ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Chris Gabehart made his first public appearance as a Spire Motorsports employee on Saturday — at the IndyCar race in St. Petersburg.
The employee at the center of a federal lawsuit concerning his employment status sat inside the Andretti Autosport hospitality as lawyers work behind the scenes to come to a resolution with Joe Gibbs Racing before Monday afternoon.
“With all the momentum the sport currently has, coming off everything in the offseason, I think this is a very unfortunate spot for the sport to be in, in the public light,” Gabehart said. "This is something that could have been taken care of behind closed doors. I can respect the fact that we are working our way through it and will continue to do so as long as it takes.
“I feel bad for all the publicity that this has drawn away from the sport of NASCAR.”
Gabehart spent 13 years with JGR and in 2025 was the competition director for Gibbs' NASCAR team. A dispute over his new role late last year led to negotiations on his separation.
The talks became contentious and eventually broke down. Gabehart accepted a job with Spire as their chief motorsports officer and Gibbs is seeking a restraining order to stop the move. JGR is also suing Gabehart for allegedly taking proprietary information to Spire, which has also been named as a defendant in the case.
All parties were in court Friday and a federal judge ordered negotiations to continue or she will make a ruling on Monday regarding Gabehart’s ability to work for Spire.
Gabehart was permitted to work this weekend and went to the IndyCar race in Florida, where Spire parent company TWG Motorsports has three cars racing under the Andretti banner. Spire has two entries in the Truck Series race here.
Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson in Florida clarified that Gabehart did not make a lateral move in leaving JGR, which is a point of contention in Gibbs trying to block the hiring. Dickerson said Gabehart was hired for a much larger role than the one he had at Gibbs and will be part of nearly all TWG properties.
“I think it’s insulting to say that it’s the same role, because it’s not the same role," Dickerson said. "We have a significant investment in Chris and we’re giving him the autonomy to do what he needs to do, not just to help the NASCAR program. We have all these other businesses that need a lot of help, too. That’s why we brought him in.”
JGR was founded by Gibbs in 1992 after he won three Super Bowls as Washington’s football coach. Gibbs is a member of both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and NASCAR Hall of Fame and now co-owns JGR with his daughter-in-law, Heather. The team fields Cup cars for Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe, Ty Gibbs and Denny Hamlin.
Gabehart joined JGR in 2012 as an engineer, worked his way to crew chief for Hamlin, and became competition director ahead of the 2025 season. He maintains JGR is suing him for “daring to leave” the NASCAR team when the situation surrounding Gibbs’ grandson became untenable at the organization.
He admitted to the court he did take photographs of JGR information on his phone but did not give them to Spire. Gabehart also admitted his new position at JGR began to unravel when he was pressured last season to crew chief Ty Gibbs despite having been promoted to competition director.
Gabehart said Saturday in St. Pete he felt badly for the narrative that has been created around Ty Gibbs because of the lawsuit.
“I understand the public narrative that has come along with the things that I’ve been forced to say in public,” Gabehart said. "But those have nothing to do with this. As a matter of fact, deep down, I believe Ty is a really good person who has been delt a really tough hand the last three years, him and his family, and I feel really bad about that.
“I share a ton of sympathy because of where I’ve been in trying to help, in a small way, to get through that and am thankful for all the family has done for me. But unfortunately the 54 car and everything that went on last year, starting early in October of '24 to where we are now, is an important part of my story," he continued. “This is not about Ty personally, this is not about the family personally. It’s more about understanding my story and why we got to where we got, because it is relevant and does matter to me.”
Ty Gibbs was successful in NASCAR’s second-level series, where he won 12 races and the 2022 championship. His father, Coy, was found dead in his hotel room the morning after Ty won the championship.
Both of Joe Gibbs' only children have died, as J.D. Gibbs passed away in 2019 of degenerative neurological disease. He was also 49 at the time of his death. Coy Gibbs succeeded his older brother as vice chairman of the family-run NASCAR organization.
Ty Gibbs moved to the Cup Series in 2023 and is winless in 125 starts. The 23-year-old finished a career-best 15th in the 2024 Cup standings.
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
FILE - Joe Gibbs watches a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, July 27, 2025, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings, File)
FILE - Christopher Gabehart, crew chief for Denny Hamlin, watches practice for a NASCAR Cup Series auto race on Saturday, Nov. 16, 2019, at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Terry Renna, File)
LAREDO, Texas (AP) — A month after ICE agents sent the young Ecuadorian mother and her 7-year-old daughter to a sprawling detention center 1,300 miles from their Minnesota home, they were finally free.
But when the bus pulled up to a migrant shelter in the border city of Laredo, dropping off a half-dozen families lugging bags stuffed with belongings, the stress of recent weeks tracked mother and daughter like the long shadows on that mid-February afternoon.
Night after night inside south Texas’ Dilley Immigration Processing Center with hundreds of other families, the grade-schooler wept and pleaded to know why they were being held.
“She would tell me, 'Mom, what crime did I commit to be a prisoner?' I didn’t know what to tell her,” said the 29-year-old, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear being identified could negatively affect their immigration case. Her husband was deported to Ecuador soon after they were taken into custody.
Many Americans were alarmed last month when photos circulated showing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis detaining a 5-year-old boy wearing a bunny hat and carrying a Spiderman backpack. The concern followed Liam Conejo Ramos and his father when they were sent to Dilley, surrounded by chain-link fences on a dusty plain about 75 miles south of San Antonio.
But Liam was hardly an outlier. ICE has been holding hundreds of children at Dilley — many for months.
“We are all Liam,” Christian Hinojosa, an immigrant from Mexico, said by phone from Dilley, where she and her 13-year-old son were held for more than four months. They were released this month and allowed to return home to San Antonio where she works as a health aide.
She noted that Liam and his father were released from Dilley after 10 days, when members of Congress and a judge intervened.
"My son says, ‘That’s unfair, Mama. What’s the difference between him and us?’”
When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014, nearly all families detained there had recently crossed the border from Mexico. Detentions at the facility were scaled back by the Biden administration in 2021, before it was closed three years later.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.
Since being reopened by President Donald Trump’s administration last spring, life inside Dilley — a compound of trailers and other prefabricated buildings — has been shaped by three decisive changes.
The number of detained families has risen sharply since last fall. The government is holding many children well beyond the 20-day limit set by longstanding court order. And many detainees have lived in the U.S. for several years, with roots in neighborhoods, workplaces and schools, according to lawyers and other observers.
“Just imagine that you’re a child and you’re taken out of your surroundings,” said Philip Schrag, a Georgetown University law professor and author of “Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America.”
Suddenly you're in "a completely strange environment with the doors locked and guards in uniform roaming around,” said Schrag, who counseled Dilley detainees as a volunteer lawyer during the Obama administration.
ICE booked more than 3,800 children into detention during the first nine months of the new Trump administration, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. On an average day more than 220 children were held, with most of those detained longer than 24 hours sent to Dilley. More than half of Dilley detainees during that period were children.
Nearly two-thirds of children detained by ICE were eventually deported and almost 1 in 10 left the country when their parents accepted voluntary departure, according to an AP analysis of the latest comprehensive data. About a quarter were released in the U.S., requiring their parents to check in regularly with ICE as their legal cases proceed.
The number of detainees at Dilley has risen sharply since the period covered by the data, nearly tripling between last fall and late January to more than 1,300, according to Relevant Research, which analyzes immigration enforcement data.
“We’ve started to use 100 days as a benchmark for prioritizing cases because so many children are exceeding 20 days,” said Leecia Welch, the chief legal director at Children’s Rights, who visits Dilley regularly to ensure compliance. In a visit this month, Welch said she counted more than 30 children who had been held for over 100 days.
The increased detention of children comes as the Trump administration has gutted a Department of Homeland Security office responsible for oversight of conditions inside Dilley and other facilities.
“It’s a particular concern that family detention is being increased,” said Dr. Pamela McPherson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist contracted by DHS from 2014 until last year to inspect and investigate conditions at Dilley and other ICE facilities holding children.
“Just who’s providing that check-and-balance now?”
Rep. Tony Gonzales, who represents the congressional district where Dilley is located, said multiple visits have convinced him criticism of the center is unfair.
He said he’d been impressed by Dilley's facilities and the professionalism and dedication of staff. “They’re not doing policy. They’re just fulfilling a duty,” said Gonzales, a Republican.
DHS did not respond to detailed questions about Dilley submitted by the AP. But both DHS and ICE sharply refuted allegations of poor care and conditions there.
“The Dilley facility is a family residential center designed specifically to house family units in a safe, structured and appropriate environment,” ICE Director Todd M. Lyons said in a statement this week. Services include medical screenings, infant care packages as well as classrooms and recreational spaces.
But concerns about Dilley are personal for Kheilin Valero Marcano, a Venezuelan immigrant detained with her husband and 1-year-old daughter, Amalia, in December and held for nearly two months.
When the child got a high fever, Valero Marcano said Dilley staff told her it was just a virus. Two weeks later, Amalia started vomiting, then losing weight. Valero Marcano said she took her to the Dilley doctor’s office at least eight times but was offered Tylenol and ibuprofen.
The baby was eventually sent to two hospitals, where doctors diagnosed COVID, bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach virus, she said.
ICE disputed Valero Marcano's account, saying in a statement the baby “immediately received proper medical care” at Dilley before being sent to the hospital. Back in Dilley, “she was in the medical unit and received proper treatment and prescribed medicines,” it said.
The family’s return to Dilley coincided with a measles outbreak there. They were released earlier this month after their lawyers petitioned the court.
“I’m so worried for all the families who are still inside,” Valero Marcano said.
After more than two months in a cramped room at Dilley with three other families, the 13-year-old girl’s depression turned increasingly dark.
The eighth grader stopped eating after finding a worm in her food, family members said. Staff sometimes withheld medications she’d long been prescribed to keep her anxiety in check and help her sleep.
When a total lockdown was imposed, a guard blocked the teen from leaving the crowded room to join her mother and sister in the bathroom. She spiraled into crisis, and used a plastic knife from the cafeteria to cut her wrist.
“She said she didn’t want to live anymore because she preferred to die rather than having to keep living in confinement,” her mother, Andrea Armero, told the AP in a video call from Colombia, where the family was deported this month. The AP generally avoids identifying people who attempt or die by suicide.
The girl’s struggles began before she arrived at Dilley. Soon after starting middle school in Colombia, she learned a family member had sexually abused her younger sister. Armero said she saw no option but to leave and in early 2024 she and her daughters traveled to the U.S. border with Mexico, applying for asylum.
Living with family in Florida, the 13-year-old was doing well in school but sometimes experienced panic attacks about being sent back to Colombia. Under a psychiatrist’s care, she was prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications and regularly saw a therapist. Then, in December, ICE agents detained Armero and her daughters during a routine check-in.
At Dilley, the 13-year-old calmed herself by drawing, producing haunting pictures of a girl locked inside gates. But when she and other detainees took part in a protest after 5-year-old Liam and his father got to Dilley, guards took away drawing materials and ordered everyone to stay inside.
The teen's mental health collapsed. She tried to harm herself with the plastic knife, Armero said, and repeatedly hit her head. The family was put into isolation without seeing a doctor, then deported to Colombia on Feb. 11 after a judge ordered them removed, she said.
Dilley discharge documents described “active problems,” including a “suicide attempt by cutting of wrist” and “self-harm,” in addition to a “history of post-traumatic stress disorder" and “history of anxiety.” AP also spoke with detainees and attorneys who independently described the girl’s suicide attempt.
Responding to questions from AP, a DHS official acknowledged there had been “a case of self-harm” inside the facility, but did not specify what had happened, or how staff handled the incident. When AP asked for details, DHS did not respond to follow-up questions.
“No child at Dilley ... has been denied medical treatment or experienced a delayed medical assessment,” said Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, the for-profit prison company that operates the facility under contract with ICE. Gustin declined to answer specific question about the 13-year-old girl, citing privacy rules.
On a phone call from inside Dilley, 13-year-old Gustavo Santino-Josa introduced himself to a reporter by name and the 9-digit identification number ICE assigned him when he was taken into custody with his mother.
“Until today I don’t know what we did wrong to get detained,” Gustavo said. “I’ve seen my mom cry almost daily and I ask God that we can go out and go home soon.”
He worried they might never be released.
“My mom says that as long as there is hope it is worth fighting for,” Gustavo said before handing the phone to his mother, Christian Hinojosa, the health care aide originally from Mexico.
“All his friends have left already,” his mother said. “Some were deported. Some got released recently. And it hurts. It hurts to see people leaving and you’re staying here.”
Dilley was built to hold 2,400 people, housed in clusters ICE calls “neighborhoods.” Bunk beds are arranged side-by-side for up to four families, frequently putting parents with young children in close quarters.
Once in full operation, Dilley is expected to generate about $180 million in annual revenue for CoreCivic, according to the company's recent filing with securities regulators.
In a video on its website, CoreCivic says Dilley’s “open campus layout allows residents to move freely and unescorted throughout the day.”
It does not mention that parents and their children are locked inside.
In response to questions from the AP, CoreCivic's Gustin said the staff at Dilley includes a pediatrician, pediatric nurse practitioner, other trained medical professionals, as well as mental health services to “meet the needs of children and families in our care.”
In talks with parents of children held at Dilley, however, the same problems come up repeatedly, said Welch, the children’s rights lawyer.
Kids cry often and don’t get enough sleep, in part because lights are on around the clock, she said. The water tastes terrible and causes stomachaches and rashes, so some families stick to what they can buy in the commissary.
Their children don't eat enough and have lost weight, Welch said. There are classrooms, but instruction is limited to an hour daily, mostly filling out worksheets.
A 14-year-old girl, identified in court papers by the initials NVSM, reported there were tensions with up to 12 people sharing their room. At night when she and her mother tried to sleep, others insisted on turning up the TV.
“I feel very sad and stressed to be here,” the teen said in an account filed with the court that oversees a binding settlement governing detention and release of children. “My nerves are so high. I don’t know what is happening. My muscles will twitch because I’m so nervous and on edge.”
As the government’s detention of parents and their children came under scrutiny in 2014, an ICE official insisted that family detention centers, equipped with basketball courts and medical clinics, were “more like a summer camp.”
The characterization irritated McPherson, the child psychiatrist who, along with another physician, was retained in 2014 by DHS to inspect family detention centers. Their contracts were not renewed by the Trump administration last year after DHS announced sweeping staff reductions.
“Having a clean place to sleep, having food, that’s not the same thing as having family and community,” McPherson said.
The doctors' investigations of family detention centers exposed consistently inadequate staffing and disregard by administrators for the trauma caused by detention, concerns they reported in 2018 to a Senate caucus set up to hear from whistleblowers.
At Dilley, the doctors noted a persistent shortage of pediatricians and the inability to hire a child psychiatrist from the time they began their inspections until they alerted senators.
Employees unsure how to deal with 2-year-olds biting and hitting each other placed the children and their parents in medical isolation for days, McPherson and her colleague told senators. Without supervision, a nurse at Dilley gave adult-strength hepatitis A shots to about 250 children in 2015, the American Immigration Lawyers Association reported.
DHS responded to many of the findings by making changes before a special committee recommended in late 2016 that the government discontinue family detention except in rare cases. The first Trump administration increased family detention before the Biden administration began phasing it out in 2021.
That the Trump administration is again holding families at Dilley after so many warnings feels “dystopian,” McPherson said.
“The decision to knowingly traumatize children and subject them to chronic stress, I just have no words for it,” she said.
Huddled around picnic tables at the Laredo migrant shelter, parents released from Dilley searched anxiously for flights back to the homes they left behind. They called relatives, friends, teachers, anyone who might help with money to get there.
The young Ecuadorian mom talked of returning to Minneapolis, where her 2-year-old daughter, born in the U.S., was staying with a friend. With her husband deported, parenting will be entirely her responsibility.
That means getting her 7-year-old back in school. Then the woman, who had a work permit and a job in a Minneapolis restaurant before being detained, needs to keep her children fed.
“Let’s go home, Mom, but don’t go back to work because ICE is going to pick you up again,” the little girl said. Her mother tried to reassure her.
That won’t happen, she said, because now they have a special paper telling ICE to leave them alone.
She hopes that's a promise she can keep.
—
AP Data Reporter Aaron Kessler contributed from Washington.
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
A young immigrant girl who just arrived at the Holding Institute, a shelter in Laredo, Texas on Feb. 12, 2026, pets a cat as her mother and other families receive a welcome and instructions on how to purchase tickets to get back to their homes in the U.S. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)
Andrea Armero, right, and her daughter, who were deported from the United States, sit in a park in Colombia, on Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2026. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)
Kheilin Valero Marcano, hugs her 18-month-old daughter, Amalia Arrieta Valero, in Southern California on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Immigrant families settle in for the night at the Holding Institute in Laredo, Texas, on Feb. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)
