A member of Congress made a surprise visit to Krome. What she saw left her concerned

Miami Herald

a day ago

A member of Congress who made an unannounced visit to the Krome North Service Processing Center in southwest Miami-Dade County said migrants in deportation proceedings are being subjected to overcrowded and inhumane conditions where they are forced to carry out bodily functions without privacy.
'It's wall to wall people here and it's very troubling,' U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat who represents parts of Broward Country, said after emerging from a three-hour visit Thursday inside the detention facility.
Wasserman Schultz said the detention center, which made headlines recently after two men in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody died inside, was built to hold 882 people. On Thursday, there were 1,111 detainees. There were two tents on the property to accommodate overflow.
'This is not a nice place. There's no one in your family that you would ever want to be here, not only because you wouldn't want your family detained, but because you wouldn't want anyone that you care about to be in the conditions that these people are being held in,' she said. 'They have people who are being held and are forced to sleep on cots in between the bunks.'
As part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation plans, the Department of Homeland Security has been ramping up arrests. The expansion has worried immigration advocates and members of Congress like Wasserman Schultz who have been increasingly concerned following the two deaths at the Krome detention center and another of a Haitian woman at the Broward Transitional Center.
While the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office ruled that the two men at Krome died of 'natural' causes, a Miami Herald investigation found evidence of what experts described as questionable medical care for the two immigrants.
Wasserman Schultz said while she could not say that cruelty was taking place inside Krome or that immigrants' were being denied due process — she saw rooms where they could meet with lawyers — the conditions were nevertheless disturbing.
That includes hearing from migrants how sometimes there are plans to move them away despite an upcoming hearing. She saw multiple small cells, she said, where between 25 and 35 men are held 'for upwards of 48 hours.'
'The consensus was that they are there in those rooms with all of those other men, eating, sleeping and going to the bathroom in that room … sleeping on the floor, having to urinate and defecate in front of other people in that in that small room,' the congresswoman said.
Even when they shower there is no privacy, the men complained.
'The two constituents I spoke to definitely described conditions that were extremely unpleasant, not conditions that you would want anyone you care about to be subjected to,' she said.
Wasserman Schultz arrived at the facility after 3 p.m. The staff was surprised by her unannounced visit, she said, but she was allowed in without incident after having to wait for about 20 minutes. There was some chatter about whether she could speak to detainees, but she pushed back and was able to talk to two detainees — a Cuban national and Jamaican national — who lived in her district.
The reason she was able to show up unannounced is because of a 2020 law she helped write that prevents DHS from interfering in congressional oversight, she said.
'I can tell you that some of the things I saw would not have looked like that if I had given them notice,' she said.
Still, as she walked the facility, she 'got inconsistent answers depending on who I was speaking to and asking the question to and from the leadership that was walking me through, to the personnel that I was talking to.' This was the case, she said, when she inquired about the two detainees' deaths.
Wasserman Schultz said her concerns about the conditions of detainees in custody are fueled by a number of factors. One is the push by the Trump administration to allocate $45 billion in the federal budget to expand immigrant detention facilities and services. The 'big, ugly bill,' she said, was 'rammed through last week in the middle of the night by one vote,' and the administration is going to attempt to ramp up and process even more detainees.
'When they do that, you start to fill up even more facilities like Krome,' the congresswoman said. 'Then the conditions are going to get decidedly worse.'
Wasserman Schultz, who represents the largest district of Venezuelan-American voters in the country, said another concern she has is the administration's track record on immigration.
'The administration is lying when they say that they're really only prioritizing criminals. I am getting calls from constituents who say, U.S. citizen children have been deported along with their undocumented parents,' she said. 'Trump has absolutely no regard for the law. He is the most anti-immigrant president in American history, and he is hell bent on essentially bleaching, bleaching out the United States.'
Wasserman Schultz said she plans to aggressively engage DHS as a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee 'to ensure that we can make conditions better in these facilities and also fight back on their outrageous extreme immigration policy that are not targeting people who are criminals and who are here to do anything other than to make a better way of life for themselves and their families, and have credible fear from countries like Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba —places that are in no condition to send anyone back to right now.'