MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — After what she saw at a South Florida detention center, immigration attorney Katie Blankenship said she can't get the images out of her head.
She said she's "haunted" by dozens of women banging on doors at the Krome North Service Processing Center, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility west of Miami. Blankenship said she's seen her clients sleeping on the floors and struggling to get food and medical care.
WATCH BELOW: Attorneys say conditions at ICE facility in South Florida are 'burned into my brain'
"There's people sleeping on the floor," Blankenship said. "I've had a client tell me they're forced to sleep literally next to the toilets. They're being stuffed into the bathroom. So, they're sleeping, literally their face, underneath a toilet, and they're rotating them off and on the buses."
Blankenship said she's started meeting with clients in different locations of the detention facility because the client intake room has been converted into holding cells. She said some people have slept on buses or waited hours on buses just to enter the facility.
"Seeing the women the way I've seen the women will haunt me forever," Blankenship said. "Every time I would go in there, it was just literally this group of women with no room to even move around, just banging on the window, begging, because they would see somebody that wasn't an officer. They could see that I was a lawyer, and they were just, (saying), 'Please help us. Please help us. Please help us.' And I mean, it's just burned into my brain."
Blankenship is one of two attorneys who told WPTV about the conditions inside the Krome detention facility, which they said houses some detainees from Palm Beach County.
WPTV started talking with the attorneys after a video surfaced on TikTok from an unknown man who identified himself as a detainee at Krome, asking for help and showing people sleeping on floors or underneath chairs.
"There just isn't enough room for all the detainees," Maria Sierra, an immigration attorney based in Miami, said.
She said one of her clients waited on a bus for eight hours before being brought to a different room with 30 people sleeping on the floor. Sierra said she's struggling to become surprised based on her observations while visiting clients.
"I hate to say it," she said. "I think you get used to kind of what's happening because I've heard clients being in the bus longer. So, I thought eight hours was not as long as other people."
A budget justification document WPTV uncovered showed the capacity at the ICE facility is 581. Data from the agency showed 605 people were in the facility at the beginning of March. But both Blankenship and Sierra think there are even more detainees.
ICE said some of its facilities are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations, and it is actively implementing measures to manage capacity. This includes transfer of detainees to alternate facilities, expedited case processing and coordination with state and local partners.
"ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously," Nestor Yglesias, a spokesperson for ICE, said. "These allegations are not in keeping with ICE policies, practices and standards of care."
Blankenship said the overcrowded conditions at facilities like Krome are leading to death and serious illnesses. She said she's representing a detainee who died in ICE custody, and plans to file a future wrongful death lawsuit citing the department caring for more detainees than they can handle.
"This is what overcrowded does," Blankenship said. "It means they can not provide basic human amenities. They can't provide basic medical care."
