Immigrant deaths in ICE detention in South Florida demand action | Opinion

Last month, a Ukrainian man named Maksym Chernyak died in immigration detention at the Krome Processing Center in southwest Miami-Dade.

A month earlier, a Honduran man named Genry Guillen Ruiz died inside the same facility. Both Florida residents went into detention healthy, only to die within a matter of weeks.

Chernyak, 44, had received humanitarian parole to find refuge in the United States from his worn-torn country. Like hundreds of people before him, he instead found harsh and inhumane detention conditions that very likely led to his premature and what his family believes was a preventable death while the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Chernyak will return to his family in an urn.

Little is known about the death of 29-year-old Guillen Ruiz, who passed away Jan. 23, also at Krome.

But Chernyak and Guillen-Ruiz’s cases are not unique. They are among at least three individuals who have died in ICE custody within the first month of the Trump administration. The third ICE detainee died in Arizona. We feel these are three people who would likely be alive today but for their encounter with ICE.

Now, the thousands surviving in ICE detention are experiencing daily conditions eroding their health and human dignity.

As immigrant attorneys, activists and founders of Sanctuary of the South — a refuge and a new model for building community power, justice and resources and providing pro bono legal services, with a special focus on immigration — we have seen how the overcrowding at Krome is so severe that legal visitation rooms have been turned into holding cells without water or toilets: Krome, an “all-male” facility, forces transgender women into packed cells with men.

ICE has even started to transport women into Krome, who are crammed into small rooms without beds, water or toilets and most recently moved to buses where they sleep without access to showers or necessary amenities for days at a time. Medical care is rare.

In Chernyak’s case, his family reports that he had no pre-existing medical conditions prior to entering Krome. Once detained after an arrest for charges that his family disputes, he fell sick in freezing, overcrowded cells, experiencing extremely high blood pressure. It is unclear if he received any medical attention for his condition. He suffered a stroke and was transported to nearby HCA Kendall Hospital where he died on Feb. 20.

This sounds like the stuff of nightmares. It is. It is also the current reality in the U.S. — a daily government-sponsored terrorism inflicted on millions of immigrants physically and emotionally targeted by the Trump administration. Many of these people were forced to flee their home countries due to violently destabilizing foreign policies by the U.S. government.

Yet today, the U.S. is not a beacon of hope, but a country that has declared war on undocumented immigrants, against its own democratic values.

So what do we do? The answer is not an easy one. Immigration enforcement under Trump is playing out in a system that has a long history of human rights abuses with little-to-no accountability.

For far too long, the U.S.. has relied on the nonprofit industrial complex as a siloed effort to protect our democracy. Yet many large nonprofit organizations depend on government funding, and are thus subject to the whims of the state (and currently under attack by the federal government). Major nonprofits are often more beholden to wealthy foundations or funders than the communities they are meant to serve.

In short, there is no well-resourced, unified system of resistance to rely upon. We believe we must open our hearts more than our wallets. While yes, you should absolutely give to worthy causes, the most important thing we can do is to boldly reject the government’s own rejection of undocumented immigrants and provide them sanctuary however we can.

Katie Blankenship and Mich González are immigrants’ rights attorneys, activists and founding partners of the Sanctuary of the South, a new model for social justice. www.sanctuaryofthesouth.com