Overcrowding and Dysfunction Produced a Quiet Riot at a Miami Federal Prison Holding ICE Detainees
Immigration lawyers and correctional officers say an influx of hundreds of immigrant detainees at a federal prison in Miami has thrown the facility into disarray, leading to a detainee revolt in April that was put down with force.
The details of that April 15 disturbance—in which detainees flooded a floor of the prison and correctional officers responded with concussive flashbang grenades—have not been previously reported outside of a few sparse details in one local news story, and they show the strain that President Donald Trump’s mass deportation has put on an already distressed federal prison.
Federal Detention Center Miami, a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facility, is now holding roughly 400 people detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for alleged immigration violations. At the same time, four of the eight elevators that staff rely on to navigate the multi-story tower are broken.Â
The overcrowding, intake and processing headaches, and broken elevators have led to extended lockdowns and loss of detainees’ ability to communicate with their families; lack of legal access for immigration lawyers and their clients; and medical and legal records being lost in the shuffle between ICE and BOP custody. The latter is particularly troubling because it can cause potentially life-threatening interruptions in medication schedules and breakdowns in the chain of custody—the record that establishes the legal history of a person’s incarceration.
“I’ve been at FDC Miami for 16 years,” Kenny Castillo, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 501, the union representing Bureau of Prisons employees at the lockup tells Reason. “I’ve never seen the building like I see it right now.”
The federal prison system has been struggling for years with chronic understaffing and crumbling facilities, but Castillo says the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, combined with mismanagement and broken elevators, has pushed the conditions at FDC Miami into dangerous and unprecedented territory.
ICE stopped releasing public information on the number of detainees being held in various federal facilities, citing safety and security concerns, but Castillo says FDC Miami is currently holding around 400 of them on two floors of the facility.
Many of those detainees are being transferred from the Krome Detention Center, an ICE facility that’s been dogged by overcrowding, reports of inhumane conditions, and deaths.
“They’re showing up at our doors sick and they’re getting the staff sick because I don’t know what kind of care they’re receiving down in Krome,” Castillo says. (FDC Miami confirmed a case of tuberculosis on May 3.)
However, FDC Miami did not receive any more staff in the receiving and discharge department to handle the churn of transfers between it and the Krome. Additionally, the broken elevators have caused frequent lockdowns, which prevent inmates and detainees from having regular access to phone and computer systems.
“We use those elevators to move inmates, to respond to body alarms, to come to the aid of officers and the inmates when there is a fight or other disturbance, to provide medical assistance,” Castillo says. “This is not like a compound where you can run across and respond to a body alarm or to a medical emergency. The elevator is the heart of the building.”
If that’s the case, then FDC Miami is on th
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