Undocumented migrants in Trump’s America

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/04/2025 (360 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Do you remember when the Episcopal bishop from St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C. called upon U.S. President Donald Trump to treat migrants with respect and compassion back in late January?

Looking directly toward the president, Right Rev. Mariann Budde said calmly: “You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our society who are scared now.”

Well, Trump obviously wasn’t paying much attention. In fact, it’s pretty clear that he doesn’t give a damn about unauthorized migrants in the U.S.

The Trump administration has been on a frenzied and oftentimes illegal mission to lock up as many migrants as they can find. Some of them have been sent to improper and inadequate detention prisons at the U.S. naval facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Others have been deported to the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador — identified as the best place for the “worst of the worst” — where human rights organizations have documented the horrendous conditions at the facility.

Meanwhile, those who are still waiting to find out their fate and where their next destination will be remain in limbo in U.S. detention centres. But the conditions and standards in those facilities are not as humane and dignified as they should be.

There have been multiple reports from detainees and their families that there is precious little in the way of medical care, beds, water and edible food. One Florida detainee, who has chronic bronchitis, had gone days without proper medical attention, and then was secretly shipped off to another detention centre in New Mexico.

The Miami Herald recently documented the awful and inhumane conditions and treatment of those detainees being held in the Sunshine State’s detention system — and how quickly it is running out of detention capacity. Of the four U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities in Florida, one particular centre, the overcrowded Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, can only be described as a veritable house of horrors and where people are being “disappeared.”

Some of the detainees who were interviewed have only been able to shower once a week, are crammed into very tight quarters (with 30 or so other detainees) and left to sleep on the cement floor. Because of the overcrowding, one migrant said that the detainees were basically trying to sleep while they were standing. One detained woman spoke about being shackled and chained and then left on a bus overnight without any access to bathroom facilities.

Another woman explained: “It was cold like you can’t imagine. Sometimes we spent hours screaming, “’We’re thirsty, we’re thirsty!’” But to no avail.

An ICE spokesperson, however, told the Miami Herald that “ensuring the safety, security and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority.” But if that is the case, then ICE needs to seriously review and revise its safety and security protocols.

Evidently, three Krome detainees have passed away from often unexplained medical causes during the mid-December to mid-February time period, which was far above the average deaths of ICE detainees. Medical exams indicated that a 44-year-old Ukrainian man, who entered the U.S. through a Joe Biden humanitarian parole program, died from a possible haemorrhagic stroke.

In early March, one Mexican detainee used his cellphone to film a group of men sleeping on the floor under some chairs. In the video, he can be heard saying: “We are practically kidnapped. There are people who have been here for over 30 days. Please help us.”

Additionally, a Brazilian detainee with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was denied access to medication and a customary phone call — and then left to sleep on the floor for days at the Krome facility. His attorney said angrily: “This administration is looking for numbers. Without actually reviewing if it was legal, if it was right, or if it was morally correct to do what they’ve done. They don’t care about that.”

One lawyer who represents several of the detainees at Krome said that the conditions are worse now than anything that he has seen in 20 years of being a civil rights attorney. As far as he is concerned, the detention situation has “risen to the level of being an international human rights disaster.”

Of course, the inhumane treatment of these immigration detainees speaks volumes about those occupying the Trump White House. Their incessant “othering” of these people only confirms their views of these migrants as worthless, sub-human and disposable.

All of this also highlights the precarious state of the rule of law and democratic principles in America today. It used to be that U.S. political leaders understood that the strength of their democracy was a reflection of how they treated the vulnerable and weakest among them. But those days are long gone now.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.