Like sardines in a jar

March 24, 2025 11:31 AM

Accounts from immigrants held at the Krome North Processing Center in Miami allege life-threatening inhumane treatment. Of 6 deaths in ICE custody in FY25 so far, half were at Krome.

A letter written by one of the women says in part:

first bright memory is a bunch of men behind a glass from different corners of that big room, staring at us, so wild, so hungry. It was very scary feeling. They made us run through those halls with "fish tanks" filled with so many men per room who were wildly staring at us. It's hard to describe their faces like they never seen women before. Very uncomfortable unpleasant feeling. We were pushed to not a big room filled with women (like sardines in a jar). I won't ever forget those first seconds after I heard a door behind me got locked. Girls look like boys with tattoos on face, getto looking women, homeless drug addicts, pregnant woman started to puke on the floor. Somin other woman got seizure, foam started to come from her mouth and nose. Everything was happening so fast in a head, like no, no, no, it's a joke, we can't spend 5 min here, not talking about to spend a night. I can say for sure, it was the most scary moment of my entire life + that first day, I was pretty sure I won't gonna make it. Bad vantilation, two opened toilet, camera towards, untisanitary, a small tiny piece of soap for 26 ppl at that time, it was gonne same day and we haven't had it till the end. Most of those women hadn't use it at all, no wash hands. Me and my girls took the only open spot by the door, we needed at least some of fresh air.

We had to knock a door if we wanted water, there was a ten gallons cooler in a corridor and a tiny paper cups. We were in line. So you have to hurry up to drink a couple of it to not feeling that thirsty. And they weren't open it every time we want. It was tottaly up to them when we gonna drink. There was a girl with a high blood pressure. She's been waiting for medical 3 days. She seemed she was about to faint any second. I got a bad allergic reaction. I just needed benedryl. I was told by guard, I won't get anything unless I pretend I have seizure and fall down.

...We couldn't stretch our legs. We were sleeping on concreat. Some girls gave us jeans jacket so we had to decide we will use it as blanket or as bed. Light was on all the time. It was freezing we were spooning each other not to get that cold. It was a men facility - that's why they help men first and every left over (if so) was for us. (Visitors section - no bed) diabet women didn't get help.

ICE's mid-March nationwide numbers reflect 4,769 people for whom they do not have beds.

posted by joannemerriam (11 comments total)

This is an expansion of the terrible treatment from the first time around, this is from 2019:

Ex-Hostage Suggests Trump Treatment of Migrants Worse Than His Captors: 'Somali Pirates Gave Me Toothpaste and Soap'

Moore, who was held by Somali pirates from January 2012 to September 2014 for a total of 977 days, called out the Trump administration in a Saturday tweet. In his post, the author, who wrote a memoir about his time in captivity entitled The Desert and the Sea, shared a link to a NowThis video of a lawyer for Trump's Justice Department arguing in court that the administration should not be required to provide basic sanitary products, such as a toothbrush and soap, or blankets to detained migrants.

"Somali pirates gave me toothpaste & soap," Moore pointed out in his caption above the video.

In one of them, he shared a link to what he considers "the best short essay on America's border camps." That essay is titled: "Some Suburb of Hell: America's New Concentration Camp System." The former hostage also shared a link to donate money to a nonprofit providing legal assistance to immigrant families and children.

The Justice Department's Sarah Fabian argued on Tuesday of last week that creating "safe and sanitary" conditions for detained migrants did not mean that the Trump administration had to provide them with toothbrushes, towels and other basic products. The judges listening to her arguments appeared taken aback by the suggestion.

"If you don't have a toothbrush, if you don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket, it's not safe and sanitary," Senior U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima stated. "Wouldn't everybody agree to that?" he asked.

posted by rambling wanderlust at 11:57 AM on March 24 [3 favorites]

I have not heard of Krome Detention Center in a long time, I guess not since some previous immigrant panic that long predates Trump as a politician. It is a place that would have been shut down long ago if the United States were more like the place described in the Pledge of Allegiance.

I guess the atrocities in Trump I were so focused at the Southwest that the Caribbean got overlooked.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 12:02 PM on March 24

I'll just say the whole thing again:

These are monstrous acts. People who work for ICE, people who work for DHS, people who work for other branches of the federal government, etc, all increasingly face the choice of whether or not to participate. It's not a matter of "policy" or "orders" or anything like that. Individuals face choices, period.

Critically, we frequently do not get to pick and choose which choices we are faced with, especially in the short term. Times change around us, and people are extremely imperfect at projecting future eventualities, especially in a situation where one is significantly psychologically invested, as in the case of a career. As such, it is worth extending the benefit of compassion to those who find themselves facing these choices. Nonetheless, at a certain point, blindness to the cruelty of one's acts can only be maintained by willful direction of attention away.

So it may be that a person has to choose between leaving a career they have pursued for however many years, or participating in a process which jails innocent elders. One of those options is monstrous, the other is a (possibly significant) personal cost. It is a matter of whether someone is willing to sacrifice some extent of their personal identity, social station and economic well being to avoid being professionally obligated to participate in gratuitous and racist cruelty to innocent people.

As citizens opposed to these acts, we must include the authors of these policies, and the political rhetoric which supports them, but it is worth consideration that the locus of agency of these policies is not with their authors, or with the writers of rhetoric.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 12:04 PM on March 24 [11 favorites]

To be clear - there are also those who are enthusiastic in their monstrousness. Perhaps those who are conflicted can be convinced to make the sacrifice to extract themselves from these monstrous situations. Those who pursue them enthusiastically must perforce be considered differently. In both cases, however, the role of the individual in carrying out these policies needs to be highlighted. It is not OK to do these things for any reason, and "because it's your job" has been specifically highlighted as an insufficient rationale. This is a matter of settled philosophy since the Nuremberg Trials.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 12:52 PM on March 24 [5 favorites]

Put another way, when you're a lawyer and you find yourself telling the judge that you're required to provide safe and sanitary conditions but that doesn't mean you're required to provide soap, toothpaste, or blankets - that oughta be a "can I still look at myself in the mirror?" moment.
posted by nickmark at 12:58 PM on March 24 [6 favorites]

Prosecutorial culture was already pretty gross, tbh.
They're supposed to be under heightened ethical constraints.
In practice, the opposite is true.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:21 PM on March 24 [3 favorites]

Every genocide is committed by people who believe they are doing it in self-defense.

I’m sure plenty of these guards and lawyers cast themselves as heroically circumventing the rules (which, of course, were made by sniveling liberals who revel in letting dangerous criminals run amok) to protect the youth of America.
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:53 PM on March 24 [3 favorites]

Piss Christ as policy.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:48 PM on March 24 [1 favorite]

This, and worse, is what they want to do to "unaccompanied minors" (read: other people's kids). This is what they would do to your kids if they thought it benefited them in some way.

We know from experience that social movements based on hate and dehumanization have to incorporate new targets both because they get diminishing returns hunting down current ones and to keep the base frothing at the mouth.

These arguments will be advanced by people who think of themselves as officials or lawyers or representatives in various fora against an increasing number of people and they count on the imprimatur of the government and ignorance of undiscerning voters to normalize the practice.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 5:15 PM on March 24 [2 favorites]

I wonder how much "inefficiency and waste" DOGE could save if they eliminated social security for green card holders?
posted by ryanrs at 6:25 PM on March 24

rambling wanderlust, I couldn't find the donation link you mentioned, can you link it?
posted by chromecow at 2:06 PM on March 25