The US government has deported a critically ill, two-month-old baby after releasing him from the hospital and returning him to a south Texas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) concentration camp.

As of Tuesday evening, federal authorities had still refused to confirm whether Juan Nicolás was alive, deported, transferred or dead. However, Univision reporter Lida Terrazas posted on social media that Nicolás was deported, “along with his mother and the rest of the family.”

Terrazas reported that she spoke over the phone with Juan’s mother, who said that they were “practically abandoned at the border” and that the baby “is still sick.”

Nicolás, who has spent nearly half of his life imprisoned at the Dilley family detention center in Texas, was recently hospitalized after becoming unresponsive while suffering from bronchitis, according to his mother. Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro reported Tuesday morning that Juan’s mother was brought before an immigration judge and told she would be deported, without being informed when or where. Castro said she and her infant son were then returned to Dilley, after which their whereabouts became unknown.

In an interview Tuesday afternoon with Pablo Manríquez of Migrant Insider, Castro said that neither he nor his staff has been able to obtain basic information from ICE. “Right now and for the last several hours I cannot tell you where he is,” Castro said. He explained that Juan’s mother missed scheduled appointments to speak with family members and legal contacts. “We have not gotten a straight answer from ICE about where exactly he and his mom are,” Castro said.

Loading Tweet ...

Tweet not loading? See it directly on Twitter

Terrazas reported that the baby “is still sick. They were left there with the money they had left in their commissary and someone actually gave them a phone—in the street—and that’s how she was able to call me.”

Terrazas said Juan’s mother was in “distress” and “panicking, they were sent to the same place they fled from.”

There is no doubt that the US government purposely preemptively discharged and deported Juan in order to avoid providing him proper medical care after forcing him and his family to languish in a disease-ridden concentration camp. In his interview with Migrant Insider, Castro warned that seriously ill detainees often become “a hot potato for the system,” and that ICE is attempting to evade responsibility for the infant’s medical care. The lack of transparency has fueled grave concerns, including the possibility that Juan’s condition worsened while in federal custody.

Loading Tweet ...

Tweet not loading? See it directly on Twitter

Describing conditions in the detention center, attorney Eric Lee, who represents other families at Dilley, told MS Now Sunday, “We live in a country where the federal government kidnaps children, spirits them away to what are really concentration camps, hundreds of miles from home.” He said that prisoners were held for months at a time in “disease-infested conditions,” without adequate food, clean water or medical care.

Last month, two cases of measles were identified at the same Dilley detention center where Juan Nicolás became sick. Separately, El Paso city officials and U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar confirmed that two cases of tuberculosis and 19 cases of COVID-19 were identified at Camp East Montana, a 5,000-bed tent facility built last year on the Fort Bliss Army base. Approximately 3,100 people are currently imprisoned on the army base.

The deportation of sick Juan Nicolás and his family comes the day after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally notified the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) that it will not share evidence or allow access to case files related to the murder investigation of Alex Pretti.

Three weeks ago Pretti, a Minneapolis ICU nurse, was executed by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) thugs Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez. As of this writing neither Ochoa, Gutierrez nor Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent that murdered Renée Good, has been charged with a crime. BCA Superintendent Drew Evans called the FBI’s refusal to share information “concerning and unprecedented.”

While state investigators are being stonewalled in efforts to secure basic evidence in the killings of Pretti and Good, federal authorities are simultaneously moving forward with plans to dramatically expand the concentration camp network under ICE.

Internal government documents released in recent days detail plans to construct a network of long-term “mega centers” capable of holding tens of thousands of people at any given time. These facilities are explicitly designed for sustained mass detention, which will sharply increase the risk of disease, medical neglect and death.

The United States already operates a sprawling, for-profit detention system that imprisons more than 55,000 people on any given day, with tens of thousands more cycling through its camps annually. The expansion now underway is aimed at normalizing mass incarceration without due process or a trial.

These camps are not being built to detain the “worst of the worst,” as claimed by the Trump administration. They are being constructed to imprison workers, immigrants and political opponents of the financial oligarchy. The real “worst of the worst” are not detained in Dilley or El Paso but are in Washington, where officials are advancing illegal plans to bomb Iran, continuing the genocide in Gaza and backing the annexation of the West Bank. The same ruling elite that wages imperialist war abroad is building concentration camps at home.

The Democratic Party is just as responsible for these crimes as the Republicans. As negotiations continue to reopen the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and restore its funding, Democrats have abandoned even nominal demands that ICE comply with the Constitution and obtain judicial warrants before entering private property.

According to reporting by CBS News, Senate Democrats have narrowed their demands to a short list of procedural measures, including restrictions on roving patrols, a use-of-force code and requirements that ICE agents wear body cameras and remove masks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described these proposals as “common sense.”

Under conditions in which a majority of self-identified Democrats and a plurality of independents support abolishing ICE and prosecuting those responsible for the thousands of crimes and abuses carried out by the immigration police since Trump’s return to the White House, the Democratic Party has dropped any demands that would halt ICE raids, dismantle the detention camp network, or impede Trump’s drive to concentrate unchecked executive power.

Even figures such as Representative Castro, who has reported grave crimes committed by ICE, offer no alternative path forward. Asked by Pablo Manríquez what people should do in response to the inhuman treatment of Juan Nicolás and thousands of other immigrants, Castro urged the public to “reach out to members of Congress,” the same Congress that has overseen the bipartisan expansion of ICE, approved its budgets year after year and funded imperialist wars across the globe.

The refusal of the Democratic Party to oppose ICE terror is not a failure of courage or political will but a conscious decision rooted in class interests. The Democrats and Republicans defend the same capitalist system, the same corporate and financial oligarchy that is driven towards dictatorship in order to preserve its unearned wealth through attacks on the working class. The disappearance of Juan Nicolás underscores that the defense of immigrants, democratic rights and human life itself cannot be entrusted to Congress, the courts or any faction of the political establishment.