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Reports of deplorable conditions plaguing U.S. migrant detention facilities continue to pile up, painting a picture of squalor and dangerous living arrangements for thousands of people caught up in President Donald Trump‘s immigration crackdown.
A damning report, issued earlier this week by advocacy groups Human Rights Watch (HRW), Americans for Immigrant Justice and Sanctuary of the South, is the latest to highlight alleged inhumane, degrading and unsanitary conditions at some of these facilities, narrowing in on conditions at three overcrowded south Florida detention centres.
Among many stories collected from interviews with detainees, the report highlights incidents of men allegedly being forced to eat out of Styrofoam containers with their hands tied behind their backs “like dogs.” At one facility, women detainees said the only toilets they can use are in full view of the men being held there. Another interviewee detailed dozens of detainees being shackled and left on buses for more than 24 hours while awaiting intake.
NEW: The United States government has subjected immigrants detained in three Florida facilities to abusive, degrading, and in some cases life-threatening conditions. https://t.co/4t3wuD5Y2y pic.twitter.com/DyYTkIc9vY
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) July 21, 2025
And while the report is new, it’s only the latest in a growing list of documented abuses inside the federal immigration facilities that experts say are buckling under the Trump administration’s push to ramp up detentions and deportations since the president’s inauguration in January.
“The anti-immigrant escalation and enforcement tactics under the Trump administration are terrorizing communities and ripping families apart, which is especially cruel in the state of Florida, which thrives because of its immigrant communities,” Katie Blankenship, immigration lawyer and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South, told The Guardian.
“The rapid, chaotic, and cruel approach to arresting and locking people up is literally deadly and causing a human rights crisis that will plague this state and the entire country for years to come.”
Trump has launched the largest domestic deportation operation in U.S. history — aiming to expel one million immigrants in a year.
Read on to learn more about the reports coming out of facilities across the United States, where inmates and advocates say overcrowding, degrading treatment and lack of safety procedures are putting lives at risk and violating human rights.
Krome North
Krome Detention Center officers man an entrance gate as people hold a vigil outside to recognize those who have died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, as well as those affected by mass deportations, Saturday, May 24, 2025, in Miami.
Rebecca Blackwell / The Associated Press
At the Krome North service processing centre in west Miami — where male detainees gathered in the yard to spell out S.O.S. with their arms earlier this year — female detainees told interviewers that they were denied access to gender-appropriate care, showers and food, and their only toilets are in full view of male detainees.
In another case at Krome, a woman said she began vomiting and lost consciousness due to gallstones after being denied care for several days. After surgery to remove her gallbladder, she said she was returned to her cell without medication.
Other detainees at the facility reported being held for more than 24 hours on a bus as they awaited processing. Men and women were being held on the bus together, shackled, and only freed to use the bus’ single toilet, which quickly became clogged.
“The bus became disgusting. It was the type of toilet in which normally people only urinate but because we were on the bus for so long, and we were not permitted to leave it, others defecated in the toilet,” one man said.
“Because of this, the whole bus smelled strongly of feces.”
In an aerial view from a helicopter, detainees are seen at Krome Detention Center run by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on July 4, 2025 in Miami, Florida.
Alon Skuy/Getty Images
Once they were finally admitted into Krome, many reported being forced to spend 12 days in a cold intake room, denied warm clothes or bedding, while guards figured out where to put them. The influx of daily detainees has left the facility overrun, and one woman said every room was so full of people waiting for intake that, in a few cases, people were forced to stand.
HRW estimates that the number of people being held at Krome had increased 249 per cent by March from the levels before Trump’s inauguration.
“At times in March, the facility detained more than three times its operational capacity of inmates,” the report states.
Broward Transitional Center (BTC)
FILE – The Broward Transitional Center, a detention center owned by Boca Raton-based Geo Group, in Pompano Beach, Fla., on June 25, 2018.
John McCall/Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
At Broward Transitional Center, another south Florida facility, men and women told HRW that they faced punishment and retaliation for seeking support. People who divulged to guards their emotional distress were often put in solitary confinement for weeks, they said.
“If you ask for help, they isolate you. If you cry, they might take you away for two weeks. So, people stay silent,” one woman told HRW.
Another female detainee said that it took a week for guards to provide her with crutches after she hurt her ankle falling from her bunk.
And a male detainee said that despite his complaints of extreme back and abdominal pain, he was only offered over-the-counter painkillers and an antacid. When the pain finally got so severe that he was taken to hospital, a CT scan revealed he was suffering from an abdominal hernia and his intestines were on the verge of rupture.
Federal Detention Center (FDC)
FILE – Protestors gather outside the Federal Detention Center in Miami on June 12, 2020.
Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images
At the FDC in Miami, detainees paint a picture of inhumane treatment at the hands of guards.
Two men, cited in HRW’s report, claim they were subjected to invasive visual cavity searches during their intake, shackled at their feet and hands during the transfer process and left for hours.
When they were finally given food, the men said, they remained chained and forced to eat “like animals.”
“At 7 p.m., they finally gave us lunch, but only after another guard protested on our behalf. We were chained, though, so we could not reach the plates with our hands. We had to put the plates on chairs and then bend down and eat with our mouths, like dogs,” one of the men said.
Other detainees at FDC reported being subjected to arbitrary lockdowns, extreme overcrowding, abusive and humiliating harassment and were denied essential medical care and medication.
They also described the food at FDC as largely inedible — at times they were served frozen meat — and some men reported being denied appropriate diets to help manage their health conditions.
Alligator Alcatraz
President Donald Trump tours a migrant detention center, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” located at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport in Ochopee, Florida on July 1, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP via Getty Images
Since the opening of the controversial Alligator Alcatraz less than a month ago, there have been reports of appalling conditions coming out of the facility, not unlike the others in south Florida.
Alligator Alcatraz (once the unofficial moniker for the makeshift detention facility that has now been adopted as its official name) is surrounded by swamps filled with mosquitoes, pythons and alligators. But the reference to the notorious federal prison and the harshness of the conditions at the facility that are meant to be a deterrent are only the tip of the iceberg of alleged violations occurring there, advocacy groups say.
On Tuesday, a number of non-profit organizations called for the closure of the facility that was quickly cobbled together to address overcrowding at other detention centres.
Speaking at a press conference, those groups said the tents erected to hold more than 1,000 men are “flood-prone” and overcrowded. Sewage backups, they say, are “resulting in cages flooded with feces.”
Advocates said that at least six people detained at the Everglades facility have been hospitalized, calling it a “public health crisis.”
‘The cruelty is the point’: Democratic lawmakers slam ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ during tour of facility
“The detention conditions are unliveable. When you expose human beings to human waste in heat, in a hot environment, you propagate germs and therefore illnesses,” said Tessa Petit, the co-executive director of the Florida Immigration Coalition, CBS reported. “People in there have not been allowed to step outside of those cages.”
One detainee, speaking to reporters from inside the facility while his wife held her mobile phone to a microphone, called the conditions “like a dog cage” and said he’s developed a fungus on his feet after being exposed to floodwater and denied proper bathing.
Other detainees told the Miami Herald earlier this month that they’re subjected to a constant barrage of mosquitoes and are forced to sleep under fluorescent lights.
During the day, detainees say they sit sweating inside cages with no air conditioning, while at night they freeze without proper bedding or warm clothing.
26 Federal Plaza
Federal agents wait in the hallways outside of immigration court to detain immigrants for deportation, June 18, 2025, at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City.
Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
At a migrant holding facility in New York City, a detainee with a contraband cellphone shared recent videos with the New York Times, showing deplorable conditions inside the federal immigration offices.
The glimpse inside one of the four cells at 26 Federal Plaza shows more than a dozen men sitting on benches or sprawled on the floor on thin thermal blankets.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told the New York Times 26 Federal Plaza was not a detention centre and that detainees were held there only “briefly.”
“Any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions at ICE facilities are categorically false,” she said. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”
Adelanto
At the Adelanto facility in California, detainees have reported sleeping on the floor and not being given a change of clothes for 10 days, reports the Financial Times.
And while many advocates are trying to determine the conditions behind the walls of the building that has capacity to house nearly 2,000 people, last week two Democratic congressional representatives reported being denied entry into the ICE facility.
Reps. Raul Ruiz and Norma Torres arrived at the privately run detention centre on a scheduled visit only to find the main gate padlocked shut, reported Eyewitness News.
Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA) and Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA) are denied entry for a congressional oversight visit to the GEO Group Adelanto ICE Processing Center detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 11, 2025.
Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
“This is an obstruction of the law,” Ruiz told a guard at the facility padlocking the gate. “This is a violation of the law and we have the right to come in and ask questions.”
Torres echoed the frustration. “Denying members of Congress access to private detention facilities like Adelanto isn’t just disrespectful, it is dangerous, it is illegal and it is a desperate attempt to hide the abuse happening behind these walls,” she said, the outlet reported.
In a statement to Eyewitness News, ICE defended denying the pair access to the facility, citing recent rule changes that now require seven days of notice for a visitation, instead of the previously required 72 hours.
“Unannounced visits help ensure transparency and accountability,” Ruiz told the outlet. “But this visit was announced according to their own procedures and we have to ask, ‘what are they trying to hide?’”