A leading immigrant rights group said Wednesday it had reached an agreement with federal authorities that requires the Department of Homeland Security and others to turn over more than 20,000 pages of records regarding environmental hazards at a now-closed detention center in Homestead that housed immigrant children, including those separated from their families.
The American Friends Service Committee and the environmental law firm Earthjustice said they filed suit in 2021 against the U.S. Air Force and DHS for failing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.
EPA official did not immediately respond to WLRN's request for comment. DHS officials referred all questions to the EPA.
The newly released records detail conditions at the former Homestead Temporary Influx Shelter for Unaccompanied Alien Children, which was located near the Homestead Air Force Base — a site placed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund National Priorities List in 1990 due to hazardous pollution and contamination, said the immigrant and environmental advocates.
According to the documents, children — as young as six years of age — were detained at the facility, including some who were separated from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border rather than arriving as unaccompanied minors. The facility held as many as 140 children as part of the Trump administration's “zero-tolerance” policy at the time.
READ MORE: Florida child migrant detention facility shuts down
The records showed no evidence that the site was evaluated for environmental hazards before detaining children there, and remediation work on contaminated areas near the facility was not completed before or during their detention, said the advocates.
“We shut down the detention center, but our struggle was far from over,” said Guadalupe De La Cruz, Program Director for AFSC’s Florida program, in a statement. “The justifications and deceptions the government used to jail children on a toxic military site in Homestead are the same tactics they are using to justify cruel detention practices today.
"We were determined to expose the real story about how the federal government treated children at the Homestead detention center and to hold the government accountable so that children are not exposed to hazards like these again.”
The Homestead facility was closed in 2019 by Trump administration officials following intense public pushback from local activists and advocacy groups.
“The only way to ensure our rights have meaning is to enforce them when they are ignored,” said Tania Galloni, an Earthjustice attorney representing AFSC. “The government is not invincible. It has to answer to the courts. And it has to answer to the people.”
Researchers and immigrant rights groups involved in reviewing the disclosures said the findings highlight ongoing systemic issues as immigration detention and family separation efforts expand elsewhere.
“These documents confirm that the federal government placed children in harm’s way by detaining them next to a military Superfund site and active military base,” said Emma Shaw Crane, an assistant professor in Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology.
