Detained Cubans demonstrated inside the Krome Detention Center in Miami, Florida, on Thursday, spelling out “SOS,” “CUBA” and “LIBRE” using their bodies and towels.
Video captured by a news helicopter showed the detainees protesting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts in the detention center's courtyard.
South Florida's NBC6 reports the men kneeled, clapped their hands together, and waved their shirts at the passing helicopter. A relative of one of the detainees told the outlet that they were demonstrating against a transfer to a Texas detention facility and eventual deportation.
Cruel conditions have been reported at the detention center. The wife of one detainee who was briefly held at Krome said the center had "hundreds of people living under two tents." Her husband was transferred to Miami's Federal Detention Center, which she claims is making it difficult for detainees to speak to lawyers and forcing inmates to spend most of the day in cells.
“The conditions of the federal building (are) insane,” she said.
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Two detainees at Krome have died while in custody since Trump assumed office in January. Despite the medical examiner’s office determining that they died of natural causes, an investigation from the Miami Herald found evidence of what experts called “questionable medical care” for the two immigrants.
House Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., visited Krome in May. She called what she saw there “very troubling.”
