Days without a shower. Sleeping on floors. Two hundred people confined in a space meant for 85. Some immigration detention units are so crowded that non-citizens arrested in President Trump's crackdown are living in inhumane conditions, say attorneys for detainees. The Trump administration's goal of deporting "millions" of people has led officials to jam more than 46,000 detainees into a system designed to hold no more than about 40,000, Axios reports. The crowding is just one sign of a system under stress. Officials are scrambling to arrange more detention space across the U.S. and abroad. They're sending detainees they've deemed as dangerous on controversial — and legally questionable — flights to foreign prisons without giving them court hearings. They're monitoring other unauthorized immigrants who've been arrested and released after agreeing to return for their court dates.
At a time when the Department of Homeland Security is desperate for billions more to build an infrastructure that could come close to handling the surge, conditions in the system's detention facilities are deteriorating. "Oftentimes conditions aren't great, but this seems definitely out of the norm, this type of extended overcrowding," said Paul Chavez, of Americans for Immigrant Justice. He said that at a detention center in Miami, about 200 people were being held at one point in a room meant for 85. One client was held in a room meant for 50 people that was holding 90. "If you have a building that's meant for 600 people, and now you have twice that in there, it'll inevitably lead to issues," Chavez said. Detainees often are hesitant to speak out about conditions in detention, particularly if they're trying to get an immigration court to allow them to stay in the U.S. Conditions in detention have been so poor that some immigrants prefer deportation to spending more time in the facilities, Chavez said. "A lot of people are just signing orders to be removed, because the conditions are so horrible."
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