Dehumanization and Protest: Miami's Krome Detention Center and Beyond

"Please make this go viral. . . . Please help us."

Those are the words of Osiriss Azahael Vázquez Martínez in video messages he was able to record from the overcrowded Krome detention center two weeks ago. Vázquez Martínez, 45, a construction worker, lived in the United States for a decade and "was arrested [in February] for driving without a license on his way home from work," the Miami Herald reported.

Crouching under a table in what is apparently a waiting area, Vázquez Martínez knew his message was from a place we might not even know about. "This is happening right now in the Krome detention center in Miami, Florida," he says in Spanish. "We are practically kidnapped."

Thirty-five years ago, I taught English at Krome. The photo accompanying Vázquez Martínez's story—an exterior view of Building 8, the men's "dormitory"—reminded me of how remote the detention compound seemed when I would drive home after my classes, from the edge of the Everglades back to Miami Beach.

"You're brainwashed over there [to think] 'These are all scumbag inmates,'" he said.

Teachers worked at Krome back then through a Dade County Public Schools contract with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, predecessor to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The detainees, our students, came from around the world, though most were Haitian asylum-seekers. They were frustrated and bored. They were also quiet, calm, and appreciative of any small efforts the teachers made to help.

So it was surprising when Krome guards, also known as detention officers, warned us to be careful. Informally and at "briefings," they told us the detainees were dangerous, even though we were used to moving freely through the common areas, registering students, and sitting with them to study or talk. Guards also asked us teachers to act as their "spies." When I brought in copies of the Miami Herald to use for English lessons, guards told us not to let detainees see newspapers. Later I'd understand the reason.

Out of sight, Krome guards would beat men regularly and force women to trade sex for the promise of getting out. The Herald had started reporting on all of this, even as the immigration agency barred its reporters from the detention center. Miami, and much of the country, would learn about these practices—they weren't aberrations—from a teacher who had been working at Krome for years and finally decided she had to speak out about what the detained women had been telling her (Miami Herald, 4/11/1990).

As I started to research detention further, I was able to interview a former Krome guard who explained how the officers were conditioned to view all immigrants as criminals, and how this, in their minds, justified the brutality. "You're brainwashed over there [to think] 'These are all scumbag inmates,'" he said.

The ex-guard told me that his fellow guards, not the detainees, were the dangerous ones. He called his colleagues "cop wannabes" and said, "I tell you from experience. I was going, 'Wow, I got a badge and a gun now.'" The more experienced officers encouraged him to lock detainees in the bathroom for hours at a time, just to let them know who had the power, and he did it.

U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance didn't invent anti-immigrant rhetoric and violence. Brutality and racism have always been part of the immigration enforcement regime. But the longstanding principles of U.S.detention and deportation policy—dehumanization of the immigrants and unchecked power for their guards and deporters—have metastasized under the Trump-Vance plan.

Our government now glorifies and celebrates the humiliation and violence, as it has in the U.S.-El Salvador collaboration on what historian Timothy Snyder has called a propaganda film worthy of the 1930s.

In 1990, the "average daily population" of immigrant detainees in the United States was about 5,000. On March 23 of this year there were 47,892 people acknowledged to be in ICE custody.

Last year the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) randomly chose 5 out of 44 available videos of use-of-force incidents at Krome from a given six-month period. Four of the five videos depicted the use of pepper spray by guards against detainees who were already restrained or who were offering no resistance at all.

DHS's Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (OCRCL) also investigated Krome, reporting on "concerns related to inappropriate use of force and the impact on the mental health of the noncitizens involved with the incidents." Congress formed OCRCL during the post-9/11 Bush administration in response to, among other things, "widespread illegal and abusive detention of Muslim and Asian immigrants." The Trump administration has eliminated this and other watchdog agencies and removed OCRCL documentation from the agency website. (At least some of the material has been preserved at the Wayback Machine.)

A DHS spokesperson said that government oversight has "obstructed immigration enforcement." In other words, the law itself is an obstruction, and "enforcement" is a synonym for lawlessness.

This plays out in large and small ways at Krome and elsewhere.

At Krome, a reporter from Reason was barred by an "ICE supervisor" from observing public court hearings. At the Batavia detention center in New York State, guards are illegally opening and copying detainees' legal mail.

ICE's "administrative detainees" are also being incarcerated in federal prisons, although the government refuses to say which prisons or how many prisoners. In this way the Bureau of Prisons can help keep the immigrants away from their lawyers.

Back in 1998, the officer-in-charge at Krome said "that the problem was that some officers did not want to accept the fact that detainees were human beings." Last month USA Today reported that women held briefly at Krome, which is an all-male facility now, were chained for hours on a bus without bathroom access. Guards told them to urinate and defecate on the floor, and some had no other choice.

Detainees at ICE's Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico told USA Today they staged a "sit-in" because they wanted to see deportation officers or a judge. Some had been held for seven or eight months. Even if they wanted to leave the U.S. voluntarily, they couldn't do so. One of the nonviolent protesters, Irrael Arzuaga-Milanes, said he was punished with four days of solitary confinement. (The ACLU has just obtained ICE documents, for which it had to sue, concerning ICE policies on solitary. ICE has used this punishment as a form of torture, according to the United Nations.)

There will be more protests by detainees against wrongful detentions, illegal deportations, overcrowding, and mistreatment. ICE detention guards, private-prison contractors, and county jails holding ICE detainees will respond with the excessive force that the administration actively encourages. And not only encourages: Our government now glorifies and celebrates the humiliation and violence, as it has in the U.S.-El Salvador collaboration on what historian Timothy Snyder has called a propaganda film worthy of the 1930s.

There's a small bit of good news here. A day after the Herald reported on conditions at Krome, 200 protesters rallied outside that immigration prison. Also in recent weeks:

• In Washington State, labor unions protested outside ICE's Northwest detention center to support people locked inside;
• In North Carolina, women protested the arrests of their husbands (stopped based on lies by law enforcement) who were then sent down to Krome;
• In New Jersey, protesters opposed the planned reopening of the Delaney Hall detention center to be operated by the GEO Group, while Newark city inspectors have reportedly been barred from entering the detention center construction site; and
• In Rhode Island, protesters outside the Wyatt Detention Facility demanded the release of their immigrant neighbors.

There are almost 200 of these "facilities"—that we know of—across the United States, as well in Guam and the North Mariana Islands, used by ICE to hold immigrant prisoners as of late 2024. The prisoners are in ICE's "processing centers," in county jails, and (the overwhelming majority) in private prisons. There are also 25 ICE field offices, as well as ICE "check-in locations" around the country.

There's room outside all of them for lawful protests and demonstrations against the lawlessness and inhumanity inside.