As the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement, Texas has come to play a central role in hosting the detained migrants. Texas is home to the largest ICE detention center, a sprawling tent city on the edge of Fort Bliss in El Paso known as Camp East Montana, and the only family detention center, outside San Antonio.

Almost 20,000 people are currently detained at ICE facilities in Texas. Many of the detainees have reported poor conditions, including inadequate food, insufficient medical care and overcrowding. At least seven migrants have died in Texas lockups in just the last few months.

To discuss the current state of ICE detentions, TribCast is joined by Texas Tribune political reporter Alejandro Serrano and investigative reporter Lomi Kriel, who have been covering the fallout.

Watch the video above or subscribe to the TribCast on iTunes, Spotify, or RSS. New episodes every Tuesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected the appeal of a Texas-based online citizen journalist who said she was wrongly arrested in a case that drew attention from national media organizations and free speech advocates.

The justices left in place a divided federal appeals court ruling that found journalist Priscilla Villarreal, known online as La Gordiloca, could not sue police officers and other officials over her arrest for seeking and obtaining nonpublic information from police.

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, writing, “It should be obvious that this arrest violated the First Amendment.”

The high court has previously directed the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review Villareal’s case in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling in another case from Texas. In June 2024, the justices gave a former local elected official another chance to pursue her lawsuit claiming she too was wrongly arrested.

In that case, Sylvia Gonzalez, a former city council member in the San Antonio suburb of Castle Hills, said she was arrested in retaliation as part of a dispute with a political rival.

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But the 5th Circuit essentially stood by its earlier ruling and this time, the justices declined to intervene without explanation. “The Fifth Circuit has doubled down on granting officials free rein to turn routine news reporting into a felony,” Villareal’s lawyers wrote in their Supreme Court appeal.

A state judge had previously dismissed the criminal case against Villareal, saying the law used to arrest her in 2017 was unconstitutional. She then sought to sue the officials for damages. The full 5th Circuit ruled 9-7 that officials Villarreal sued in Laredo and Webb County were entitled to legal immunity.

Villarreal had sought — and obtained from a police officer — the identities of a person who killed himself and a family involved in a car accident and published the information on Facebook. The arrest affidavit said she sought the information to gain Facebook followers.