The United States government has submitted migrants arrested in three Florida centers to abusive, degrading conditions and, in some cases, potentially mortalas published on Monday by America for Immigrant Justice, Human Rights Watch and Sanctuary of the South. These organizations have documented the experience of 17 migrants arrested since January 20, 2025 at the Krome Services Processing Center (Krome), the Broward Transition Center (BTC) and the Federal Detention Center (FDC).
According to Belkis Wille, associate director of the Crisis and Conflicts of Human Rights Watch, “People arrested for migratory reasons are being treated as if they were not human beings”. “It is not about isolated cases, but about a fundamentally poor detention system in which serious abuse is committed,” Wille said.
In Krome, detained people have been held regularly in icy cells and overcrowded, without bedding or access to hygiene servicesin addition to having undergone prolonged and unjustified chains. They have not been able to receive medical attention, even for chronic diseases such as diabetes, asthma or HIV. In addition, some women have been detained in this center, only for men, without access to hygiene services or care for their gender and privacy. At least have been documented Two deaths in custodyone in Krome and one in the BTC, supposedly related to the lack of medical care.
One detainee witnessed the death of Marie Age Blaise, a 44 -year -old Haitian woman, after the center staff did not call medical services in time. “We started screaming for help, but the guards ignored us. When the rescue team arrived, she no longer moved”he declared.
In an incident that organizations play “especially degrading”, those arrested in the FDC were forced to eat with your hands on your back. “We had to bend and eat on the chairs with our mouths, like dogs”Said Harpinder Chauhan, a British entrepreneur arrested by ICE. Chauhan, with diabetes and heart disease, said he was denied insulin on several occasions during his arrest in Krome, FDC and BTC.
All these conditions “They violate international law and seem to also violate fundamental norms of the federal government. ” The researchers documented that the ICE and its contractors are not complying with their obligations, “denounces the report.
Since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, for the second time, his administration has carried out a increase in the arrests of migrants throughout the country. According to data from the United States Immigration and Customs Control (ICE), in mid -April, 45 of the 181 detention authorized throughout the country exceeded their contractual capacity. In Krome alone, the detained population tripled in the first three months of 2025 and exceeded almost three times the capacity of operation of the center. For its part, the FDC, a federal prison that in recent years had not been used for migrants’ arrest, began to house hundreds of these people in February.
“The antimigrant escalation and the Trump administration control tactics are terrorizing communities and destroying familieswhich is especially cruel in the state of Florida, which prosper thanks to its migrants communities, “said Katie Blankenship, a migration and co -founder lawyer of Sanctuary of the South.” The fast, chaotic and cruel approach to arrest and enclose people is literally deadly and is causing a human rights crisis that will affect this state already the whole country. “
In your report, researchers They ask the United States Government to put an end “to the use of migrants’ detention in default response for almost all people apprehended in the increasingly recurring raids of ICE”. “The United States Government is stopping many people who do not represent any threat to public security, under conditions that violate basic human rights and dignity,” Wille said.
