Over the weekend, federal authorities in Texas reportedly released nearly 500 women and children from the nation’s two largest family detention centers. Legal advocates say most families were released without travel plans, and volunteers worked with a local church to open shelter space early Saturday morning. The move followed a ruling Friday by a Texas judge that bars the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services from issuing child care licenses to family detention centers. Advocates say conditions at the facilities are equivalent to prisons. The judgment effectively invalidates the licenses now used to operate the facilities, which are owned by GEO and CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America. Human rights groups have called on the Obama administration to end the practice of detaining families before the end of his administration.