‘Horrific’: Lawmaker denounces conditions at Miramar ICE office as detentions ramp up

Immigration admin July 2, 2026 0 Comments

‘Horrific’: Lawmaker denounces conditions at Miramar ICE office as detentions ramp up

An Immigration Customs Enforcement office in Miramar where immigrants go for routine appointments, but which has been a hotspot of detentions under President Donald Trump, is so overcrowded that conditions are “horrific,” a lawmaker who visited the facility on Thursday said.

After an unannounced visit to the field office, U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said that people are spread across four holding rooms inside, and that she estimates she saw more than 150 men and women detained in the administrative office, which is not designed to be a long-term holding facility. Officials have obtained a waiver that allows ICE to hold people there up to 72 hours, instead of the usual 12.

“These are people packed in so tightly, they can barely move,” she said. “They looked shriveled and miserable.”

The overcrowding at the Miramar office comes as ICE ramps up arrests across the country as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Over the last week, the agency has arrested 10,000 people, including a nun in Texas who was later released after outcry from officials, community leaders and activists. The New York Times, which first reported on the nationwide arrest operation, reported the directive came from the White House.

Immigrants being detained at the Miramar facility are being fed three small microwaveable meals a day, housed in extremely hot temperatures, and have no private place to speak with their attorneys, Wasserman Schultz said.

“You wouldn’t wish the conditions of these people to be detained on anyone you love, certainly, but really anyone,” she said. “They are inhumane.”

The congresswoman said she expected a significant uptick in people processed at the Miramar center after a recent Supreme Court decision allowing Trump to end deportation protections under Temporary Protected Status for Haiti and Syria without judicial review. The Trump administration already ended TPS for Venezuela. Nearly all TPS holders in Florida are Venezuelan or Haitian immigrants.

“The situation is going to get a lot of worse here,” she said.

Miami lawyers have told the Herald they’ve witnessed an increase in the detention of Venezuelan clients with pending asylum cases over the last month and a half. Last week, massive back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, killing at least 2,295. Tens of thousands are still missing and feared dead or injured. It’s unclear whether the Department of Homeland Security will pause deportations in light of the quakes, and has not responded to Herald inquiries.

ICE did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the conditions that Wasserman Schultz described during the press conference on Thursday. Wasserman Schultz said that ICE officials told her that a “change in policy” had led to an increase in people being held at Miramar, but they did not indicate whether the numbers had gone up in the past week.

Activists and faith leaders denounced the conditions at the office during a press conference the previous day, calling on officials to visit the facility and said there had been bad conditions at the facility for weeks. The Miramar field office is not designed to be a long-term detention center, like the Krome Detention Center in Miami-Dade County. Instead, immigrants go there to check in with authorities and process paperwork.

READ MORE: Advocates demand inspections at Miramar ICE office after reports of crowded conditions

Wasserman Schultz witnessed the arrival of three fire trucks, including two that arrived during the press conference itself. “They have an average of about one every day, according to them, of a medical case where they have to call 911,” she said, adding the Miramar office has not been inspected since the current director started last October. “Hard to know that you’re meeting ICE standards if a facility is not inspected,” she added. During her visit,

Maria Bilbao, a community advocate with the Miramar Circle of Protection, a group that has been going to support immigrants who have appointments there weekly for nearly a decade, said that she had seen a dramatic uptick in cars coming in since Monday; 33 unmarked vehicles entered the facility during a three-hour period, she said.

“The first Trump administration was terrible. But this is much worse than that. I consider this state-sponsored terrorism,” Bilbao, who is also a member of the American Friends Service Committee, told the Herald.

The Trump administration has also deployed ICE officers to pick up people after their immigration court hearings. On Thursday, a Miami Herald reporter did not see any agents at the immigration court downtown. A federal judge in California banned ICE from carrying out those arrests last week.

At the Miramar field office on Thursday, there were relatives of immigrants doing check-ins waiting outside for their family members, including two Cuban women waiting for their husbands, an American man waiting for his Brazilian spouse of 20 years, and a Cuban man previously held at the state-run, now-defunct Alligator Alcatraz immigration facility. They held their breaths under the hot Florida sun to see whether their loved ones would come out of their appointments or be sent to an ICE detention center.

Jorge Alain Hernandez had a check-in appointment at the Miramar office late 2025, where he was detained for three days at the same facility. He described the little sustenance he and his co-detainees were given as “dog food”.

“Not even a baby lives off of it,” he said.

Following his stint at Miramar, Hernandez spent seven months bouncing between Alligator Alcatraz and the El Paso Service Processing Center in Texas. He returned Thursday to Miramar for another immigration check-in, this time hoping he wouldn’t leave the facility malnourished.

Cesar Peinate, a 59-year-old Venezuelan man, left his appointment on Thursday carrying his immigration paperwork and red passport in a clear folder. The appointment was routine but slow because of the volume of people, he said. Peinate came to the U.S. on a visa in 2018 with his family, but the Coast Guard detained him in May while he was working as a boat captain. He showed his ID and work permit, but he ended up spending a month detained by ICE. He was recently released through a court order.

“Coming to these places is always worrisome,” he said.

Maritza Rodriguez, a 60-year-old woman from Havana who fled Cuba because of her political activities as a member of the Damas de Blanco group, waited for her husband of 38 years to come out of the Miramar facility. They are both waiting on green card applications but have so far been unable to obtain them because of the paperwork they received in the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021. Once a year since arriving, they go to check-ins at the Miramar office.

But since Trump returned to the White House, the appointments have gone from routine to nerve-wracking.

“I am putting myself in God’s hands,” Rodriguez said.

Miami Herald staff writer Milena Malaver contributed to this story.

This story was originally published July 2, 2026 at 1:49 PM.