Extreme overcrowding and abuse plague Florida ICE facilities, whistleblowers say

Syra Ortiz Blanes, Miami Herald on Sep 21, 2026

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MIAMI — Immigrants are sharing extremely overcrowded cells, sleeping while chained and on the floor, and using bathrooms overflowing with human waste in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Miramar typically used for routine appointments, according to a new whistleblower report.

The ICE facility in Miramar has been so jam-packed that, at one point, it held 342 people instead of its maximum capacity of 50, according to congressional Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. They released photos and allegations from a whistleblower Monday and announced an investigation into the Miramar center and another one in Orlando.

The images, taken by an unidentified whistleblower, show detained immigrants sleeping on the floor of the Miramar sally port, an unventilated garage entrance to the ICE facility. The Democrats wrote in a summary of the allegations that immigrants sleep while restrained with handcuffs, leg irons and belly chains, and even elderly people have been chained for 16 hours a day.

“Trump’s immigration detention system is as cruel as it is unnecessary… This new whistleblower report reinforces what has long been documented about immigration detention facilities—a system being used to punish people rather than uphold basic human dignity and justice,” said U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost of Orlando in a statement.

The revelations come a week after the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security released reports about conditions at the Krome Detention Center in Miami and the now-defunct state-run facility in the Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz.

Those agency reports, based on an inspection in January, declared that Alligator Alcatraz violated government detention standards and that detainees were confined in small, outdoor metal cages, sometimes as a punishment. At Krome, a separate report based on a May 2025 inspection found that it was so overcrowded that people slept standing up and that an officer put a man in a chokehold while searching his cell.

The congressional oversight group said that cells at the Miramar facility are 200% to 300% over capacity, toilets are constantly clogged and leaking into an immigrant holding cell, and officials refuse to get the portable toilets cleaned. At times, only three officers have supervised and cared for 300-plus detainees. Immigrants previously held at Miramar have also described overcrowding and not having access to clean clothes or bathrooms.

Photos show immigrants at Miramar sleeping in cots in rows on the floor, portable toilets with urinals overflowing with brown water and paper, and human feces outside the doors. Images also depict a heap of trash bags outside the sally port and people brushing their teeth outside with a hose.

In Orlando, the facility has been so overcrowded that people are forced to stand up and are kept without going outside or fresh air for two weeks at a time, according to the Oversight Committee. There is also black mold in the air vents; officers were told to keep people shackled all day long, and they also deleted records of people detained in violation of judge’s orders, the committee members said.

In both facilities, detainees are living in the same clothes and underwear for weeks at a time, always under bright lights, and lack access to hygiene products like menstrual products and soap, according to the congressional watchdog group.

Frost, along with Rep. Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi and Rep. Robert Garcia of California, wrote a letter to the Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General about the two Florida facilities.

“ICE is detaining people… for days to weeks in abusive and life-threatening conditions, including overcrowded cells, prolonged shackling, inadequate access to medical care and hygiene, insufficient food, and limited to no legal access. ICE is simultaneously attempting to cover up these horrific practices,” the letter states.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a Miami Herald request for comment about the photos and allegations the whistleblower made. The Oversight Democrats’ summary published on Monday says officers at the facility were told by superiors there would be consequences for speaking up.

The ICE facility at Miramar has historically been used for routine immigration appointments, but has become a detention hotspot under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. In July, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz dropped in unannounced and said it was so overcrowded that conditions were “horrific.”

A Herald investigation last month found that 911 medical calls to Miramar rose sharply between July 2025 and July 2026, among them for a diabetic emergency, breathing problems and two seizures. One man said he had been held there without being given access to his HIV medication. The Oversight Committee said Monday that officials in Miramar had been ordered to stop calling 911 for non-emergency situations, but it was not clear who gave the orders from the summary of allegations.