After a series of reports about poor conditions at immigrant detention facilities, Republican lawmakers said they want the facilities to be humane — and that they believe they already are.
“I’m not personally inspecting every facility, but I’ve been in a hell of a lot of them over the years. The facilities I’ve been in are pretty friggin’ nice,” Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said.
As the Trump administration stretches detention center capacity, immigrants and advocates have alleged that facilities are often overcrowded, lack reliable and safe food and limit detainees’ ability to contact legal representation.
The Department of Homeland Security denied a recent NBC News report that alleged detained migrants were left hungry. Republicans in Congress also downplayed allegations of poor treatment, arguing the facilities are as nice as they’d expect.
That included at a new facility in Florida known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, where migrants said the tents they were kept in had leaks and let in bugs, that they weren’t able to regularly shower, had limited access to medication and were fed tiny portions for meals.
Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida said he visited the facility and has “absolutely no concerns about the conditions there.”
“It’s not full of alligators. It’s not full of snakes,” he said, calling it “very similar to a lot of the facilities that were on the border.”
He said complaints about food quality or portion sizes can be difficult to verify, but he never saw anything that raised concern.
“Those are hard to prove or disprove. I can’t really comment on whether they’re getting food and what kind of food, but the facilities that I’ve seen were totally adequate,” he said. “They’re not a hotel. This is not the Ritz. It is a detention center, but there’s nothing inhumane about what I saw.”
The Trump administration has increased the number of migrants in detention, both through raids and by holding people who may have been released by other administrations — like those without criminal records not deemed a flight risk — while they await deportation proceedings. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been operating with more people in detention than Congress has currently funded them to maintain and is past capacity.
As the detention centers have filled, concern has spread about the conditions migrants are being held in. Several Democratic members of Congress have staged visits at ICE facilities, some successfully and some where they were denied entry.
Some Republicans said they’re not buying the allegations.
“I typically don’t rely on partisan Democrats who have supported open borders and are desperate for headlines to provide accurate fact-finding or reporting,” Sen. Ted Cruz said about the reports detailing concerning conditions for migrants.
Many pointed to their own visits at various facilities where they felt conditions were humane. Rep. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona said he’s never seen anything concerning, but that it’s an issue he’s monitoring.
“The facilities that I’ve visited, the one in Eloy, for example, I didn’t see anything alarming or controversial in that one,” he said. He added that he wanted to “make sure” people were treated with “respect and dignity.”
Immigrant rights advocates have expressed concern about oversight of ICE as internal watchdogs have been shut down and DHS has instituted new rules requiring lawmakers to give notice before visiting a facility.
Ciscomani brushed off those concerns.
“I’ve never had a problem accessing any of the information that I need at these facilities,” he said. “We still have to look at each case individually, and things may happen here and there, but what we have to make sure is that it is not a systematic problem that is happening everywhere, across the board, which it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.”
Rep. Tony Gonzales echoed that statement.
“I don’t have any concerns, but I’m tracking it on a regular basis,” the Texas Republican said. “I’m literally in contact with DHS, like, literally almost daily.”
Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said he has a solution for those concerned about how migrants are treated in detention: either deport them quickly or make it so they never come to the U.S. in the first place.
“The best way to fix the living standards in these facilities is for migrants to not come here illegally to begin with,” he told NOTUS. “We should certainly provide food and assistance to that extent, to make sure that people are given at least the bare minimum, but the real problem is that we’ve had millions of people come into the United States illegally and then act like they have a legitimate claim to our resources when they don’t.”
Other lawmakers said the problem isn’t about the facilities at all, but those who are being apprehended.
“My concern is people who are being detained, who do not have a criminal record,” said Rep. María Elvira Salazar of Florida. “It doesn’t matter where you put them, even if you put them in a great location, who is there? That’s my only concern.”