MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – Attorneys echoed the recent concerns about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees at the Krome Detention Center in western Miami-Dade County.
While ICE doesn’t allow detainees to have phones, somehow a Mexican migrant used a video to raise awareness about the way U.S. authorities are allegedly mistreating migrants and asked Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo to intervene.
“We are in a deportation process, but we have been here for more than 20 days,” the migrant said in Spanish. “There are people who have been here for more than a month unable to communicate.”
Patricia C. Wall-Santiago, a Fort-Lauderdale-based attorney, who represents clients with immigration cases said she wasn’t surprised about the claims in the video. She is also concerned about ICE agents making mistakes.
“They are going to be exhausted. They’re going to be burnt out and based on that there are going to be gross mistakes. They’re going to engage in misconduct because they have to abide by the quotas of the current administration,” Wall-Santiago said from her office at the Stok Kon + Braverman law firm.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a statement reporting that some ICE facilities are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations.
“We are actively implementing measures to manage capacity while maintaining compliance with federal standards and our commitment to humane treatment,” Nestor Yglesias, a DHS spokesperson, wrote in a statement.
The measures include transferring detainees and expediting case processing. Yglesias also said the agency was “committed to providing necessary medical care, access to legal resources, and safe living conditions.”
Wall-Santiago is among the immigration attorneys who disagree and are finding it difficult to even find out where their clients are being held.
“When a client is detained, we are not provided information,” Wall-Santiago said adding, “It limits the ability of that person to be effectively represented.”
Saman Movassaghi Gonzalez, an immigration attorney, recently told Local 10 News that while Krome has about 500 beds she and other attorneys estimate there are over three times that many migrants there, and asked, “So at what point do we recognize that this is not safe?”
According to Yglesias, “ICE does not provide population numbers due to operational and security concerns” and “the numbers fluctuate hour to hour as detainees are being processed, transferred to other detention centers or being removed from the country.”
Earlier this month, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele reported that the U.S. had transferred 200 migrant detainees who were gang members to be held at his “Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo” or CECOT.
Bukele and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, reported the group included Venezuelans who belonged to the Tren De Aragua and 23 from the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, including two leaders César Humberto López Larios, known as “El Greñas de Stoner.”
Meanwhile, the BBC reported Myrelis Casique López was among the mothers in Venezuela who said their relatives were shown in the videos and photos that Bukele released and they were not gang members.
Casique López told the BBC that her 24-year-old Francisco José García Casique, a barber who has tattoos, left the poverty in Maracay to try to find stable work in 2019 in Peru before traveling to the U.S. in September 2023.
José Daniel Simancas Rodríguez, a 30-year-old father of five who worked in construction, recently told CNN that he left Maracay for Ecuador before working in Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico to get to the U.S. where he was held for nine months in Texas, and later at the “hell” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he suffered hunger, isolation, and suicidal ideations.
On Wednesday, during a televised speech, Nicolas Maduro accused President Donald Trump and Bukele of “kidnapping” Venezuelans. Trump has accused Maduro of not cooperating with the speedy processing of the undocumented gang members he designated as terrorists.
Read the statement from ICE:
Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE. Some ICE facilities are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations. We are actively implementing measures to manage capacity while maintaining compliance with federal standards and our commitment to humane treatment.
ICE is using multiple strategies to address these challenges, including the transfer of detainees to alternative facilities with available capacity, expedited case processing where appropriate, and coordination with federal, state, and local partners to ensure continued oversight and accountability. Additionally, we remain committed to providing necessary medical care, access to legal resources, and safe living conditions for all individuals in our custody.
ICE will continue to evaluate detention needs and make adjustments as necessary to ensure the integrity of our immigration enforcement operations while upholding our duty to treat all individuals with dignity and respect.
As a law enforcement agency, ICE expects all employees to adhere to the highest standards of professional conduct and to demonstrate integrity and professionalism in all aspects of their work. ICE takes any allegations regarding professional misconduct seriously. If you have information about a specific individual, ICE requests that any information about the incident be shared so the agency may look further into the matter.
Allegations of ICE employee or contractor misconduct should be reported to the DHS Office of Inspector General at 800-323-8603 or the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility at 833-442-3677 or ICEOPRIntake@ice.dhs.gov, a monitored electronic mailbox. ICE encourages reporting detention facility complaints to the Detention Reporting and Information Line at 888-351-4024, a toll-free service with trained operators to help on a wide range of topics – language assistance is also available.