Immigration

This ICE Office Detains People for Days in Overcrowded Holding Cells

ICE's standards say these cells shouldn't be used to confine people for more than 12 hours. But that's not how it works in Miramar, Florida.

C.J. Ciaramella | 8.25.2026 10:09 AM

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An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Miramar, Florida, is supposed to be where immigrants go for regular appointments with federal authorities. However, family members of detainees, immigrant legal aid groups, and Democratic lawmakers say the South Florida facility has become a dangerously overcrowded detention center in the past few months, with people languishing for days in what are meant to be temporary holding cells.

A South Florida resident who asked to only be identified by her first name, Marlene, says her sister Yajaira, a 37-year-old mother of two, spent five days last month detained at the Miramar facility before being transferred to another detention center across the country.

Marlene says Yajaira was jammed into a bare concrete holding cell with roughly 50 other people, where she suffered an anxiety attack. Yajaira was given barely any food, no room to sleep, limited phone time, and no confidential access to legal counsel.

"She lasted five days in there, five days without brushing her teeth, without showering and things like that," Marlene says.

According to an extraordinary waiver that ICE granted itself last year, Yajaira should have been in that holding cell for no longer than 72 hours at Miramar, but advocacy groups say that extended stays like Yajaira's are the norm now at the facility.

María Bilbao, the campaigns coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee of Florida, says she's been fielding texts and phone calls every day from family members of detainees being held at Miramar for up to 12 days at a time. Bilbao is also an organizer for the Miramar Circle of Protection, a volunteer group that provides support and legal guidance for immigrants outside the Miramar ICE office.

"Miramar is supposed to be a space where you go to do a check-in or pay a bond," Bilbao says. "But now I describe it like a clandestine detention center, because there is no clarity."

Paul Chavez, an attorney with Americans for Immigrant Justice, said his organization has been hearing the same thing.

"We've seen people held........

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