Two detainee deaths at Bunker Hill center this year
The detainees alleged in the lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal court in the Northern District of Indiana, that conditions at the Miami Detention Center are inhumane and that officials’ neglect has created a “dangerous medical crisis,” according to a copy of the complaint obtained by The Associated Press. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on behalf of the three detainees held at the facility known as the “Speedway Slammer.”
The facility, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Indianapolis, was a maximum-security prison before the Trump administration converted it into an immigration detention facility last year. As a prison, it had a record of inhumane conditions, violence and inmate deaths.
Two people have died at the facility this year: Tuan Van Bui, a 55-year-old Vietnamese man, and Lorth Sim, a 59-year-old Cambodian man. Sim’s son sued ICE in August, saying the agency withheld information about his father’s death.
The suit lands as immigration detention facilities face intensifying scrutiny. At least 37 people have died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this fiscal year, the most in the agency’s history, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The Associated Press has previously reported on medical neglect, dangerous conditions and human rights abuses at immigration detention facilities across the country.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations. None of the three detainees in the lawsuit has ever been convicted of a crime in the U.S., according to the complaint. While the Trump administration has said its immigration crackdown is focused on immigrants with criminal records, recent data shows most of those arrested have no criminal convictions.
The complaint details treatment its authors describe as medical neglect and abuse. Cynthia Acevedo, a Guatemalan national arrested by ICE in July, suffered multiple seizures a week after officers at the facility switched her to a medication less effective at treating her epilepsy, and officials often failed to give it to her regularly, according to her attorneys. She also alleges she was sexually assaulted soon after arriving at the facility, and that officials waited days to take her report and never provided her with a rape kit, HIV test or medication. A man who could barely walk due to inflamed leg wounds also received no care despite multiple requests for help, according to the complaint.
Sergei Vasenin, a Ukrainian-born man detained at the facility for more than a year, was once placed in solitary confinement for around nine weeks, according to the complaint. He “spent up to 23 to 24 hours per day in a tiny, frigid cell,” his lawyers wrote, and talked out loud to himself “to stay sane.” They added that he contemplated suicide multiple times. Recently, one man attempted suicide after other detainees “begged” officers to help him for days, the complaint said. Officers instead locked him in a cell and failed to remove a cable that he then used to hang himself.
Attorneys wrote in the complaint that officials at the facility use “abusive forms of punishment” on detainees and “excessive force bordering on torture.” They said state staff direct racial slurs at detainees, have told them to go back to their country and referred to them as a “plague.” Detainees are held in cells “smaller than an average parking space” with one small window slit, according to a description and image included in the complaint. Solitary confinement cells are so cold that some people stuff toilet paper in the vents to try to block the frigid air, and detainees are allowed to leave to shower “every few days,” the complaint said.
Kemoye Muslar, the third plaintiff, alleged his cell flooded with sewage water for three days, which he spent trying not to “slip and fall into human waste,” his attorneys wrote. They said that staff wear masks to keep out the smell of blood and feces on the floor and clogged toilets.