator and the city where it's located. The Associated Press obtained contracts that show U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will maintain largely the same structure that government auditors criticized earlier this year. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
By The Associated Press

HOUSTON (AP) — The U.S. government has quietly reached a new agreement to keep open a 2,400-bed detention facility used to detain immigrant mothers and children.

It's a lucrative arrangement for a private prison company and the tiny South Texas town where it's located.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month signed an agreement with the city of Dilley, where the South Texas Family Residential Center opened in 2014. The city of Dilley signed a contract at the same time with CoreCivic, the private prison operator that runs the detention center, the largest facility of its kind in the U.S.

ICE said it was replacing an arrangement that its inspector general criticized earlier this year as violating budget guidelines and wasting money. But the new arrangement has some of the same features the inspector general criticized.