Men in an immigration detention center were crammed in rooms so crowded they slept on the floor or standing up, federal inspectors found last year. An officer put a man in a chokehold while searching his cell. Another used pepper spray on immigrant detainees who were not resisting.

In May 2025, investigators from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General arrived at Krome North Service Processing Center on the outskirts of Miami. In a report released this week, they say over 1,100 people were living in a space that at most could hold 882.

The report, stemming from an unannounced inspection, shows the agency found Krome to be in violation of a variety of government guidelines, including for use-of-force. It is the second time in two years that the OIG found officers used excessive force against detainees at Krome, after a 2023 inspection also found guards deployed pepper spray and used chokeholds.

“Detainees had to stand or lie on the floor,” inspectors who visited last year wrote about intake areas.

The inspection took place weeks after the Miami Herald published an investigation into inhumane conditions at Krome — which became so overcrowded that women said they were left on a bus outside in their own urine. Alongside another report the inspector general’s office released this week about a 2025 inspection of nearby “Alligator Alcatraz,” it provides an inside-look into a Florida facility at the center of the Trump Administration’s mass deportation campaign.

“It was a total nightmare,” Mario Meléndez, an immigrant from Honduras, told the Herald at the time. “This has been the worst experience of my life. And I’ve never committed a crime.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accepted all nine recommendations outlined by the inspector general, but not all the advised changes appear to have been implemented, according to the report.

For example, while ICE provided a curriculum for de-escalation, it did not give evidence that training had been provided to staff, according to the report, or evidence that medical staff were evaluating everyone involved in such incidents.

Yet in an emailed statement, ICE said that all recommendations had been resolved, and any “claims that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are FALSE.”

“ICE is committed to safe, secure, and humane environments for all of those in its custody and will ensure appropriate conditions for confinement,” an ICE spokesman said.

ICE referred the Herald to Akima Global Services, the company with which ICE contracts for detention services, for questions about use-of-force. Representatives for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In 2023, federal inspectors also found a host of violations during a visit to Krome. The inspector general’s office reviewed a random sample of five use-of-force incidents out of 44, and found staff used inappropriate force in four — deploying pepper spray against detainees, some of whom were already restrained. One man was alone in his cell when officers deployed a canister of the spray through a slot in his door.

“The officers were not under threat, and the detainee was not a threat to himself or others,” inspectors wrote.

This week’s report includes several photos that show men in orange jumpsuits cramped in holding cells for more than 12 hours. Frozen food was left in the hot sun for over two hours. The average detainee when the inspectors arrived was at the facility for 33 days.

Inspectors in 2025 also reviewed a sample of five use-of-force cases from a total of 44 incidents in six months, according to the report. They found two to be inappropriate. In one, officers deployed pepper spray against a detainee who was not resisting.

“The detainee was inside a POD with other detainees nearby and offering no resistance,” the report, reviewed later by investigators, concluded.

Officers used a choke hold in the second incident — only authorized if an individual posed an “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”

Investigators found the man who was restrained had not posed any serious threat.

In a written statement, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Herald the report reflected the “overcrowded, unsanitary and unsafe conditions” she saw during her own surprise inspection last year.

“Republicans continue to send ICE huge sums of taxpayer dollars to round up and detain our neighbors and coworkers who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, hardworking members of our community,” said Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat. “And this IG report lays bare that these inhumane, cruel conditions are systemic. I’ll keep working to end this obscene abuse of power and hold those responsible to account.”

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(Miami Herald staff reporter Syra Ortiz Blanes contributed to this report.)

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