House Oversight Democrats released photographs and accounts from ICE whistleblowers on September 21, 2026, describing conditions at the agency's field offices in Miramar and Orlando, Florida. Miramar is not a detention center. It is an administrative building where people are processed before being moved somewhere else, and its holding rooms are rated for about 50 to 56 people. In August it held 342 at once.
The photographs show people sleeping in rows of cots on the floor of the sally port, the unventilated garage entrance where vehicles pull in; portable toilets with urinals overflowing with brown water and paper; human waste outside the doors; trash piled up; and people brushing their teeth outside with a hose. Others show detainees asleep in handcuffs, leg irons and belly chains. The Miami Herald reports cells running 200 to 300 percent over capacity.
The letter from Reps. Robert Garcia, Bennie Thompson and Maxwell Frost, addressed to acting ICE Director David Venturella and DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, says ICE is holding “men, women, families, and elderly people with chronic medical conditions—for days to weeks in abusive and life-threatening conditions, including overcrowded cells, prolonged shackling, inadequate access to medical care and hygiene, insufficient food, and limited to no legal access,” and that the agency “is simultaneously attempting to cover up these horrific practices.” Garcia said the administration “is trying to cover up these disgusting and unsafe conditions and escape accountability, while countless lives are put in danger.”
These are allegations, and the whistleblowers are anonymous. No inspector general has examined Miramar. What raises them above a press release is the corroboration around them. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz inspected the building in July and described the same thing: “There are literally people lining the floors. There is absolutely no room at all. It is wall-to-wall people.” A named former detainee, Armando Martinez, told WSVN, “They put us in a cell that's supposed to be for eight people, and they had over like 29 people stuck in there. We couldn't even sit down; most of us had to spend time standing up,” and “They treated you like animals. You didn't have no say-so.” The Miami Herald had already documented that 911 medical calls to the facility rose sharply between July 2025 and July 2026, including a diabetic emergency, breathing problems and two seizures. And the DHS inspector general has substantiated overcrowding and violations of the holding-time limit at Krome, and confinement in metal enclosures at the Everglades facility (see DHS Watchdog Finds 'Alligator Alcatraz' Confined 79 ICE Detainees in Small Metal Enclosures Used as 'Calming Areas').
The time limit is the legal core of it. ICE's own 2025 detention standards cap confinement in a holding room at 12 hours. The agency issued a nationwide waiver last June letting field offices hold people for up to 72 hours; a federal judge vacated that memo in June 2026 in a case about conditions at ICE's San Francisco field office. Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigrant Coalition put the objection plainly: “They're holding people illegally. For more than the 12 hours the law allows. Remember, it's not a detention center—it's ICE administrative offices that they're using like a detention center.”
DHS's response did not address a single one of the specific allegations. Its full statement: “Miramar is a processing facility not a detention facility. Illegal aliens are processed and transferred to permanent housing at a detention facility. Being in detention is a choice. We encourage all illegal aliens to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App.” ICE itself did not respond to NBC 6, WSVN, Reason or the Miami Herald. The Orlando allegations, which include standing-room-only cells, 16-hour shackling, black mold and booking records that were deleted or backdated, come with no photographs.