SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a federal lawsuit in South Bend, claiming the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, often referred to as the “Speedway Slammer,” is holding detainees in unconstitutional conditions.
The class action lawsuit called the Miami Correctional Facility “Indiana’s largest and most dangerous high security prison.” The lead plaintiff said the facility provides inadequate health care, uses abusive punishment and provides inhumane conditions.
The lawsuit said he facility is dangerously understaffed and delays and denies urgently needed medications and treatments. It said one of the plaintiffs has been treated for epilepsy for years but is being denied proper medication. Another plaintiff has been denied healthcare for weeks, the lawsuit claimed.
The abusive punishment includes forcing people into solitary confinement for 23 and 24 hours each day with “little or no justification,” the suit claimed.
The plaintiff in the case said staff have degraded detainees by using racial and xenophobic language, including calling the detainees a “plague.”
Mark Feldman, the senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said the conditions at the facility are emblematic of ICE facing no accountability for its actions.
“ICE turned to Miami Correctional Facility to detain people at the height of its violent arrest operations in Chicago and Minnesota, and since then, has disappeared hundreds of people into this isolated prison where they are forced to either endure deadly conditions or abandon heir immigration cases and their loved ones in the United States and ‘voluntarily’ depart the country,” Feldman said. “No one should have to choose between their safety and their right to seek immigration relief in this country. ICE’s use of Miami Correctional as a tool of coercion and abuse must end.”
in its announcement, the ACLU said last year, at least two people died while detained at Miami Correctional, and another person attempted suicide.
The three named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Sergei Vasenin, Kemoye Muslar and Cynthia Acevedo, are from Jamaica, Russia and Guatemala. The announcement said they are being denied adequate medical care and have inadequate access to food, water, clothing, essential medications and hygiene items.
The lawsuit aims to get a court order demanding federal and state government officials “take immediate steps to protect the people detained by ICE at Miami Correctional.”
The full complaint can be found here.
