New Indiana immigrant detention center could triple ICE beds in Chicago region

Chicago immigrant advocates described a newly announced Indiana immigrant detention facility as cruel and inhumane — and a sign that enforcement efforts may soon ramp up in the region.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced a deal with Indiana on Tuesday to increase detention space in what she dubbed “Indiana’s Speedway Slammer.” Indiana Gov. Mike Braun supported the move and said the state was assisting with immigration enforcement.

The Indiana Department of Correction confirmed that 1,200 empty beds at the Miami Correctional Facility in rural Indiana could be used by the federal government to house detained immigrants. The beds were unused because of a staffing shortage, the Indianapolis Star reported.

The Department of Correction did not say how much the feds would pay the state or if it would help hire more prison workers.

Brandon Lee, spokesperson for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, said the expansion — which includes a second location at Camp Atterbury in southern Indiana — could triple U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention capacity in the Chicago region. That could indicate ICE has plans to increase enforcement, he said.

“It shows the disregard that they have for immigrants, for people who are going to be held in inhumane conditions and go through a process that has no respect for them,” Lee said.

Chicago’s immigrant communities and advocates have been on high alert since June, when President Donald Trump and senior administration officials threatened to expand deportations in Democrat-led cities.

In Illinois, state and local laws prohibit local entities from entering into contracts with the federal government to detain immigrants.

ICE’s immigration processing center in west suburban Broadview, immigration advocates say, has become a makeshift detention center with no beds or blankets and very little food, the Chicago Sun-Times previously reported.

As the Trump administration has ramped up deportation efforts, many detention centers around the country have become overcrowded and lack adequate food and beds. The Clay County Jail in Indiana — where some immigrants detained by ICE in Chicago have ended up — is one of the facilities most over capacity, according to an analysis from the Transactional Records Clearinghouse. The local jail has a contract to house 100 ICE detainees, but the average population was 242 from last October to April. The population at one point grew to 348, the analysis found.

Many immigrants detained by ICE were in the process of legalizing their immigration status, such as seeking asylum, said Antonio Gutierrez of the Chicago-based Organized Communities Against Deportations. Many of the arrests have happened at immigration court hearings or check-in appointments with ICE.

“It is not just illegal immigrants,” Gutierrez said. “On the contrary, they are targeting those that have, in a way, followed every single legal procedure allowing [ICE] to know where they are, what they’re doing, where in the process are they are in regard to the immigration structure that we have here.”

The Miami Correctional Facility is about 130 miles southeast of Chicago’s border with Indiana and 70 miles north of Indianapolis. It’s adjacent to a U.S. Air Force base and located in Bunker Hill, a town with less than 1,000 residents, according to Census data. It’s meant to be the state’s version of the high-security detention center in Florida's Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” which sits on an old airstrip that’s being used to deport immigrants.

Indiana state Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, a Democrat whose district includes portions of central Indiana, said she is concerned her state is taking part in “federal missteps” that are destroying people’s lives. She said news of the ICE expansion contradicts the message from Republican lawmakers in the spring session that the state has to do more with less.

“Our agriculture industry is in distress right now, and unfortunately, we don’t have the extra means to be supporting this initiative,” she said. “The federal government is really going to need to cover the bill for this.”

Eric Kurtz, 61, lives about two hours away from the Miami Correction Facility. He considers himself a political centrist but said he thinks the immigration system has gotten out of control.

“As an Indiana resident and taxpayer, it doesn’t really concern me as long as the federal government pays its full, fair share of the cost that it imposes on Indiana state government and the Department of Correction,” he said. “As an Indiana taxpayer, I don’t want to subsidize the federal government more than what taxes we pay in.”