MIAMI — The Biden administration is limiting the use of a Florida detention center that holds immigrants in federal custody after lawmakers and immigration activists raised alarm over conditions in the facility.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a formal announcement Friday afternoon stating that it would limit the use of the Glades County Detention Center, a county jail near Lake Okeechobee that houses migrant detainees on behalf of ICE.
The federal agency said it had curtailed its use of the Moore Haven county jail in recent years due to “persistent and ongoing concerns related to the provision of detainee medical care.” It also described the facility as one of “limited operational significance.”
“ICE has continued to pay for a minimum number of beds, many of which the agency has not and likely will not utilize. The agency will not extend the guaranteed minimum beds provision of the agreement,” reads the announcement.
In the same memo, ICE also said it would stop using Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama as well as limit the use of two other detention facilities in Louisiana and North Carolina. The decisions were part of the federal agency’s commitment under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to review the conditions in detention facilities, the memo added.
There are currently no migrant detainees being held at the county jail in Glades. Extensions of the government’s contract with Glades will require the facility to address the concerns leveled against it and to ensure that it meets detention standards, according to the memo and two government sources familiar with the decision.
The Glades County Sheriff’s Office, which runs the county jail, did not respond to a request for comment. It has previously and repeatedly ignored or declined requests for comments from the Miami Herald.
Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who has publicly called for shutting down the county jail, celebrated the decision.
“I applaud the Biden administration’s decision to stop sending immigrants to the Glades facility,” Wasserman Schultz told the Herald in a statement.
The facility has faced scathing allegations of medical negligence, sexual misconduct, retaliation against peaceful protesting, COVID-19 protocol violations and racist violence, according to several immigration advocates, civil rights groups and watchdog organizations.
In a complaint from earlier this month, Earthjustice, along with local groups Americans for Immigrant Justice and Immigrant Action Alliance, urged the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate alleged misuse of chemical disinfectants. In a complaint from February, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington accused the Glades County Detention Center of deleting video footage before it was legally allowed to do so.
A carbon monoxide poisoning last November that sickened and hospitalized detainees has also put the detention center in the spotlight. Last August, a group of female detainees, along with Miami-based Americans for Immigrant Justice and other groups, made a complaint to Homeland Security accusing the guards that watched the women shower of voyeurism.
Wasserman Schultz has been at the forefront of congressional efforts to shut down the facility. In a July 2021 letter, Wasserman Schultz along with seven other legislators sent a letter to Mayorkas asking the federal government to stop using the facility. Last month, the Florida lawmaker spearheaded another letter with over a dozen members of Congress asking that DHS terminate its contract with the county jail.
“My congressional colleagues and I pressed emphatically for months to have this facility shuttered, and while this stops just short of that, the controls I expect to be announced later today would take a very strong step towards ensuring that immigrants will no longer suffer at this site. The long, disturbing record of inhumane treatment at this facility demands this move,” said Wasserman Schultz. “I will continue to closely monitor this contract, and press for its complete termination if anything close to the abhorrent mistreatment persists.”
National immigrant rights organizations hailed the announcement as a “result of collective pressure of multiple immigrant advocates and civil rights groups.”
“We are proud of the relentless work that immigrant justice partners have made over the years to bring an end to this abuse by speaking up and never giving up,” said Bridgette Gomez, executive director of We Are Home, a coalition of immigrants rights advocates, in a statement.
Lily Hartmann, a human rights advocate at Americans for Immigrant Justice, said her organization applauded the announcement to limit use of the facility. But she also told the Herald that they and other immigrant rights organizations continue to push for the facility’s permanent closure so that no immigrants are detained there in the future.
“Attempts at oversight have happened for years but abuse persisted. Organizations like ours have reported numerous abuses, but things have never changed or gotten any better,” she said.
Rebecca Talbot, who coordinates Glades advocacy efforts at Immigrant Action Alliance, said that advocates who have pushed for the county jail to stop being used as a center that holds migrant detainees were “incredibly relieved.”
In September 2020, the Shut Down Glades Coalition, which is made up of several immigrant and civil rights advocacy groups, officially began meeting to put pressure on the federal government. It was yearslong efforts from detainees and advocates, including rallies and hunger strikes, to shut down the facility, that led to Friday’s news, Talbot said.
Like Hartmann, she also urged the Biden administration to release anyone currently in ICE custody that had previously been held there and to shutter the facility.
“If Glades is open we know people are being harmed there,” she said. “The Biden administration must not only limit the use of Glades, it must finish the job.”
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