Despite three weeks of advocating for the release of an Oregon family in a Texas detention facility, Congresswoman Maxine Dexter said she’s ultimately unsure why U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did just that last week.
“I don’t know why they released them,” Dexter told OPB.
Immigration officials held the Crespo-Gonzalez family at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, for three weeks after arresting them in a hospital parking lot on Jan. 16. The family had traveled to Portland Adventist Health that morning seeking medical care for their 7-year-old daughter Diana whose nose had bled all night.
According to a relative and a close family friend who spoke with OPB, immigration officers refused to let Diana go see a doctor and detained the young girl and her parents.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have not responded to multiple requests for comment about the family’s detention. OPB reached out to ICE again Wednesday for a response to Dexter’s comments.
The family’s arrest marked one of the first confirmed detentions of an entire family in Oregon amid the Trump administration’s campaign to escalate deportations. Since their return, the family has asked for privacy.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter, second from right, poses with the Crespo-Gonzalez family and her chief of staff Kari Williamson, far right, at the Portland International Airport on Feb. 7, 2026. The family was recently released from an immigration detention facility in Texas.
Courtesy of the Office of U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter
Dexter traveled to Texas last week, just days after state and federal officials reported two detainees at the facility had contracted measles. When she first arrived at the detention facility Thursday, officials refused to let her in.
Dexter, a Democrat from Portland and a physician by trade, said she never received a clear answer on why she wasn’t allowed in. She said the measles cases were cited as one reason she was not allowed in but others at the facility, including a supervisor, disputed that and told her “measles is not a threat.” That supervisor also told her the detention center was providing measles vaccines to any detainee who wanted one.
Dexter told the supervisor she had plane tickets for the family to return to Oregon with her the next day. She argued that a decades-old precedent, known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, stipulates that the government can’t hold children in immigration detention for more than 20 days. Friday marked the family’s 21st day in detention.
Related: Gresham family returns to Oregon from Texas detention facility
When Dexter returned Friday, the facility again denied her entry. Employees at the facility told her she could visit with the family via a virtual chat but not see them in person.
“I wanted to see them in person and be able to potentially listen to Diana’s lungs if she wasn’t feeling well and whatnot,” Dexter said. “They told me at one point, instead of examining or talking to them in the facility, they were going to release them to me so that I could escort them home.”
According to Ana Linares, a close friend of the family, Diana contracted a fever in their first week of detention.
Dexter said she doesn’t know why the facility released Diana, her mother, Darianny Liseth Gonzalez De Crespo, and father, Yohendry De Jesus Crespo, when so many other kids were held longer than 20 days. An investigation from the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news outlet specializing in criminal justice, released in December found that the Trump administration held more than 1,300 kids in immigration detention for more than 20 days in 2025.
“It does make you wonder if they don’t really have legitimate reason to hold them if when they’re put under pressure, if that’s why they’re letting folks go,” Dexter said of the family’s release.
According to Innovation Law Lab, the immigration legal clinic representing the Crespo-Gonzalezs, the family has a pending asylum case with a court set for 2028. The family immigrated to the U.S. from Venezuela in 2024.
Though grateful that the Crespo-Gonzalez family was released, Dexter remains concerned about the other families in detention because she wasn’t able to get a look inside.
When they were released on Friday, Dexter said the family told her the facility was “horrible” and that Diana had lost weight while there.
Dayanny Gonzalez, Diana’s aunt, previously told OPB she had been able to speak with the family on the phone at the detention center. She said the family told her Diana was only eating bread with mayonnaise because she didn’t like the food at the facility.
According to Oregon state Rep. Ricki Ruiz, who helped advocate for the Crespo-Gonzalez’s release, the family traveled to Salem on Wednesday so Diana could see the state Capitol building. He said the family is still adjusting to life back at home.
“They have a long road ahead,” he said.
