'Made to eat food like dogs, women made to use toilets in full view of men': Shocking claims on US detention centres run by ICE
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "'Made to eat food like dogs, women made to use toilets in full view of men': Shocking claims on US detention centres run by ICE")
From a protest in Florida this July against Trump's policies on migration Photograph: (AFP)
The report by Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South is based on detainee interviews.
Migrants in detention centres run by ICE in Florida were allegedly shackled with their hands tied behind their backs and made to kneel to eat food from styrofoam plates 'like dogs'," a new report has claimed on Monday (July 21). The report by Human Rights Watch, Americans for Immigrant Justice, and Sanctuary of the South is based on interviews of people detained in the dreaded jails operated by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
A pattern of abuse in overcrowded immigrant jails run by ICE
The interviews mainly cited detainees in three migrant jails in south Florida, which they described as ‘overcrowded.’
Dozens of men were packed into a holding cell for hours at the Miami downtown federal detention centre and were denied lunch until about 7 pm, one detainee said. “We had to eat like animals,” the report quoted the detainee Pedro as saying.
ICE detention centre horror: ‘Women made to use toilets in full view of men’
The report claimed that female detainees at the Krome North service processing centre were forced to "use toilets in full view of men".
The women were denied gender-appropriate care, showers, or adequate food, with some held for more than 24 hours on a parked bus.
"The bus became disgusting... others defecated in the toilet... the whole bus smelled strongly of faeces,” the report quoted a detainee as saying.
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The ice box: Chilly ‘intake room’ of ICE migrant processing centre
Many of the detainees were made to spend up to 12 days in an icy intake room, dubbed ‘la hielera’ or ‘ice box’, with no bedding or warm clothing.
Due to overcrowding, the detention centre's visitation rooms were also turned into holding areas for detainees.
“By the time I left, almost all the visitation rooms were full. A few were so full men couldn’t even sit, all had to stand,” Andrea, a female detainee. was quoted as saying in a report by The Guardian.
At Florida migrant centre where woman died in April, lack of medical care reported
At Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, a woman named Marie Ange Blaise from Haiti died in April. Detainees from that centre said the place lacked proper medical and psychological care, with delays and dismissive or hostile responses from staff to requests.
Man coughing blood was not cared for at US migrant jail
At the Miami facility, a "disturbance control team" reportedly beat detainees protesting the lack of care for a man coughing up blood, the report claimed, adding that a CCTV was switched off, and one detainee suffered a broken finger.
ICE facilities are overcrowded with migrants
The report claimed that all three Florida facilities are severely overcrowded.
The allegations in the report came amid Florida government's push to build a jail for migrants in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, which may hold up to 5,000 undocumented migrants.
ICE jail detentions are up since Donald Trump took over as US president
There was an average of 56,400 detainees per day in the US nationally by mid-June, as against the 37,500 daily average for the whole of 2024. Some 72 per cent of the detainees had no criminal history.
“The anti-immigrant escalation and enforcement tactics under the Trump administration are terrorising communities and ripping families apart, which is especially cruel in the state of Florida, which thrives because of its immigrant communities,” The Guardian quoted Katie Blankenship, co-founder of Sanctuary of the South as saying.
