MIAMI — Rep. Carlos Gimenez became the first Republican federal lawmaker and the latest member of Florida’s congressional delegation to visit South Florida facilities that house immigration detainees.

On Tuesday, the representative toured the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami — a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility housing immigrants under the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — after the Miami Herald published an investigation into reports of harsh conditions, lack of access to legal counsel and use of force. He announced his plans for the visit last week in a C-SPAN interview.

Standing in front of FDC Miami with printed notes from the Herald article in hand, Gimenez said he had not seen any “deplorable” conditions, but confirmed an incident in April in which detention officers deployed force against a group of immigrant detainees.

“There’s nothing going on in there that would make me as an American not proud to be an American, and ashamed of what’s going on there,” he said.

Gimenez said 311 ICE detainees are housed in four units designed for a total of 500 people. On other floors, the facility separately houses about 1,000 other men who are either awaiting trial or have already been sentenced. According to ICE data showing average daily populations, about half of the men in ICE custody at the incarceration facility have criminal records and half don’t.

The Miami Herald spoke with three employees, seven detainees – one of whom was at the facility for about four months – and numerous lawyers with clients who have been housed at FDC Miami. They described delays in legal access, broken air conditioning, elevators and toilets, long lockdowns and a use of force incident in April.

“I’ve seen some inmates just sit there and cry,” one officer told the Herald during the investigation. “Some cry all day. Grown men, just crying.”

Gimenez did not speak to any detainees during his tour. But he said he witnessed them playing games, watching television, and eating meals. “They knew who I was, and nobody said ‘oh wow, this is really bad,’” he said. He toured several units, and saw showers, a cafeteria, and an outdoor recreation area. Detainees have access to emails and phones, he said.

“This is not the Ritz-Carlton. It’s a detention center. But there’s nothing inhumane that’s going on,” said the Cuban-American lawmaker. He told reporters that an FDC employee he spoke with described a broken elevator and “disrepair.”

‘Send us back’

According to Gimenez, FDC Miami officials said about 40 detainees began refusing orders, knocking down sprinkler systems and trying to rip out toilets in the incident that happened in April. “They had to use force to subdue them,” he said, of the facility’s officers. He said no detainees were taken to the hospital. In response to the incident, he said, officials changed “some of their procedures.”

In interviews and multiple lawsuits, detainees said that officers deployed crowd-control grenades and what appeared to be rubber pellets in a crowded room on April 15. Detainees had flooded the cell to protest a lack of food, water and medication.

Six detainees who were present during the incident said that they had been waiting to be processed for hours, after they were transferred that day from nearby Krome North Service Processing Center, and grew desperate. They were hungry and thirsty and some of them needed daily medications to be administered on time.

In one lawsuit signed by 24 detainees related to the incident, a man wrote that they were yelling for hours for “basic needs” of food, water and medicine, and flooded the cell and grew “combative.” Diego Rafael Medina Rodriguez, 26, said that he got hit by “rubber bullets coming from the explosion of concussion grenades,” suffered pain in his wrists from being tightly handcuffed for hours, and was unable to sleep as the incident worsened previous PTSD from his experience during protests in Venezuela.

“It felt like we were being tortured,” Medina Rodriguez wrote. “All we did was flood the floor to call for attention because they were not paying attention to our basic needs.”

Medina Rodriguez wrote that before the use of force was deployed, an officer asked the detainees for their “demands.”

“Send us back,” he recalled another detainee responding. “There’s no reason why we got transferred to a Federal Prison to be treated as prisoners when we are ICE detainees. We should be at an Immigration Facility.”

The lawsuits were dismissed due to procedural issues after the detainees filed them independently.

Krome is next

In February, ICE signed a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to house immigrants in civil detention in federal prisons and jails, accommodating for the ramp up of immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. But advocates and lawyers said that the United States prison system - which is understaffed and riddled with reports of poor conditions and abuse - is not a suitable place for detainees in immigration proceedings

In recent months, Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Frederica Wilson, and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick have visited Krome North Service Processing Center and the Broward Transitional Center, other South Florida facilities holding ICE detainees. The Democratic lawmakers have been vocal critics of conditions at the center in the wake of overcrowding and detainee deaths in South Florida. In January and February, two men died after they had been detained at Krome. While the autopsies were ruled natural deaths, the Herald found reports of questionable medical treatment. In April, a Haitian woman died at BTC.

Gimenez said he next plans to tour Krome Detention Center, an ICE facility that falls within his district. Detainees there have told the Herald that the facility became severely overcrowded over the past four months, with men sleeping on the floor.

“I have to visit Krome to see what’s going on with my eyes,” said Gimenez.

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.