Immigrants detained at a federal Florida site face inhumane situations including substandard medical care, abuse, neglect and overcrowding, the Human Rights Clock was allegedly in a report released Monday.
The advocacy group in the 93-page report details the conditions described at three Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in Sunshine State, including the conditions described at the Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome), Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami.
The detainees and their allies alleged serious violations of health standards and other ICE’s own guidelines at three Florida facilities, according to the report.
A spokesperson for the Prison Bureau told Hill that the agency could not comment on certain conditions, but noted that it was the BOP’s mission to “operate safe, secure and humane facilities.”
“We take our obligation to protect individuals entrusted to our custody and maintain the safety of our employees and our communities,” BOP said in a statement.
The hill also requested comment from ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“Some people were bound and detained for a long time in buses without food, water or functional toilets. There was an extreme overcrowding of frozen-retaining cells that were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors under constant fluorescent lighting. “One Trump administration’s truck immigration policy focuses specifically on large-scale deportations, and will continue to send more people to immigration detention facilities that have no capacity to hold them and only exacerbate the conditions mentioned in this report.”
President Trump’s administration has stepped up detention and deportation this year as part of a drastic repression of immigrants. Additionally, Congress passed the law earlier this year, calling it the Wage Riley Act, which requires federal detention of immigrants accused of theft, robbery and other crimes.
Records show that more than 56,000 immigrants are held every day at detention facilities this month.
Florida has been drawing attention to immigrant detention after Trump opened the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” site he recently toured with the Everglades, but the facility was not reviewed in a report by HRW.
The HRW cited an interview with 11 migrants currently being held and recently detained. The family of seven detainees. Fourteen immigration lawyers documented the experiences of 17 immigrants across Chrome, BTC and FDC facilities.
“If you ask for help, they will isolate you,” one woman, who was not named in the report, told researchers. “If you cry, they might take you away for two weeks.”
“So people are silent,” she added.
The HRW provided some recommendations for improving detention facilities and procedures.
The HRW proposed policy changes to avoid detention of persons with disabilities and allow them to monitor how their medical conditions are treated and how the facilities are run.
