Immigrants Held at “Speedway Slammer” Challenge Unconstitutional Conditions 

INDIANA — Three immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Indiana are challenging the inhumane and horrific conditions at the facility on behalf of a class of other detained immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security glibly named Miami Correctional the “Speedway Slammer” when ICE began contracting with the State of Indiana and detaining immigrants there in 2025. It is now one of the largest and deadliest immigration detention centers in the Midwest. In the last year, at least two immigrants died while detained there, and another person recently attempted suicide.

An Indiana Department of Corrections official acknowledged the dangerous conditions at Miami Correctional when testifying before the Indiana State Budget Agency, noting that “we’ve struggled with . . . the ability to keep those incarcerated [at Miami Correctional] safe.” Yet state and federal officials still detain immigrants in unconstitutional conditions.

The three named individuals, who are from Jamaica, Russia, and Guatemala, are being denied adequate medical care, live under constant threat of prolonged solitary confinement without justification, subjected to racist and xenophobic abuse, and forced to endure filthy conditions, inadequate access to food, water, clothing, essential medications, and hygiene items. They are housed in two-person cells measuring just five by eleven feet, each containing a metal sink and toilet.

“Immigration detention is not supposed to be punitive – being held in Miami Correctional is not just punitive; it is dangerous,” said Katie Hickey, Staff Attorney with the ACLU of Illinois. “The federal and Indiana governments have needlessly chosen to put people’s lives at risk.”

“The State of Indiana and Federal government are working together to create a human rights disaster in one of Indiana’s most dangerous prisons,” said Alexa Van Brunt, director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois Office. “The conditions are cruel and have resulted in the deaths of innocent people. Both the state and federal government must be held accountable for their heinous treatment of people locked inside Miami.”

The conditions being experienced by immigrants civilly detained at Miami facility include:

• Inadequate health care – including dangerous understaffing, inadequate health screenings, delays and denials of urgently needed medications and treatment, and ineffective emergency response. One of the lead plaintiffs has been treated for epilepsy for years but is being denied proper medication, and another lead plaintiff was denied mental health care for weeks. These accounts echo other stories involving medical neglect at Miami Correctional and a report exposing widespread failures in medical care at the facility.
• The use of abusive punishment – including forcing people into solitary confinement for 23 and 24 hours each day, with little or no justification, use of force by staff without accountability and consequences, and untrained staff who degrade immigrants being held at the facility with racial and xenophobic slurs, including calling them a “plague.”
• Inhumane conditions – including inadequate and unhealthy food, lack of access to water, inadequate clothing and shoes (especially during winter), inability to access hygiene items and little or no access to recreation. The conditions are described as “filthy” in most parts of the facility. These disturbing conditions represent a pattern at Miami Correctional, where previous lawsuits recently resulted in $1.2 million in settlements for inmates forced to endure months in total darkness, sewage-flooded cells, and exposed live electrical wires.

“ICE turned to Miami Correctional Facility to detain people at the height of its violent arrest operations in Chicago and Minnesota, and since then has disappeared hundreds of people into this isolated prison where they are forced to either endure deadly conditions, or abandon their immigration cases and their loved ones in the United States and ‘voluntarily’ depart the country,” said Mark Feldman, senior litigation attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center. “No one should have to choose between their safety and their right to seek immigration relief in this country. ICE’s use of Miami Correctional as a tool of coercion and abuse must end.”

“Every person in government custody is owed adequate medical care, basic safety, and humane treatment under our Constitution,” said William Isaacson, Founding Partner of Dunn Isaacson and Rhee. “There is no excuse for immigrants in an ICE detention facility being treated as less than human beings.  We are proud to stand up for basic human decency and the rights of these individuals.”

Today’s lawsuit asks the court to order the federal and state government officials to stop their mistreatment, provide of the immigrants detained with constitutionally adequate care and to take immediate steps to protect the people detained by ICE at Miami Correctional.

A copy of the complaint can be found here.

Ed Yohnka, ACLU of Illinois, eyohnka@aclu-il.org
Jasmine Razeghi, MacArthur Justice Center, jasmine.razeghi@macarthurjustice.org
McKenzie Conrad, ACLU of Indiana, media@aclu-in.org
Tara Tidwell Cullen, NIJC, ttidwellcullen@immigrantjustice.org
Harrison Wollman, Dunn Issaacson Rhee, dir@tlgcommunications.com