What will Trump do?
President Donald Trump and his administration have no shortage of critics, and the latest among them to face backlash is none other than Virginia state Representative James Walkinshaw. Walkinshaw recently went into the spotlight on social media for demanding that President Trump release all the children being detained by ICE after exposing their supposedly harrowing conditions. For his remarks, Walkinshaw seemingly drew the ire of anti-immigration people online.
A 7-year-old wants to go to school.
A 9-year-old begs to leave.
A 12-year-old is told to drink the water that's making children sick.These are children imprisoned at Dilley under Donald Trump.
I am demanding Trump #ShutDownDilley and free the children. pic.twitter.com/QmBMEksAg2
— Rep. James Walkinshaw (@Rep_Walkinshaw) July 28, 2026
Walkinshaw, representative of Virginia’s 11th congressional district, recently posted the clip of his current advocacy on his own X account. In the video, Walkinshaw detailed the struggle of several children currently detained in the Dilley ICE detention center. All of the children in his examples were begging to leave the facility, and one of them, who couldn’t speak or write English well, had to draw their current situation, depicting themselves as sad in their drawings.
One child was also alarmingly told to just drink water that was making them sick after reportedly feeling unwell. “These are children imprisoned at Dilley under Donald Trump,” points out Walkinshaw. Because of the conditions of the children in the aforementioned ICE detention center, Walkinshaw also made his statement and stance clear: “I am demanding Trump #ShutDownDilley and free the children.”
“No child should be used as pawns in Stephen Miller’s sick and twisted Great Replacement agenda,” argues the Virginia representative. It’s also worth noting that Walkinshaw isn’t the only major critic of the Dilley detention center, as several of his Democrat colleagues are also shedding light on the matter and are calling for the detention center’s shutdown, especially since it appears to be the only one that “imprisons” children.
Walkinshaw’s statements were met with backlash
Sadly, it appears there might be a group of people who prefer the children stay in the detention center until they are deported. Many of the comments in Walkinshaw’s clip have pushed back against his advocacy and demand towards Trump. Some even had argued that the Democrats were at fault: “The only one using children as pawns are the Democrats! Democrats using a few children as pawns for political gains while ignoring thousands of others!”
One commenter even blames former President Obama for supposedly starting the the detention, “This was started under Obama. Just deport all of them. Problem solved. Why do you always fight for the invading army? Must be a traitor,” and one X user also reinforced the notion, claiming, “You didn’t [expletive] about it when Obama opened Dilley in 2014 did you, you soyboy [expletive]? Take it up with your wife’s boyfriend.”
Indeed, it was actually the former Obama administration that opened the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, which was meant to be a large-scale family detention center for mothers and their children arriving at the US border. Still, regardless of who’s who when it came to establishing the detention center, a Facebook user was thankfully more concerned for the well-being of children, saying, “These children should not be in Detention. Please release them ASAP. Close the Camps.”
