Durbin Reveals Devastating Insights Into Florida ICE Detention Facilities In Exclusive Site Visit

CHICAGO – Today, U.S. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed devastating insights into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, following staff site visits to two Florida immigration detention facilities in June. The visits to Krome North Service Processing Center and Federal Detention Center (FDC) Miami provide new, incriminating insight into the cruelty of the illegal Trump mass deportation agenda, including overcrowding, inhumane conditions, no access to medical care, and difficulty accessing legal counsel.

On the exclusive site visits, Durbin released the following statement:

“My staff’s visits to the ICE detention facilities reaffirm what we’ve already known: The cruelty and inhumanity of the Trump Administration’s illegal mass deportation scheme knows no bounds.

“Immigration detention is at a crisis point as the Administration ramps up enPeople are being disappeared, and the Trump Administration is barring lawful congressional oversight. These actions don’t make our country safer, and the Trump mass deportation system is designed to punish immigrants who pose no threat.

“I will keep doing everything I can do bring these abuses to light.”

Key observations from the site visits include:

• The Trump Administration’s mass deportation agenda is resulting in dangerous levels of overcrowding and deteriorating conditions at facilities like Krome.
• ICE was ill-prepared to address overcrowding caused by the large influx of detainees and has resorted to using large tents to house individuals.
• The Trump Administration’s ill-conceived mass deportation plan has resulted in the use of BOP facilities in which the conditions force detainees to live in de facto solitary confinement.
• Immigrants at Krome struggle to receive adequate health care because staff fail to take their medical concerns seriously.
• Immigrants at FDC Miami face obstacles accessing basic services and are forced to endure unsanitary conditions.
• Bureaucratic red tape makes it nearly impossible for immigrants to access adequate mental health care at Krome.
• Immigrants have limited opportunities to report complaints of abuse or neglect.
• Fear and chaos are key tools of Trump’s mass deportation agenda, with detained immigrants dreading transfer to remote detention facilities far from their families and lacking information about their cases.
• Immigrants detained at FDC Miami are denied information on the status of their cases and have difficulty placing calls to legal counsel and family members.

For a PDF copy of the devastating insights into the detention facilities, click here.

In May, Durbin released insights from visits to two facilities in Louisiana and escalated congressional oversight of the Trump Administration’s aggressive expansion of immigration detention, which has created a major financial boon for private prison companies.

Earlier this year, Durbin released a revealing investigative report on inadequate care in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities and pressed for further investigation into deficient medical care in CBP detention facilities after whistleblower reports alleged systemic failures by DHS to ensure proper oversight of its medical care contractor.

Durbin continues to actively investigate care in ICE detention facilities, which he initiated with letters to ICE and GAO. A June 2024 report from the American Civil Liberties Union, Physicians for Human Rights, and American Oversight found that 95 percent of documented deaths in ICE custody between 2017-2021 were likely preventable.

This oversight work was prompted by the death of Anadith Danay Reyes Álvarez, an eight-year-old Panamanian girl, at a CBP detention facility in Harlingen, Texas, on May 17, 2023.

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