In a surprise visit Thursday to the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she was “pleasantly” surprised at the facility’s “humane” conditions but said that hundreds of suspected undocumented immigrants detained there should not be incarcerated.
“The folks that are housed here have either no criminal history or very low-level history, like traffic stops and things that do not involve significant criminal activity,” she told reporters outside the facility. “So this is a low-level facility, and that allows for, I believe, the more humane conditions.”
“I actually don’t have a lot of bad news to report about the actual conditions there,” she added. “But I am very concerned that there are 671 people in this facility that shouldn’t be here, that should not have been detained in the first place, and that the policy of the Trump administration that is putting them here is outrageous and unacceptable.”
“These are not criminals. These are not the worst of the worst. They are the furthest thing from that,” Wasserman Schultz said in referring to President Donald Trump’s repeated claims federal immigration authorities are solely going after “criminal aliens,” those who have committee serious crimes.
“There are people who were living their lives, many of whom had lawful status, had been applying for asylum, or are TPS holders, or had some other process that made it so that they were lawfully in the United States, even though they were undocumented immigrants,” Wasserman Schultz said. “They were in the midst, many of them, of trying to be able to remain here on a more permanent basis.”
She cited the case of Claudia Rodriguez Caglianone, a Venezuelan immigrant locked up at the BTC after being apprehended more than a week ago at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
The young woman's family and friends attended Thursday’s news conference in hopes of getting her freed from federal custody.
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The 28-year-old graduated from St. Thomas University with a bachelors and masters degree, and was a key member of the soccer team, serving as the team captain. She had applied for asylum and her case was pending when she was arrested this month.
Unable to visit with Rodriguez in person, Wasserman Schultz said she spoke with the young woman by phone on Thursday.
“What she said to me was beautiful, and I am standing right beside her in support of that, … the United States is her home,” Wasserman Schultz said. “It has been her home for years. She has contributed to the strength of our community, along with her incredible family who are behind me.”
Wasserman Schultz said she was introducing legislation — the No Prejudice Act — in Congress to Homeland Security Department officials could not use federal dollars to “target people based on perceived race, ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.”
“It would bar DHS from targeting people just because they’re at a bus stop, a car wash, a Home Depot, or any other place associated with temporary work. And critically, it would ensure that speaking Spanish, Haitian Creole, or even English with an accent is not a legal cause for immigration enforcement,” she said.
“If you are a criminal, if you are a serious criminal, and you are an undocumented immigrant, you should be deported. Period,” she said. “[But] you should not be living in fear that you’re going to be detained for simply existing as who you are.”
