Miami Federal Prison Quietly Detaining Hundreds of Immigrants

Miami's downtown federal prison is quietly doubling as an immigration detention center, housing hundreds of detainees in a facility designed for criminal defendants awaiting trial.

As part of a broader Trump-era policy to convert federal prisons into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confirms to New Times that the Federal Detention Center (FDC) Miami is now detaining immigrants — many of whom are accused only of civil immigration violations.

While a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) spokesperson declined to disclose the number of immigrant detainees currently held at the facility, citing concerns over "safety" and "security," an employee at Miami's Federal Detention Center (FDC), who spoke with New Times on the condition of anonymity, estimated the number to be around 500. This contrasts with ICE's reporting, which has claimed it has detained just 139 detainees at the facility.

Recent data from The Journalist's Resource, a project of Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy, also corroborates a figure noticeably higher than the one ICE reports, indicating that FDC Miami is housing 325 detainees.

"The Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) can confirm we are assisting the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by housing detainees and will continue to support our law enforcement partners to fulfill the administration's policy objectives," the BOP wrote in a statement to New Times.

The Miami federal prison joins a handful of facilities nationwide, including FCI Atlanta, FCI Leavenworth, FDC Philadelphia, and FCI Berlin, that are currently housing immigrant detainees, the BOP says.

FDC Miami holds the immigrant detainees on the 10th and 11th floors, separate from the rest of the prison population, according to the FDC employee.

Reports of sexual abuse, poor conditions, and staffing and infrastructure issues have long plagued the BOP system. As recently as last year, an FDC Miami officer was charged with sexually abusing an incarcerated person.

According to The Guardian, immigrant detainees at some of these prisons, including FDC Miami, have recently reported inhumane conditions, such as being cut off from their attorneys, lacking basic necessities like food and toilet paper, and being forced to live in dirty, overcrowded cells.

One incarcerated woman told The Guardian that the arrival of immigration detainees at FDC Miami has worsened conditions for existing prisoners.

"Everything is worse. There's more scarcity," she said.

To accommodate the influx, women have been crammed into overcrowded housing units, she said, with some placed in areas with broken toilets and leaks.

"It's as if we're animals," she told the Guardian. "This prison already wasn't livable and now they're adding more people into a place that's so unsafe and inhumane."