‘Less than human’: Report details Trump immigration detention centre abuses

Detainees at three United States immigration detention centres have reported degrading conditions, including a delay in medical treatment that may be tied to two deaths, according to a human rights report.

The investigation published on Monday detailed women held in male facilities, rampant overcrowding and potentially deadly indifference to medical needs at the three facilities in or near Miami, Florida: Krome North Service Processing Center, Broward Transitional Center and the Federal Detention Center.

Its authors said the abuses underscore another aspect of the human toll of President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign, which has forced many facilities to operate beyond their capacity. In turn, the administration has sought a mad-dash scale-up in deportation infrastructure with new facilities, including the Florida state-erected “Alligator Alcatraz”, spiking their own concerns and condemnation.

In a statement accompanying the 92-page report’s release, Belkis Wille, the associate crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch, which authored the report with Americans for Immigrant Justice and Sanctuary of the South, warned that “people in immigration detention are being treated as less than human.”

“These are not isolated incidents, but rather the result of a fundamentally broken detention system that is rife with serious abuses,” Wille said.

Denial of medical care

The report, which relied on current and former inmate testimony, information from family members, lawyers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency data, detailed a lax approach to medical care at the three facilities, which included denial of treatment and medication.

One detainee recounted guards in late April ignoring cries for help as 44-year-old Marie Ange Blaise, a Haitian national, suffered what would prove to be a deadly medical emergency at the Broward Transitional Center.

“We started yelling for help, but the guards ignored us,” the detainee recounted, according to the report. By the time a rescue team came more than half an hour later, “she was not moving.”

The detainee who detailed the death said she was also punished for seeking mental health treatment, adding people were regularly put in solitary confinement for requesting such help.

Oksana Tarasiuk touches a box containing the ashes of her husband, Maksym Chernyak, who died in ICE custody at the Krome Detention Center in Hallandale Beach, Florida [Rebecca Blackwell/The Associated Press]

In another instance, the wife of Maksym Chernyak, a 44-year-old Ukrainian man, said her husband’s requests in February to see a doctor were repeatedly delayed as he experienced fever, chest pain and other symptoms while in detention at Krome. When he did see a doctor, he was diagnosed with elevated blood pressure, which was not directly treated, according to his wife.

When Chernyak later started vomiting, drooling and defecating on himself, a cellmate recounted that guards took 15 to 20 minutes to respond. When they did, they accused Chernyak of taking illicit synthetic drugs, a claim the cellmate, identified only as Carlos, denied.

Chernyak was removed on a stretcher, declared brain dead and pronounced dead two days later.

Overcrowding and degrading behaviour

Across the three facilities, the report detailed rampant overcrowding with detainees at Krome saying they were held in cells that at times exceeded twice their capacity.

The crowding led to shortages in bedding, soap and other sanitation products, and some detainees were forced to sleep on the floor.

Women were also processed at Krome despite it being a male-only facility. Women held at the centre told the investigators that they were denied showers and forced to use open toilets potentially visible to the male population.

“If the men stood on a chair, they could see right into our room and the toilet,” recounted a woman from Argentina. “We begged to be allowed to shower, but they said it wasn’t possible because it was a male-only facility.”

Other alleged abuses include excessive use of force, inadequate access to food, prolonged shackling and exposure to extreme heat and cold. Detainees reported 30 to 40 people crowded into a room meant for six and being forced to use a bucket as a toilet.

Harpinder Chauhan, a British entrepreneur who spent months bouncing between facilities after being detained by ICE at a regular immigration appointment in February, recounted one response from detention centre authorities.

“They told us if we kept asking for a toilet that flushed, they would create a problem we wouldn’t like,” he said.

Violations of international, domestic law

All told, the report’s authors said the allegations amount to violations of both international law and federal US policies on immigration detention.

They said the conditions showed the fallout of Trump’s effort to enact mass deportations – a drive itself predicated on the evidenceless claim that immigrant criminality is rampant in the US – despite lacking the proper resources.

The number of people held in immigration detention, who are typically undergoing their right to challenge their deportations, has risen steadily since Trump took office on January 20, jumping from 39,238 on January 26 to 56,816 on July 13, according to data compiled by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported the Trump administration is seeking to quickly scale up its detention capacity from 40,000 to 100,000 beds by year end, largely by prioritising quick-build tent facilities on military bases and ICE properties.

The construction drive comes after Trump signed a tax and spending bill that surges an unprecedented $45bn to new detention centres.

Last week, US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration would also seek to boost cooperation with states like Florida to open more detention facilities like “Alligator Alcatraz”, whose construction is initially funded not by the federal government but by state taxpayers.