ICE says prison meets standards, but inmates describe subpar conditions

Jorge Garcia Ortiz could be considered one of the lucky ones.

After nearly two months inside the state-owned Miami Correctional Facility, where he says sewage routinely backed up into cells and medical care was delayed, a federal judge granted his habeas corpus petition and ordered his release, sending him home to Illinois rather than deporting him to Mexico.

But more than 500 other individuals detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Indiana state prison on any given day might still be experiencing the conditions Ortiz described.

Plumbing systems at the prison would clog frequently, Ortiz told The Indiana Lawyer through a translator, sending urine- and feces-laced water across cell floors. Food was inadequate. Medical attention was slow.

Records The Indiana Lawyer obtained earlier this month suggest Ortiz’s experience is not isolated, pointing to broader institutional problems affecting not just immigration detainees but inmates more generally.

Immigrant advocacy groups, political leaders and immigration attorneys have sounded alarms for months, warning that Miami Correctional Facility is not providing detainees with adequate or timely medical responses — and that prison authorities are abusing detainees physically and emotionally.

In less than two months, two people died in federal immigration custody at the facility: 59-year-old Lorth Sim and 55-year-old Tuan Van Bui. The Miami County coroner ruled that Sim’s death was caused by atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Bui’s death remains under investigation.

In 2025, more than 30 ICE detainees across the country died in custody; at least 14 have died so far this year.

“It’s no secret that the conditions at Miami are abhorrent, absolutely inhumane, unforgivable, really,” said Sarah Burrow, a director at Lewis Kappes and lead of the firm’s immigration law group.

Burrow said her team has dozens of clients who are being held in ICE detention facilities, with a handful of them residing in Miami Correctional on any one time. Burrow noted that several of her clients have expressed worries about a lack of medicine and lack of meal options that accommodate their religions.

In a lengthy statement to The Indiana Lawyer, an unidentified ICE spokesperson said: “Any claim that there are subprime conditions at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Indiana, is false.”

When asked for comment on reports of substandard conditions at Miami, Noelle Russell, chief communications officer for the Indiana Department of Correction, directed The Lawyer to ICE’s statement, writing that IDOC would defer to its federal partners.

The Speedway Slammer

Situated on 200 acres along U.S. 31 between Grissom Air Reserve Base and Los Primos Mexican Bar & Grill in Bunker Hill, Miami Correctional Facility has served as a high-medium security state prison for nearly 30 years.

In August 2025, the state entered into a two-year contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, agreeing to house up to 1,000 ICE detainees at the facility, which former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem dubbed the “Speedway Slammer.”

According to the Indiana Department of Correction website, the facility can house more than 3,100 prisoners.

Under the contract, the federal government pays the state of Indiana per day for the beds used for its detainees. The first payment came in February and totaled $1.17 million.

In September, the State Budget Committee approved IDOC’s request for about $16 million to upgrade Miami Correctional to better house ICE’s detainees.

Some news outlets reported at the time that the Department of Correction planned to renovate and expand Miami Correctional to house 1,000 new beds. But reporting by the Indiana Capital Chronicle later confirmed that the prison was simply making 1,000 existing, unused beds available to federal officials.

Miami Correctional Facility began holding ICE’s detainees at the beginning of October, but Burrow, the Lewis Kappes attorney, said she believes the issues started before the facility even opened its doors to the immigrants.

“In my opinion, what happened was ICE contracted with this long-standing facility without having the infrastructure in place to accommodate the number of detainees that they’re housing,” Burrow said.

Prolonged and ignored

In 2000, a 12-year-old Ortiz traveled through the desert on foot and crossed the southern border near New Mexico without being stopped.

Twenty-five years later, while driving on Interstate 90 near Chicago, he said ICE agents chased him, blocked him in and pulled him from his car.

He spoke about his experiences with The Lawyer earlier this year through a translator.

After he was held at Broadview ICE Detention Center in Illinois for about three days, ICE transferred Ortiz to Miami Correctional Facility. There, he says he developed a fever and a cough and became so congested at night, he struggled to breathe.

Ortiz told The Lawyer he filed three forms requesting medical attention, but two weeks lapsed before medical staff saw him.

Other detainees faced similar delays, reports show.

According to quarterly reports from the Indiana Ombudsman Bureau for the latter half of 2025 — which The Lawyer obtained last week through a public records request — medical care ranked as the most frequent complaint topic among inmates.

The Ombudsman Bureau was created by the Legislature as an independent review source separate from the DOC that receives, answers and investigates complaints from offenders or their family members.

When someone files a complaint alleging that a Department of Correction facility has violated the department’s policies and procedures, the ombudsman will review the matter and provide recommendations for correction if a violation is discovered.

Despite the conditions Ortiz describes, the Ombudsman Bureau received fewer complaints during the fourth quarter last year — when ICE detainees were held there — than in the third quarter when they weren’t.

The bureau received 226 complaints in the third quarter of 2025, which covers July to September. The bureau closed 242 complaints and identified 67 complaints as “substantiated.” Of those substantiated complaints, 87% related to medical care.

A closed complaint indicates that the matter was investigated and considered resolved.

For the fourth quarter, which covered October to December, the bureau received 163 complaints and closed 141, identifying 51 complaints as substantiated. Of those substantiated complaints, 71% concerned medical care.

This year’s first quarter report has not been completed, and the information is not available for release.

The reports do not specify whether a complainant has come from a criminally convicted inmate or an ICE detainee. But Burrow said her immigrant clients have experienced delays in accessing prescription medications as well as delayed medical evaluations and treatment (essentially being “left ill in their cell”) and inadequate dietary accommodations.

“It’s unacceptable,” she said.

Burrow said she has made several attempts to contact Miami Correctional regarding these and other matters. And although she said she has sometimes had success getting through to prison staff, she said her team has been “stonewalled” when trying to coordinate medical care.

“It is almost impossible for us to communicate with anyone inside the facility or to get anything done on behalf of detainees,” Burrow said.

ICE, however, told The Lawyer that a certified nutritionist verifies that all detainees receive an FDA-approved diet and that all detainees have access to the appropriate types and quantity of medication based on their health needs.

ICE facilities are mandatorily bound by National Detention Standards and Family Residential Standards, which an ICE spokesperson described as “rigorous, federally enforced guidelines that prioritize safety, medical care and detainee rights.”

“All ICE detention facilities operate in strict accordance with all applicable federal detention standards for safety, sanitation and humane treatment in accordance with national detention standards,” the spokesperson said.

The 2020 Family Residential Standards document lays out what residents should expect: They “will be able to request health services on a daily basis and will receive timely follow-up.”

Burrow said that is “absolutely not” happening in Miami County.

Freedom for Immigrants’ National Immigration Detention Hotline has answered 393 calls from the Miami Correctional Facility since Dec. 1, 2025, according to Jeff Migliozzi, communications director for the California-based nonprofit. Among the most common complaints the organization receives relate to severe and life-threatening medical neglect and routine medical neglect, such as denial of prescription medications, he said.

Some of the callers say prison staff ignore their daily requests for medical attention for pain or anything else, and that in some instances, they have either been given too much medication or denied their proper medicine.

“Investigations are ongoing regarding detainee allegations about difficulties communicating medical emergencies to staff,” ICE said. “Detainees have not been locked down and are free to approach staff to express any questions or concerns. Detainees have immediately notified staff during medical emergencies, who have in turn responded immediately.”

One offender — in a handwritten grievance letter — described slipping and falling in a cell, hitting the back of his head, which caused it to swell. It is unclear whether the writer was a state prisoner or a federal ICE detainee and whether the writer was a man or woman.

Writing about a week after the fall, the inmate complained to still be in pain and had not received medical care.

“I want to be seen by a doctor,” the inmate wrote.

Critics of the facility and ICE detentions have said the Miami Correctional Facility is understaffed and under-resourced, but they’ve provided little data to support the claim.

After U.S. Rep. André Carson, D-Indiana, toured the prison earlier this month, he said the staff “simply don’t have enough resources compared to other states.”

The Department of Correction denied The Lawyer’s records request seeking information about the number of budgeted medical positions at Miami Correctional Facility compared with the current total number of medical workers. The department instead directed inquiries to Centurion Health, its third-party medical services contractor based out of Virginia. Centurion Health did not respond to The Lawyer’s inquiries.

Carson said after his visit that accounts from detainees contradict official assurances about conditions. He called for ending immigrant detention there.

On the same day, the ACLU of Indiana issued a call for urgent transparency and accountability regarding the two detainee deaths and conditions inside the facility.

Flooded cell is frequent complaint

One dominant theme Ortiz, Burrow and the many grievance letters noted is cell flooding.

According to several individual grievance letters, detainee toilets have flooded frequently, causing neighboring cells and the hallways to be left with standing water — sometimes ankle-deep — that included traces of human waste, such as feces.

Ortiz said the detainees were forced to stay in their cells.

“It was disgusting,” Ortiz said. “You wouldn’t want to sleep there. It was gross, smelly, but you had to sleep there, and you would be forced in, because if you didn’t want to go in, they would hit you, or they would pepper spray you.”

Ortiz said he was never physically punished, but he told The Lawyer he saw it happen to his friends. None of the grievance letters The Lawyer obtained suggests that an inmate endured physical abuse, such as hitting or pepper spray, for refusing to enter a dirty cell.

According to Ortiz, maintenance workers would come into the cells and drain the pipes, but “basically that’s all that they would do.”

It was only a temporary fix.

“It would happen over and over again,” Ortiz said.

According to the Miami Correctional Facility maintenance work order logs from the beginning of October 2025 to late March 2026 obtained by The Lawyer, there were about 50 instances of cell toilets being clogged or flooded. While some of the work orders stated that inmates purposely clogged toilets to get out of their cell, most did not.

Many complainants also emphasized the length of time it would take prison staff to clean out the contaminated cells or provide the inmates with cleaning materials so that they could clean their cells themselves.

In a Dec. 14, 2025, grievance letter, the writer claimed to be confined to a cell for more than nine hours with roughly ankle-deep standing water.

“I notified staff of the situation multiple times, but no immediate action was taken to remove me from the cell or address the flooding,” the complainant wrote.

Another complainant wrote on Dec. 28 that, when the cells were cleaned, it was done so without “proper biohazard procedures,” including a lack of protective equipment and “no trained sanitation response.”

“A mop, gloves and disinfectant were later provided, which is not sufficient to properly decontaminate a cell that had human waste present for several days,” the complainant said. That letter also said that inmates continued to live and eat meals in their cells.

According to Miami Correctional Facility’s maintenance logs, there were about 30 plumbing-related work orders that had a recorded resolution time of longer than two weeks. Some of those orders — including clogged or overflowing toilets — appeared to take months to complete.

On nutrition

The quality of food has also been a consistent complaint from inmates.

Burrow of Lewis Kappes said the facility is consistently not providing detainees with good-quality food and appropriate meals, such as medically prescribed diets or religious accommodations. “The concept of a well-rounded, like nutritious meal, is non-existent,” she said.

In offender grievance letters filed between October 2025 and March 2026, some detainees wrote that they had been medically prescribed specific diets, such as high-protein diets, but often did not receive the correct food. The letters said that Aramark, the third-party food provider for Miami Correctional Facility, sometimes denied their prescribed diet.

Many of the nutrition-related grievances filed by detainees also referenced a lack of Kosher meals, which fall under Jewish religious practice.

Some detainees have also claimed to have lost a significant amount of weight since being detained at Miami Correctional Facility.

“It was too little,” Ortiz said of the food.

ICE said detainees receive breakfast, lunch and dinner daily.

What needs to change

While Carson called for an end to ICE detention at the facility, some critics seek an immediate and complete shutdown of Miami Correctional Facility all together.

Burrow offered two other options for the country to pursue: increase funding for detention centers to be able to provide medical care, proper nutrition and clean spaces, or reevaluate who it is detaining and how long it is detaining them for.

“I think it’s unrealistic to say, ‘Let’s pour even more money into ICE detention to improve conditions,’” Burrow said. “Although if we’re not going to decrease detention numbers, then that’s going to have to be the answer because we cannot continue to treat people as inhumanely as we are right now.”

But that might first require a change in the country’s political posture.

“If our lawmakers and the people responsible in these agencies for coordinating immigration detention don’t view immigration detainees as human, they are not going to treat them humanely,” Burrow said.

Since returning home to Illinois, Ortiz has been back working, but he says he is still nervous; he thinks that ICE agents are in the area.

“Are they gonna pick me up again and just take me away?” he said. “Or are they gonna let me stay here?”

For now, when he goes out, Ortiz says he remains cautious.•