When guards appeared earlier this month outside the room Christian Hinojosa shared with her son and other women and children at the immigrant detention center in Dilley, Texas,
she guessed what they might be after.

She quickly donned her puffy winter jacket, then slipped a manila envelope inside it.

“Thank God the weather was cool,” she said — the jacket didn’t raise suspicions.

Then, she said, she was instructed to leave the room while eight to 10 guards lifted up mattresses, opened drawers and rifled through papers.

In the envelope were kids’ writings and artwork about life in America’s only detention facility for immigrant families,
a collection of trailers and dormitories in the brush country south of San Antonio.

She planned to share their letters with the outside world.

Guards have taken away crayons, colored pencils and drawing paper during recent room searches at Dilley,
according to Hinojosa and three other former detainees,
along with lawyers and advocates in contact with the families inside.

Guards have taken artwork, too, they said
— even one child’s drawing of Bratz fashion dolls.

They said detainees have lost access to Gmail and other Google services in the Dilley library amid stepped up searches, seizures and restrictions on communications,
making it more difficult for them to contact lawyers and advocates.

They and family members said guards sometimes hover within earshot during detainees’ video calls to relatives and reporters

https://www.propublica.org/article/dilley-detention-center-kids-art-removal