Two top Florida Democrats on Wednesday blasted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for allowing brutal conditions inside a Miramar ICE facility being used as a makeshift detention center to house dozens of migrant detainees.
Speaking to reporters — as activists hoisted enlarged photos of overflowing toilets and crowded rooms — U.S. Senate hopeful Angie Nixon and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz condemned ICE officials for unlawfully detaining people for up to several days at a time in overcrowded cells, failing to provide proper medical attention and granting detainees limited access to legal counsel.
The Miramar facility is intended to serve as a check-in and processing center, where people are held for less than 12 hours.
Nixon and Wasserman Schultz specifically cited a "whistleblower" report released last week by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In the report, ICE employees told the lawmakers of "brutal conditions [that] put staff, detainees, and the public at imminent risk of serious harm or death" at the Miramar facility and other detention center in Orlando. Photos inside the facilities were included in the report.
"We should not be here," Nixon said. "This facility must be shut down immediately."
Wasserman Schultz last visited the Miramar facility on a surprise inspection two months ago. As a federal official, she’s entitled to show up to immigration centers without announcing her presence beforehand to see conditions inside.
Though Wasserman Schultz couldn’t speak with anyone being processed, she was able to ask quick questions in Spanish, she said. Some people called out to her that they’d been in the facility for up to six days.
However, she said she saw some improvement, mostly in terms of the sheer number of people held. While she saw about 70 people in the room holding men on her last visit, she saw 25 in the same room on Wednesday. Similarly, the number of women went from 45 to about 20.
'Horrendously dirty'
Wasserman Schultz described the facility as “horrendously dirty.” She said she saw accumulated dirt, a broken sink leaking water and no mounted soap dispensers.
“It looked like a mop had never touched a corner of any part of those rooms,” she said.
The facility also has no medical center, according to Wasserman Schultz, who said she saw a woman who had apparently been brought from the Broward County Jail with a bad leg injury, which was wrapped in a cast rather than a bandage.
She attributed the positive changes by ICE officials to last week's whistleblower report produced by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
“I have a regular rapport with [ICE] regional leadership,” she said. “And they acknowledge that our oversight is giving them here the ability to successfully push for resources they need to have conditions to change. But it's no solace, because it's not like they're detaining fewer people.”
Wasserman Schultz said ICE staff are holding people in Miramar for shorter periods of time, then sending them around the country more quickly.
Donna Fairweather told WLRN that her husband was among those detainees bounced from facility to facility. She had accompanied her husband to the Miramar facility on Wednesday.
She said her husband had been to the Miramar facility multiple times after he was detained during a traffic stop in July. He was sent to Louisiana, Arizona, Texas and Colorado before being released to South Florida with an ankle monitor. The couple is from Jamaica.
"We came here for a better life — not to be treated like animals," Donna Fairweather said.
Nixon slams ICE officials
Nixon called out her Nov. 3 election opponent, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, for supporting President Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement agenda. She specifically cited Moody's vote in June on a bill to provide $70 billion to ICE for the next three years.
Only Wasserman Schultz was allowed to visit the Miramar facility because she's a member of Congress. Nixon, a state legislator, is required to obtain prior approval to do so.
“People who are going through the process and showing up at their check-ins should not be punished with detention and deportation,” Nixon said. “In some cases, facing a death sentence while in custody, or a death sentence when they're deported to dangerous situations, or deported to countries they don't even come from.”
The Trump administration has deported noncitizens to Mexico and countries in African and Latin America in cases where the migrants’ home countries have refused to accept them. The U.S. The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the administration to resume the move.
