Two civil rights groups filed a federal class action lawsuit on Friday against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), alleging that unconstitutional conditions at the Miramar Field Office have turned a routine administrative check-in site into "a de facto detention facility operating with no beds, no functioning medical care, and no independent oversight."
The lawsuit, brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Americans for Immigrant Justice, alleges systemic abuse at the facility. According to the complaint, ICE has used the Miramar building since October 2025 to hold individuals for days at a time, violating the agency's own policy limiting holds of detainees to 12 hours.
The lawsuit filing comes a day after Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, and Democratic Senate candidate Angie Nixon blasted ICE officials for allowing brutal conditions and for using the facility as a makeshift detention center to house dozens of migrant detainees. The facility is intended to serve as a check-in and processing center, where people are held for less than 12 hours.
READ MORE: Florida Democrats slam ICE officials over ‘brutal’ conditions at Miramar facility
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs argue that the practice by ICE officials directly violates constitutional protections.
“While due process is supposed to extend to every person in this country, ICE has chosen to ignore the Fifth Amendment and instead detain people for days on end in degrading and dangerous conditions at the Miramar Field Office,” said A.J. Hernandez Anderson, deputy legal director for immigrant justice at the SPLC.
“We’re asking the court to force ICE to stop using Miramar as the detention facility it was never built to be. Denying the people held at Miramar beds, food, water, medical care — basic necessities — is dehumanizing and dangerous and ICE must be held accountable,” Hernandez said in a statement.
Inside the facility, detained individuals are forced to sleep on bare concrete floors wrapped only in aluminum foil blankets within severely overcrowded cells, according to the lawsuit. The complaint notes severe sanitation and privacy issues, noting that the only available toilets sit in open view of surveillance cameras and other detainees. Plaintiffs also report being denied adequate food and water for extended periods.
Last week, a "whistleblower" report released by Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform found similar bad conditions. ICE employees told the lawmakers of "brutal conditions [that] put staff, detainees, and the public at imminent risk of serious harm or death." Photos inside the facilities were included in the report.
House Oversight Committee ranking members — Reps. Robert Garcia, of California, Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, and Maxwell Frost, of Orlando — have demanded formal answers from ICE regarding conditions at Miramar and other Florida ICE detention sites.
Paul R. Chavez, Director of Litigation and Advocacy for Americans for Immigrant Justice, said the Miramar facility was "meant for a routine check-in [and] has become a place where the human rights and human dignity of people are undermined."
"Families show up to follow the rules of immigration law but instead are held for days in deplorable conditions that include overcrowded floors with no beds, no medical help, exposed toilets and limited access to lawyers,” he said. “Whether fundamental human decency is followed should not depend on which building a person happens to be held in.”
The suit alleges that the facility lacks on-site medical staff or a functional system to respond to medical emergencies. Furthermore, detainees have been cut off from legal representation through blocked phone calls and denied visits, while ICE has reportedly failed to update its online detainee locator system.
“The application of due process does not depend on convenience. Due process is an obligation the U.S. Constitution has with every single human being,” said Sui Chung, Executive Director of Americans for Immigrant Justice. “Holding someone in the inhuman conditions detailed in this complaint means that our fellow human beings are not being afforded basic human rights."
Immigrant advocate groups in South Florida applauded the filing of the federal lawsuit.
Guadalupe De la Cruz, director of the Florida program for the American Friends Service Committee, said her group has protested for years outside the Miramar facility over conditions inside.
“For months we have been hearing disturbing reports of people held for long periods of time packed into overcrowded spaces without basic sanitation or bedding," she said. "We are so glad that our partners at SPLC and AI Justice are filing this lawsuit and we will continue to demand an end to these horrific conditions and the cruel and arbitrary detention policies that underlie them.”
Read the lawsuit here.
