Miami Republicans want answers from Biden administration about Homestead detention center
Two Miami Republicans who visited the Homestead detention center when it operated during the Trump administration are pressing the Biden administration for more details after the Miami Herald reported that the center will reopen.
Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Mario Diaz-Balart were going to send a letter to the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) on Thursday asking for more transparency as the Biden administration braces for an influx of unaccompanied immigrant children amid a pandemic that limits bed space at existing facilities.
“In 2018/19, we visited the facilities in Homestead to witness the living conditions and to ensure the unaccompanied minors were being treated with dignity and respect,” Gimenez and Diaz-Balart wrote in a letter shared with the Miami Herald. “We were pleased with the conditions we saw and remain hopeful the standards set previously will continue.”
Gimenez and Diaz-Balart asked ORR for details on which contractors will be used to operate the center, how many people would work there, how many children could be housed there and for details on social-distancing protocols.
They also asked for an emergency-response plan for hurricanes. In August 2019, all migrant teens in the Homestead facility — now called the Biscayne Influx Facility — were rapidly transferred to other facilities or reunited with a sponsor after a weather disturbance was detected in the Atlantic Ocean.
Since then, no children have occupied the facility, which was put into standby, or “warm status,” by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Homestead facility mostly housed children who crossed the border unaccompanied, but a small number were separated from their parents at the border, a Trump administration policy that drew sharp criticism from Democrats for years.
Gimenez said he wasn’t in favor of separating immigrant children from their families but said the
Trump administration was forced to do so because existing detention facilities would have placed children and adults together.
Homestead first opened as an emergency influx facility in 2016 under former President Barack Obama as the number of incoming migrants at the border soared. The detention center was shut down but was reopened in March 2018 with the same emergency designation before closing again in August 2019.
South Florida Democrats, including Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, have said they do not support reopening the Homestead facility if it is run by a forprofit contractor. Immigration attorneys and activists reported that sexual abuse and mistreatment were rampant at the facility when it operated during the Trump administration.
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