US immigration to hold 1,000 detainees in Indiana after deal with prison system

The Guardian

a day ago

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is expanding its detention capacity by 1,000 beds in Indiana through a partnership with the midwest state's prison system, federal officials announced on Tuesday.
Ice will be housing detainees at the Miami correctional center, a prison run by the Indiana department of corrections. The move is part of the US government's rapid expansion of immigration jails after Donald Trump's sweeping spending bill allotted roughly $170bn to Ice, an extraordinary sum making the agency the most heavily funded law enforcement department within the federal government.
Kristi Noem, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, said the Indiana facility would be called the 'Speedway Slammer', following last month's opening of the so-called 'Alligator Alcatraz' immigration jail in Florida, in collaboration with Ron DeSantis, the state's Republican governor.
Noem claimed Tuesday that the Indiana prison would house 'some of the worst of the worst' of undocumented people, echoing DHS' repeated claims about the targets of its enforcement. But records from the jail in the remote Florida Everglades, which critics have called a concentration camp, cast doubts on those assertions.
Reporting from the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times last month found more than 250 people detained at the jail who have no criminal convictions or pending charges in the US, despite state and federal officials saying the jail was for 'vicious' and 'deranged psychopaths' facing deportation. Those newspapers also recently reported that a 15-year-old boy with no criminal record was sent to the jail, which is not supposed to house youths – a mistake the jail claimed was due to the boy 'misrepresenting' his age.
Florida advocates have alleged that the conditions at the Everglades jail were appalling, with detainees forced to sleep in overcrowded pods where sewage backups led to cages flooded with feces. While officials have denied claims of inhumane treatment, the Trump administration has also promoted the brutality of the facility, including with the widely criticized decision to name the jail 'Alligator Alcatraz, a reference to the remote location in a wetland surrounded by crocodiles, alligators, pythons and mosquitoes.
DHS appears to be using a similar tactic with the 'Speedway Slammer' name in Indiana, which Noem promoted with a social media post, saying, 'If you are in America illegally, you could find yourself in Indiana's Speedway Slammer. Avoid arrest and self deport now.'
DHS did not immediately respond to questions about the timeline of the Indiana expansion and how the facility would be run. The Miami correctional facility is a maximum-security prison at a former air force base, roughly 70 miles north of Indianapolis, and has capacity for around 3,100 people, according to the IndyStar newspaper.
The Florida jail is run by that state's division of emergency management, an arrangement that has raised alarm among advocates, as journalists found many detainees were housed in the facility even though they were not listed in Ice's database.
Mike Braun, Indiana's governor, said in a statement the state was 'taking a comprehensive and collaborative approach to combating illegal immigration' and was 'proud to work with President Trump and Secretary Noem as they remove the worst of the worst'.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Indiana has previously raised alarms about Miami correctional center conditions. In cases filed in 2021, the ACLU said some incarcerated people in segregated housing were forced to live in prolonged darkness, in cells with live electrical wires hanging from fixtures that in some cases shocked the residents.
'We wouldn't tolerate animals being held in such horrifying conditions, how can we tolerate them for people?' the ACLU said in 2021.
Corrections officials declined to comment at the time. Annie Goeller, a spokesperson for the Indiana department of correction (IDOC), did not respond to questions about conditions on Tuesday, but said in an email her department was working with the governor to 'partner with federal authorities to enforce immigration laws', adding: 'Details about the partnership and how IDOC can best support those efforts are being determined.'
The Indiana move comes as the Trump administration has increasingly sent immigration detainees to federal prisons that house criminal defendants. Those partnerships have reportedly caused chaos behind bars, with immigrants and their lawyers reporting horrific conditions and overcrowding, exacerbating problems for the longterm residents serving sentences.
Also on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that the DeSantis administration in Florida is planning to build a second immigration detention center.
Noem has said the Everglades jail in Florida would be a model for state-run immigration detention centers. And DHS has said that Trump's bill will provide funding for 80,000 new beds for Ice.