A new report is decrying “degrading and dehumanizing” conditions at several migrant detention centers in South Florida, which have received large influxes of detainees as the Trump administration ramps up its mass deportation effort.

The report is titled “‘You Feel Like Your Life is Over’: Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025.” It was released by Americans for Immigrant Justice, Human Rights Watch and Sanctuary of the South. It focused its investigation on three facilities: the Krome North Service Processing Center, Broward Transitional Center and the Federal Detention Center in Miami.

The report is comprised a review of documents related to conditions at the facilities, interviews with 17 current and former detainees as well as family members and attorneys. Accounts repeat themselves: being denied access to basic hygiene and medical care, being shackled for long periods of time on buses without food, water or functioning toilets, extreme overcrowding in freezing holding cells, among others.

Another passage of the document details that detainees with different medical conditions like diabetes, HIV and chronic pain said they were denied essential medication and doctor visits. One detailed collapsing after not receiving his medication, noting that his family was not told and discovered he had been hospitalized under a false name. He was returned to the center in shackles.

Another man said he collapsed from a strangulated hernia after not receiving care. “The doctor told me if I had come in any later, my intestines would have ruptured.” And a woman described witnessing the death of Marie Ange Blaise, a Haitian woman, in the Broward Transitional Center. “We started yelling for help, but the guards ignored us,” she said, adding that by the time they got there she was already dead.

A fellow detainee told the Miami Herald back in April that Blaise was complaining about chest pains on the day of her death. She had her blood pressure taken, given pills and told to lie down. However, another detainee said she later “started shaking, screaming ‘My chest! My chest!” She was later pronounced death.

Belkis Willie, conflict director at Human Rights Watch, said the episodes are not isolated, but the “result of a fundamentally broken detention system that is rife with serious abuses.”

Miami Republican Rep. Carlos Gimenez has rejected seeing inhumane conditions at migrant centers in the region. He visited the Krome detention center in late June, saying afterwards that the only recommendation he would give is expanded recreation time. “One of the recommendations that I’m going to make is to allow for more recreation time, because actually that’s one way you burn off energy,” he said.

Earlier that month, a group of Cuban detainees staged a protest in the facility’s recreational yard to oppose deportation to third countries including Libya, El Salvador and South Sudan. Concretely, dozens of detainees formed a large “SOS” sign, which was captured from the air by local media outlets.

Gimenez also rejected seeing harsh conditions in another Miami detention center after migrants held there claimed so.

“There’s nothing going on in there that would make me as an American not proud to be an American, and ashamed of what’s going on there,” Gimenez told press after touring the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami.

The lawmaker went on to say he did not see any “deplorable” conditions. He did confirm the April incident that catalyzed some of the claims, which were reported by the Miami Herald and catalyzed a conversation about the conditions in the facility.

The report in question quoted six detainees who told the outlet that officers launched crowd-control grenades and shot what looked either rubber bullets into a room with about 50 people.

A new report released Monday by Human Rights Watch details what the organization describes as “abusive practices” at three immigrant detention facilities in the state of Florida.

The report documents conditions for detained immigrants at Florida’s Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome), the Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC) during the period of January through June of this year, and it alleges that all three facilities “flagrantly violate international human rights standards and the United States government’s own immigration detention standards.”

Among other things, the report shows that the number of detainees at the facilities at times has been up to three times their operational capacity and includes stories from detainees who describe being shackled for prolonged periods of time on buses without access to food, water, or functioning toilets. Detainees also said they were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors under constant fluorescent lighting and were denied access to basic hygiene and healthcare.

“This report finds that staff at the three detention facilities researchers examined subjected detained individuals to dangerously substandard medical care, overcrowding, abusive treatment, and restrictions on access to legal and psychosocial support,” writes Human Rights Watch. “Officers denied detainees critical medication and detained some incommunicado in solitary confinement as an apparent punishment for seeking mental health care.”

Human Rights Watch collected information for its report from interviews with 11 current or former detainees at the facilities, as well as with family members of detainees and more than a dozen immigration lawyers. One woman detained at the Krome facility described being subjected to unsanitary conditions when she first arrived there in late January.

“There was only one toilet, and it was covered in feces,” she said. “We begged the officers to let us clean it, but they just said sarcastically, ‘Housekeeping will come soon.’ No one ever came.”

Detainees at the facilities—two of which are operated by private companies with Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversight—also described being subjected to cruel and degrading treatment by their guards, including one man who described himself and his fellow detainees being forced to eat meals with their hands shackled behind their backs.

“We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” he told Human Rights Watch.

Detainees also said that people who made requests for mental health treatment were regularly sent off to solitary confinement as punishment.

“If you ask for help, they isolate you,” one woman explained to Human Rights Watch. “If you cry, they might take you away for two weeks. So, people stay silent.”

The Human Rights Watch report on conditions at Florida detention centers comes just weeks after Florida opened a new mass detention facility for immigrants dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” that has already drawn complaints of cruel and degrading treatment from both detainees and from local lawmakers who have visited the facility.

“I saw 32 people per cage—about six cages in one tent,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) after a trip to the facility earlier this month. “People were yelling, ‘Help me, help me.'”

A damning report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reveals serious allegations of mistreatment and abuse in three US immigration detention centers in Florida managed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency during the Trump administration.

Degrading Conditions and Overcrowding

According to testimonies gathered by HRW and partner organizations, detainees at a Miami facility were crammed into overcrowded cells, often denied food until late in the evening. When meals were provided, detainees had to eat kneeling on the floor with hands tied behind their backs, using disposable trays placed on the ground—a degrading practice reportedly intended to humiliate them.

At another facility in western Miami, female detainees were forced to use restrooms in full view of male detainees, denied gender-appropriate care, adequate showers, and sufficient food. The overcrowding was so severe that some detainees spent over 24 hours locked inside a prison bus in a parking lot, shackled except when briefly allowed to use a single onboard toilet, which quickly became unusable.

Denied Medical Care and Abuse

Inside the detention centers, many endured harsh conditions including extended confinement in cold, windowless rooms without beds or warm clothing, sleeping on concrete floors. Reports also detail systematic denial or delay of medical and psychological care. Some detainees suffered untreated injuries or chronic conditions, while staff responses to health requests were often hostile.

In April, an incident was reported where surveillance cameras were turned off as a “riot control” team violently suppressed detainees protesting the lack of medical treatment for a prisoner suffering continuous coughing up of blood. Injuries included broken fingers.

The facilities were severely overcrowded, reflecting a nationwide surge in arrests. By mid-June, an average of 56,400 migrants were detained daily, 72% of whom had no criminal record. The 2024 average daily detention figure was 37,500, according to HRW.

These documented abuses illustrate inhumane conditions in federal immigration facilities, worsening since President Trump’s inauguration in January, which triggered increased detentions and deportations. The testimonies echo reports from migrant and refugee detention centers worldwide and revive memories for many Americans of secret prisons used during the “war on terror,” such as the notorious Abu Ghraib.

The HRW report calls urgent attention to the need for reform and humane treatment of detainees within the US immigration system.

Just when I thought ICE’s human rights alleged violations couldn’t get any worse, out come some troubling reports about some of their detention centers in Florida, specifically in Miami. Miami’s ICE detention centers or jails have apparently resorted to torturing the migrant detainees by starving them, forcing them to eat like animals, and even leaving them sitting beside their own feces.

This information came from Americans for Immigrant Justice, Human Rights Watch, and Sanctuary of the South and their 92-page report called “‘You Feel Like Your Life is Over’: Abusive Practices at Three Florida Immigration Detention Centers Since January 2025,” which was released this week. The report has revealed some disturbing allegations which happened at the Krome North Service Processing Center, Broward Transitional Center, and the Federal Detention Center, all in Miami, Florida.

“Some were shackled for prolonged periods on buses without food, water, or functioning toilets; there was extreme overcrowding in freezing holding cells where detainees were forced to sleep on cold concrete floors under constant fluorescent lighting…” “We had to eat like animals,” according to a detainee named Pedro, transcript courtesy of The Guardian “The bus became disgusting. It was the type of toilet in which normally people only urinate but because we were on the bus for so long, and we were not permitted to leave it, others defecated in the toilet. Because of this, the whole bus smelled strongly of feces,“ accoring to another detainee

The situations at the cell were no better, as apparently, the overcrowded conditions in these Miami facilities led to certain health conditions being overlooked. One man even allegedly coughed up blood for hours in a crowded cell while others were starved, and by the time they were given food, the guards didn’t bother taking off their shackles, so they had to eat kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs.

Moreover, these conditions have supposedly been the contributing factor to the Alligator Alcatraz being greenlit and built so quickly after the announcement. You can read more details about the extent of the horrific abuse that detained migrants had to endure in the original 92-page human rights report that was published recently.

That’s No Way to Treat Other Humans

Such a distressing series of abuses and some might even consider torture, has angered many people online. Some of ICE and the Trump administration’s loudest critics have drawn comparisons between the Miami ICE jails and either Guantanamo Bay or Nazi Concentration Camps.

Others were simply in disbelief at how ICE treated their detainees, considering how many of them were merely wrongfully accused or even abducted despite having no criminal records. Some ICE detainees were even fully-fledged US citizens who merely had darker skin tones. ICE is also very much aware of how despicable their line of work is, considering how many times they kept asking for privacy when carrying out their “arrests.”

Given how the Trump administration and ICE are still ramping up arrests, conditions in the detention centers are only bound to get worse.

Immigrants detained as part of Donald Trump’s deportation scheme are being treated like animals, according to a horrifying report published by Human Rights Watch Monday.

The report found that detainees had been subjected to “conditions that flagrantly violate international human rights standards and the United States government’s own immigration detention standards,” as the number of detainees ballooned under the Trump administration’s direction to ramp up the rate of arrests.

The report, which focused on three immigrant detention centers in Florida—Krome North Service Processing Center, the Broward Transitional Center, and the Federal Detention Center—was based on interviews with 11 detainees, 14 immigration attorneys, and the family and friends of seven detainees who were held in detention between January and June 2025. They alleged that in these facilities, detainees suffer medical neglect and physical abuse, and are deprived of access to legal representation and safe living conditions.

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Human Rights Watch found that officers at these facilities were often abusive to the detainees. In one instance, after a group of detainees waited hours to receive food, officers forced the men to eat while their hands were bound. “We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” one man said, according to the report.

In another instance, detainees in a crowded cell became agitated when officers ignored a man who was coughing up blood for hours. Eventually, officers stormed the cell and forced everyone to the ground, binding their hands with zip ties. One detainee said he heard an officer demand that the cell’s CCTV be turned off, and another said one of the officers slapped him.

In multiple cases, facility staff were dismissive and neglectful toward detainees experiencing medical emergencies, and punished those experiencing mental health crises. Authorities at Broward Transitional Center created a chilling effect by placing detainees experiencing emotional distress in solitary confinement for weeks at a time. “If you ask for help, they isolate you. If you cry, they might take you away for two weeks,” said one woman. “So, people stay silent.”

One man said that what detainees were subjected to was akin to “psychological abuse.”

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“The guards treat you like garbage. Even if they speak Spanish, they pretend not to understand,” he said, adding, “You feel like your life is over.”

Detainees were forced into overcrowded cells where they would eat substandard food and sleep on cold concrete floors, with one man even convinced that he would get hypothermia because of the temperatures. Another woman, who was confined for days in an intake cell at Krome, an all-male facility, said staff refused to allow detainees to clean the single toilet, which was covered in human feces. “We begged the officers to let us clean it, but they just said sarcastically, ‘Housekeeping will come soon.’ No one ever came,” she said.

Another woman who was kept in the same intake room said the toilet was visible from visitation rooms, where men were being held. “If the men stood on a chair or on the desk, they could see right into our room and the toilet. And sometimes they got up to look at us,” she said.

Human Rights Watch reached out multiple times to the all three facilities, but only heard back from the company that manages Krome. That company, Akima Global Services, LLC, stated, “We cannot comment publicly on the specifics of our engagement.”

This latest report comes at the heels of stories out of Alligator Alcatraz, the Trump administration’s premier wetland-themed concentration camp, where detainees say they are kept “in cages like chickens.”