MIRAMAR, Fla. — For years, a coalition of clergy, volunteers and immigrant-rights organizers has kept a standing vigil outside the Broward County field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a squat administrative building off Southwest 145th Avenue where people are supposed to check in on their cases and leave the same day. On July 1, that coalition gathered again — this time to say the building had quietly turned into something else: a holding site where people wait for days in crowded rooms, with little food, water or sleep. Barely 24 hours later, a member of Congress let herself in to see for certain.
A Coalition That's Watched This Building Since 2017
The press conference was organized by the Miramar Circle of Protection, a group that has gathered outside the ICE office since 2017 to support immigrants attending appointments there and to speak out against detentions carried out on the spot. Jacqueline López, executive director of Women Working Together USA and a founding member of the coalition, told reporters the office was never engineered for what she said is now happening inside it. "This facility was designed as an administrative office, not as a detention center," López said. She said the coalition raised the same concern directly with the city back in December, in a sit-down with then-Vice Mayor Yvette Colbourne, and that officials promised to look into it but never followed through with a documented visit.
Guadalupe de la Cruz, program director for the American Friends Service Committee, described a building never intended to hold anyone now absorbing longer lines in direct sun, more families split apart, and more people funneled inside for extended stays, according to Local10's coverage of the demonstration. Advocate María Bilbao, affiliated with both the American Friends Service Committee and the Circle of Protection coalition, went further, framing what she's tracking as evidence of a pattern rather than isolated incidents — including, she said, 33 unmarked vehicles that entered the facility over a three-hour span earlier that week. "I consider this state terrorism," Bilbao said.
Firsthand Accounts of Heat, Crowding and Long Waits
Sylvia Muñoz, a founding coalition member representing the Pedro Arrupe Jesuit Institute and the Cuban American Women's Vote in Democracy, told reporters she had recently driven a woman from Homestead to an immigration office appointment after that woman was released from custody at Miramar — and that the woman described watching other detainees faint from the heat inside. Arianne Betancourt, an activist whose father was held for months at the now-shuttered Everglades detention camp nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz" before his release in May, argued that oversight of immigrants' treatment can't stop the moment a case fades from public attention. Accounts of exactly how long her father was detained vary by interview — WLRN reported four months, while Local10 reported six — but in both interviews Betancourt made the same underlying argument: that shutting down one facility does nothing to guarantee humane treatment at another. "They're going to spread the cruelty," she told Local10.
The coalition's demands were specific: unannounced visits from elected officials, guaranteed access to food, water, medical care and a place to sleep for anyone held overnight, and a public accounting of whether the office is being used for purposes beyond its stated mission.
A Congresswoman Lets Herself In
Federal law gives members of Congress the right to inspect immigration facilities without advance notice, and Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz used it the very next day. Her office's written statement following the visit says she found roughly 150 people held across four "holding tanks" — two for men, two for women — each with a single toilet exposed in the corner and no partition for privacy. According to her account, the men's area measured about 15 feet by 15 feet and held roughly 70 people; the women's area measured about 7 feet by 14 feet and held roughly 40. Detainees, she said, were sleeping on a hard floor and using the toilet in front of others. She described the scene in blunt terms: conditions "I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy."
Her office said ICE staff told her detainees are allotted one bottle of water and three microwaved 7.5-ounce meals daily, plus a shower every other day, and that the facility logs roughly one medical emergency serious enough to require a 911 call per day. WLRN's report on the visit quotes her calling the conditions "horrific" at a press conference held immediately afterward — one that was interrupted, she noted, when an ambulance pulled up to the building. NBC6's reporting adds that while the office is meant to hold people no longer than 12 hours for processing, staff told her ICE now operates under a waiver permitting stays of up to 72 hours — and that she was told the facility hadn't been formally inspected since October 2025.
ICE's Version of Events
ICE did not respond to interview requests from multiple outlets in time for their initial stories. In a statement provided to Local10 before the congresswoman's visit, an ICE spokesperson described Miramar as a processing site for people on a "non-detained docket," said headcounts fluctuate based on operational need, and pushed back directly on claims that people waiting outside lack access to water or bathrooms, calling those allegations "totally false." The statement added that anyone in ICE custody has a choice in the matter, framing self-deportation through a federal app as an alternative: "Being in detention is a choice," the agency said. ICE has separately and repeatedly said it remains committed to keeping people in custody in safe and humane conditions, though it did not respond to Wasserman Schultz's specific findings following her walkthrough.
A System in Flux: Alligator Alcatraz's Closure
The complaints at Miramar are surfacing just as Florida's broader detention landscape shifts. The Everglades camp known as "Alligator Alcatraz" shut down for good on June 25, with Gov. Ron DeSantis declaring at a news conference that the facility, built in days on an isolated airstrip, "served its purpose for the time." ABC News reported that the governor put the total number of people who passed through the site at "more than 20,000" over its roughly 11 months of operation. That figure has moved around depending on when DeSantis has cited it — in mid-June, before the final closure announcement, he told reporters the site had housed "up to 25,000" people, a higher number than the one he gave on the day it actually shut down. Advocates argue the caseload once absorbed by that camp is now landing on smaller federal processing offices like Miramar's, which were never designed to hold people for more than a few hours.
The Legal Backdrop: A Supreme Court Ruling Removes a Safety Valve
That shift comes just days after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the administration to end Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, in a 6-3 ruling handed down June 25. Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito held that the law governing TPS strips courts of the power to second-guess the Homeland Security secretary's decisions to end the designations, stating flatly that "the secretary's TPS designation decisions are not subject to judicial review." Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, arguing the challengers were entitled to remain in the country while their case proceeded. Betancourt pointed directly to that ruling at Wednesday's press conference, questioning why an office never built to hold people should now be doing so for days or weeks at a stretch as enforcement activity intensifies.
What Happens Next
The coalition says it will keep showing up outside the Miramar office until officials commit to regular, no-notice inspections rather than isolated, one-time visits. Wasserman Schultz, for her part, has said she intends to continue unannounced oversight visits across South Florida's immigration facilities in the weeks ahead — a pledge that will be tested the next time advocates say conditions inside have deteriorated again.
