Miami Republicans want answers from Biden administration on Homestead detention center

Two Miami Republicans who visited the Homestead detention center when it operated during the Trump administration are now pressing the Biden administration for more details after the Miami Herald reported that the center will reopen.

Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Mario Diaz-Balart will 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 when it reopens, 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 detention center was a campaign issue for Gimenez, whose district includes the facility. He defeated Democratic incumbent Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Mucarsel-Powell, who spent most of her tenure in office advocating for the center’s closure, called the facility “prison-like” and said this week that she does not support reopening it.

Gimenez said he visited the facility while working as the mayor of Miami-Dade County and spoke to children, who are mostly from Central America, in Spanish.

“I was inside trying to make sure that those children were being treated correctly and that those children had a way to get out during hurricane season,” Gimenez said in an interview last year. “What I found in that shelter — there was nothing going on there that would make me feel ashamed to be an American.”

The Homestead facility mostly housed children who crossed the border unaccompanied, but a small number were separated from their parents at the border, a policy implemented by the Trump administration 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 first soared. The detention center shut down and reopened in March 2018 with the same emergency designation before closing again in August 2019.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to answer questions about the Homestead Detention Center’s reopening, referring questions to the Department of Homeland Security. Psaki confirmed that a facility for unaccompanied children opened in Texas this week in part due to bed limits at existing facilities because of the pandemic.

“It’s a temporary opening during COVID-19,” Psaki said of the Texas facility, adding that the reopening “is not a replication” of the Trump administration’s policy of separating families who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border. “This is not kids being kept in cages.”

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 for-profit contractor. Immigration attorneys and activists reported that sexual abuse and mistreatment were rampant at the facility when it operated during the Trump administration.

Wasserman Schultz and Mucarsel-Powell said they want the Biden administration to send children to alternative facilities that are run by non-profits and are much smaller than Homestead, which was once the largest facility in the country for immigrant children with 3,200 beds at its peak.

“I urge the administration to use alternatives to detention, expedite the reunification and sponsorship processes, and only use state-licensed facilities for migrant children,” Wasserman Schultz said in a statement.

Some Republicans, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have accused Democrats of hypocrisy for reopening facilities housing immigrant children that were magnets for anti-Trump protests. Vice President Kamala Harris, who spoke outside the facility while running for president in 2019, pledged to shut down Homestead if elected.

“We look forward to receiving a response to these pressing questions,” Diaz-Balart and Gimenez wrote. “South Florida communities deserve transparency regarding this issue.”

This story was originally published February 25, 2021 at 3:55 PM.