Immigrants spend days in ‘miserable’ ICE hold rooms, violating longstanding policy

Men sleeping head-to-toe on a crowded floor, exhausted detainees blocking out fluorescent lights with face masks, and dozens of people using cardboard boxes as mattresses.

Grainy cellphone video, filmed by a detainee in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody in recent months, offers a rare public view of the harsh conditions inside a hold room in Miami – a temporary space where immigrants wait to be transferred to longer-term housing or deported.

ICE’s policies for decades have required the agency to keep migrants in cramped hold rooms like this for no longer than 12 hours.

Yet inside the Krome detention center in Miami, the average hold room stay has been more than three days. Some detainees say they have been left pleading for more food and water. One man who spent more than thre