‘Treating them like animals’: Migrant detainees face grim conditions in Miami federal jail

In cramped, scorching-hot cells, the men sleep in their underwear to keep cool. They watch vermin scuttling through their cells amid the smell of feces and urine overflowing from broken toilets.

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Those are some of the harsh conditions that detainees in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody described experiencing in recent weeks at the Federal Detention Center, a Bureau of Prisons facility located in a concrete tower in downtown Miami.

A year ago, a Miami Herald investigation found that immigrants held in the federal prison — when ICE started housing detained immigrants there as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations — faced dire conditions, including crumbling infrastructure and excessive use of force. The grim circumstances have since continued, according to the accounts of five immigrants detained there, their lawyers and loved ones. An employee at the prison also confirmed to the Herald poor conditions — including roaches so widespread that some officers don’t want to work in certain units.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data shows an average daily population of 460 as of early April at FDC. After last month’s fires near the Krome detention center, ICE relocated people out of precautions. In turn, officers and detainees noted an uptick in FDC’s population

Countless cockroaches crawl around their cells and sometimes turn up in the food, detainees and their relatives said. Many of the toilets don’t flush and are spilling over with waste. They said the heat is so extreme that they sweat through their bedsheets. When the men complain of medical conditions to the officers, they are frequently turned away, the families and detainees said in recordings obtained by the Herald.

The ICE statistics from April also show that 46% of the detained immigrants at FDC have prior criminal convictions or have pending criminal charges. Several have deportation orders. But lawyers and loved ones of men currently held there emphasize that they had already served their time and that the immigration system is not designed to be punitive.

“They aren’t there for committing crimes; they already paid their debt to society, and were rehabilitating themselves or had already been rehabilitated,” said Judith Castellanos, the wife of a Cuban man held at the facility who previously served time for drug trafficking.

ICE referred the Herald to the Bureau of Prisons, which operates the facility. BOP spokesperson Emery Nelson said that problems with air conditioning and water pressure earlier in the month had been resolved within a day or less. He emphasized that annual testing showed the water, which comes from Miami-Dade County, is drinkable, and that when there was low pressure between July 1 and 2, the detainees continued to have access to “ample amounts of potable water and the ability to flush toilets.”

Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former Department of Homeland Security official, said the complaints at FDC are similar to those she has heard about other facilities that hold ICE detainees over the years. She also said BOP must take such complaints seriously.

People in the facilities “need to be able to appropriately go to the bathroom and have sanitation,” she said.

After the Herald’s 2025 investigation into conditions at the prison, U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Miami Republican running for re-election for Florida’s 28th District, toured the facility and said it was “a detention center, not a hotel.” But he did acknowledge disrepair in the facility and the use of force incident.

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“I did not see anything at FDC Miami that would make us feel ashamed of being Americans,” he said.

Prison facilities for ICE detainees

Under President Donald Trump’s plans to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, ICE has expanded bed space by signing additional agreements with the Bureau of Prisons to house immigrants in facilities in Miami, Atlanta, Pennsylvania, and Kansas. The downtown Miami prison usually holds people serving federal sentences or awaiting trial

Last year, detainees held at FDC told the Herald that after protesting to receive water, food and medication by making a toilet overflow, officers in riot gear had deployed crowd control grenades. They also complained about malfunctioning toilets, out-of-order elevators and broken air conditioning.

‘Some cry all day.’ ICE detainees face harsh conditions in Miami federal facility

There were also issues with inadequate access to lawyers, which civil rights advocates raised in a letter to the warden in May 2025. Katie Blankenship, an immigration lawyer, told the Herald the problems continue to this day. Some of her clients have missed court hearings or deadlines because they haven’t been taken in time or can’t get in touch with her, she said. Judges routinely order immigrants to be deported for missing court dates.

“That’s going to very quickly pressure people into deportation. Especially since the roads to asylum are basically closed, bond is next to impossible these days and there’s no such thing as humanitarian parole. So what are your options? You can sit in this hell hole or you can self-deport,” Blankenship said.

Bad conditions in federal prison facilities that house ICE detainees have existed prior to this Trump administration. In 2018, immigrants held at a California correctional center sued ICE over religious freedom violations, inadequate conditions, and due-process violations. The government relocated them and settled the case.

Trickler-McNulty, the DHS official who worked under the first Trump administration as well as under Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s, said that ICE detainees are at the crosshairs of federal government bureaucracy. While BOP manages the facility conditions, ICE oversees their immigration detention and deportation.

“Unless they are determined to be a danger to the community, the very fact that they don’t have the ability to deport them, but they’re not releasing them, indicates that they’re trying to pressure them to leave,” she said.

Self-deportation

On Thursday, Castellano’s husband, Marlon Cervero Trujillo, called his wife. ICE officials showed up urging him to “self-deport” to Mexico. They had previously taken him near the border to drop him off there but he had refused, said Castellanos. The Trump administration has deported at least 6,000 Cubans to Mexico through agreements with its southern neighbor. The deportations have raised litigation and questions about their legality.

Officials are threatening to leave the detainees there if they don’t comply with self-deportation, Cervero Trujillo told his wife in a recording obtained by the Herald. He had his residency taken away after a drug trafficking conviction but had been released in 2023. A judge had lifted his probation early for meeting its conditions before ICE picked him up.

“This is inhumane,” he told his wife on Monday, complaining that the air conditioning was still not working.

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The families also told the Herald that complaints to officers about the facilities were punished. In one incident, they say an officer indiscriminately pepper-sprayed the detained immigrants after they complained about the toilets not flushing and refused to follow an officer’s instructions to go back to their cells.

“My husband said that he’s having issues with his eyes because he got pepper spray in the face,” said Annett Uset-Dumont, the wife of Daikel Dumont, a Cuban immigrant detained at FDC.

Her husband was moved to Krome on Thursday after Uset-Dumont and other wives of ICE detainees held at the prison spoke at a press conference the day before.

BOP acknowledged there was an incident on July 11 that is under investigation. The agency said several detainees had “confronted” staff with complaints, describing them as “agitated” and “confrontational.” The staff ordered the detainees to their cells, the agency said, and they refused.

That resulted in inmates being removed and taken to the Special Housing Unit, the agency said. The staff then used pepper spray to “gain compliance from the remaining inmates,” according to Nelson, and “they complied and returned to their cells.”

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Regarding allegations that detainees had been punished for speaking to media, the agency said that “retaliation of any kind is not tolerated in our agency” and that detainees can communicate with journalists through phone and mail.

“No inmates at FDC Miami were disciplined” because they spoke to the media, Nelson said.

Sweltering heat

Samantha Fernandez says her husband, Jorge, a Cuban immigrant who has been at FDC for nearly a month, told her he shaved his entire body to cool down. She said the facility brought in technicians to check the air conditioning, but the problem only got worse.

“They’re in their underwear pretty much for the most part because they’re so hot,” she said.

ICE detained her husband during a routine immigration check-in in Orlando. He has a previous conviction for improper use of a firearm and had been transferred to the federal prison from the Krome detention center in Southwest Miami-Dade due to a wildfire.

Nelson, the BOP spokesperson, said that the main chiller that supplies air conditioning at FDC malfunctioned on July 6, though a portable one that supports it continued working.

“The external chiller was doing all of the work by itself. The facilities department immediately identified the issue and began repairs,” Nelson said. “Both chillers are operating as intended and as they were before the identified malfunction.” She added that employees had been on site through the evening to monitor the temperature and the units and that employees and detainees had access to ceiling and industrial fans.

In a July 8 complaint shared with the Herald, Keith Pratt, a 62-year-old inmate with health problems, said that conditions in his unit had become so persistently severe that it made “every day living very difficult.” He said the cells were so hot at night that his sweat soaked his sheets.

“At night the hot air causes me to cough and between the coughing and sweating I am unable to get cool enough to sleep,” Pratt wrote in an email to the FDC warden.

ICE released Rollin Manning, a 54-year-old immigrant from Jamaica, last month. According to his court-ordered release, Manning had been arrested in February for battery but the charge was dismissed.

At FDC, Manning said he had to use cardboard to fan himself because the cells were so hot, and he feared complaining about the conditions for fear of retaliation.

‘Treating them like animals’

The immigrants and their families also described a jail where medical needs went unmanaged despite having an on-site medical facility with staff. Several people said that the detainees had received better medical treatment in Krome.

Anisley Cortes, a U.S. citizen from Orlando, said her husband, 41-year-old Noslen Sendra Gonzalez, needs insulin injections. She said that he was not receiving proper care for his Type 2 diabetes or to prevent an inflammation of the pancreas he has already had twice before.

“They’re treating them like animals,” she said.

Her husband was her childhood sweetheart in Havana. They reunited in the United States eight years ago. He’s had a deportation order since 2015, but applied for a green card over a year ago, she said. ICE detained him during a check-in appointment in November. Sendra Gonzalez has a prior felony record for computer fraud. Court records in his case are sealed, so the Herald was unable to obtain more details.

The Orlando woman has told her two youngest kids, whom she shares with Sendra Gonzalez, that their father is in the hospital. Her daughter isn’t buying it.

“She tells me, ‘Mommy, why can’t my dad have a phone? When daddy is hospitalized, he calls me through the camera,’” she said.

Sendra Gonzalez was hospitalized while at Krome with high triglycerides and a second bout of pancreatitis. At Krome her husband could exercise, his diabetes was monitored, and he received an appropriate diet, Cortes said. At FDC, he spent two weeks without his insulin medication, she said.

Now, he fears his pancreatitis is returning. In a recording obtained by the Herald, he tells his wife he’s experiencing lower back pain, nausea, and diarrhea.

“I’ve told half the world, the guards and nurses, and no one does anything,” he told his wife this week in an audio call shared with the Herald.

“It’s a critical situation. If he gets pancreatitis again he could die there,” Cortes said between tears. “All I ask is that he is given medical attention.”

Judith Castellanos, 56, said her husband, Cervero Trujillo, was also transferred from Krome to FDC after the wildfire. Castellanos said Trujillo, who came from Cuba in 2005, has high blood pressure and lung complications from COVID-19.

She said at Krome, Truijillo was able to obtain his medication regularly. At FDC, she said, he hadn’t received his blood pressure medication for three weeks.

Cervero Trujillo was previously convicted with a group for possessing with intent to distribute over five kilos of cocaine. When he was released in 2023, his green card was taken away. He had checked in twice with ICE before being picked up in January during his third appointment with the agency.

Castellanos came to the United States during the 1994 rafter crisis, spending over a year at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. The couple knew each other from her school years in Cuba and reunited in 2013. They built a life in St. Petersburg.

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On Wednesday, the spouses of the detainees gathered outside FDC wearing shirts with their husbands’ faces, the prison towering over them.

“We are very afraid of losing our husbands,” Castellanos said, “Of them losing their lives.”

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Miami Herald staff writer Claire Healy contributed to this story.