T. Don Hutto Residential Center: Families leaving Texas detention facility

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FILE- In this Feb. 9, 2007, file photo, a guard holds open a door during a media tour of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas. So while advocates hail the Obama administration's announcement this month to stop sending men, women and children to the much disparaged Hutto facility, they also wonder how the government will decide which families to detain, when to release them, how they will be transported and whether they'll fare better elsewhere. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

As immigrant children and their parents depart a disparaged former Texas prison that housed them while they awaited decisions in their immigration cases, advocates are questioning if the government has fully thought out what happens to the families now.

Federal officials announced last month that the T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor would no longer hold immigrant families and they instead would be detained at the much smaller Berks Family Residential Center in Leesport, Pa. But with only 84 beds — and more than 100 people once housed at Hutto — some advocates wonder if there will be enough space, or if immigrants will be released.

"We still have a lot of questions and would like to hear more details," said Denise Gilman, of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, which along with other advocates filed a lawsuit contending that family detention at Hutto was inhumane.

Hutto is set to stop holding immigrant families by the end of the year, government officials say, and families have slowly been leaving. Instead of transferring the families to Berks, the government has been trying to process the cases of families at both facilities.