Congresswoman Frederica Wilson took an hourlong tour Thursday of the Krome Detention Facility, where there have been reports of severe overcrowding, leading to unsanitary and dangerous conditions. But she certain she did not get to see the real thing.
“I am positive that they took people out today, so I wouldn’t see them,” Wilson said in an impromptu press conference outside the West Miami-Dade facility, which she said had been cleaned up for her visit. “It was like somebody went in there yesterday and put on a whole new coat of fresh paint. You could even smell the paint.
“That’s what they do.”
The other thing that caught her attention was a large tent. Not really a tent in the traditional sense. Wilson said it was a plexiglass structure that had been built in 14 days to house up to an additional 400 detainees. So, she knows the facility is more crowded than they let on, as indicated by video taken on cellphones inside and provided to NBC6. Otherwise, why build the outdoor housing?
“This is not my first rodeo,” Wilson said. “They take them on a field trip so you don’t see who is actually in there. But they did admit that they are actually building a tent city.
“Trust me, everybody is not home. Somebody was taken out of this prison today — in buses.”
Read related: Congresswoman Frederica Wilson will tour troubled Krome Detention Center
This is the first time Wilson has gone back to Krome — which has gotten some national attention because of the mass detentions and deportations under Donald Trump — in 43 years, when it was used to house female Haitian refugees. “This is an immigrant rich community. I represent Cubans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Bahamians, Jamaicans. Everybody is in this facility,” she said.
This time, Wilson went to Krome after getting calls from concerned constituents, including a woman whose husband was detained after going to a scheduled immigration hearing about two weeks ago. Married to a U.S. citizen with a child here, the man was taken away and moved three times. Thursday, Wilson said, his family reported he was in a prison in Texas. Another immigrant, a university student from the Congo, has been “moved from detention center to detention center.”
She says the transfers are intentionally designed. “I think that she they find out you have a strong attorney and people interested in you, they consider it a threat. So they move you and they keep moving you until nobody can keep up with it,” Wilson said.
She also said the detainees are not at all the criminals they are being cast as and implied that there are mentally disabled detainees in the general population.
“I wanted to see all these criminals, with their faces tattooed and with gold teeth. I wanted to see who were these dangerous people that they had picked up off the street and put in a detention center. I didn’t see that,” she said. “I saw hard-working men. Some more literate than others. I even saw some who are mentally disturbed and have mental issues. I saw some who have physical issues, who are sick.
“I saw some who weren’t quite sure what was going on,” she said. “In fact, most of the people who are there are not criminals. They’re calling being undocumented a crime.” Wilson said she had access to detainees who spoke freely and most were just family men who worked and paid taxes.
She also wanted to find out if they were building a tent city. “I asked if they were going to build a tent city, to house the overflow. And the answer is yes.” The government has already built a two-story structure of plexiglass or other material “with big pipes of air conditioning coming in” and a TV room.
Read related: Cuban American congress members stay silent on TPS, immigrant detention
Wilson said that since the Riley Act was passed in January, “people are going to be picked up on the street every day and sent here.”
The Laken Riley Act is named for a 22-year-old Augusta University nursing student who was killed while she was jogging at the University of Georgia by a 26-year-old Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally. It requires the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants admitting to, charged with, or convicted of theft-related crimes, assaulting a police officer, or a crime that results in death or serious bodily injury like drunk driving.
“I asked them, ‘Are you prepared to build or construct… more tents for people?’ And they said yes,” the congresswoman told a gathering of press outside the facility, which sits on and is named for Krome Avenue on the old edge of the Everglades.
“It’s going to get worse. Every time it gets overcrowded, they will build a new tent. Because it only takes 14 days. I was stunned.”
So is Ladra. If it’s that easy, why aren’t there temporary housing stations for the homeless? Oye, Ron Book? Are you paying attention?
Wilson said that she was concerned because there are no more ombudsmen to oversee the civil rights of immigrants in detention. “They were fired. Fired! So I’m going to serve a the overseer,” she said. “I’m going to come back as often as I can.” She is also going to encourage other members of Congress to visit. When she went to the immigration detention facility in Homestead years ago, when they were housing unaccompanied children, she took 10 members of Congress.
“I’m going to have to figure out a day I can come and not tell them I’m coming. And I have a right to be there.”
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Congresswoman Frederica Wilson will be the first member of Congress to get a tour of the Krome Detention Center in West Miami-Dade after reports of overcrowded, dangerous, unsanitary and inhumane conditions in the wake of the mass immigrant detentions and deportations by the new Donald Trump administration.
Wilson sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem earlier this month asking for access and a walk through. Her office announced Wednesday that she would get an hour inside on Thursday afternoon. She will be available for the press afterwards, around 2 p.m. So will representatives from Americans for Immigration Justice, which has joined the ACLU Florida on the federal lawsuit to challenge a Florida law that authorizes state and local authorities to jail people solely on immigration status, “powers the Constitution reserves exclusively to the federal government.”6
The congresswoman, who represents Florida’s 24th district — which includes Little Haiti, Biscayne Park, Miami Gardens, North Miami, Opa-Locka and the southern part of Broward County — has received letters and phone calls from constituents who have relatives in the detention center, said Alvaro Perpuly, Wilson’s press secretary. Or who were in the detention center. One such detainee has already been moved elsewhere, so Wilson won’t be able to check on him, Perpuly said.
Read related: Cuban American congress members stay silent on TPS, immigrant detention
“She’s trying to set up individual meetings, but it’s kind of hard to know who’s really there because they keep moving people around,” Perpuly told Political Cortadito.
The visit was not coordinated through Noem, but rather the detention center facility itself, Perpuly said. “By law, they cannot prevent a member of Congress from entering. They have more leeway with other electeds on the state and local level.”
That might be why Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has not received an answer to her own request on April 3 for a tour. A staffer said she had been invited by the congresswoman. “ICE informed her office that per their protocol, the mayor would need to schedule a separate time to tour the facility, which we hope to coordinate as swiftly as possible,” said Deputy Chief of Staff Rachel Johnson.
But what is stopping Congressman Carlos Gimenez, Mario Diaz-Balart or Maria Elvira Salazar from checking the place out themselves? The three Cuban-American legislators have come under fire for their silence in the face of the community’s fear and uncertainty. There have been billboards and video ads to blast them for their complicity.
Even a full page ad “open letter” from healthcare mogul and habitual campaign donor Mike Fernandez didn’t seem to move the dial.
Calls to Gimenez representatives at his district and Washington offices were not returned.
Detainees are seen sleeping on the floor next to each other or in chairs in a viral video that was taken, obviously under cover, by a Mexican detainee near tears and provided to NBC6 Miami. Some detainees have had to sleep outside. They have reportedly not been allowed to communicate with loved ones or legal representation regularly. Some family members of detainees say they are not given enough food or even water. In February, a Ukranian immigrant died at a nearby hospital after getting sick at Krome.
Read related: Video blasts U.S. Rep. Carlos Gimenez for silence on ending TPS, deportations
“The increase in detainees being sent to the Krome Processing Center has caused conditions to deteriorate, creating an unsafe and inhumane detention environment,” Levine Cava wrote in the letter to Noem. “Allegations of substandard conditions include inadequate access to water and food, unsanitary confinement, medical neglect and abuse such as prolonged shackling.”
Wilson, who will be going with members of her team, knows that she may not see those things.
“She’s very aware they’re going to clean up a bit and make it look nicer,” Perpuly said.
“She wants to see where the detainees are actually being held, talk to some of the folks there, see if there are any women there, and just generally see what’s going on.”
Stay tuned. Political Cortadito will follow up on Thursday.
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