MIRAMAR, Fla. — Javier Garcia arrived at an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field office in Miramar with his grandchild and his friend’s suitcase in tow.

Garcia said he had been called to bring luggage for one of two friends he said were detained there.

“So he signed the papers,” Garcia said. “Somebody called me from here to bring the luggage. Maybe today he has to go back to our country, Chile.”

Garcia said one of his friends was picked up during a traffic stop Monday.

“He stopped for a traffic situation,” Garcia said. “We think he was going too fast.”

Garcia said police stopped his friend and called ICE. The other friend, Garcia said, is married to a U.S. citizen.

“He is married to an American person, has three American kids,” Garcia said. “Maybe he has a process. Maybe he has a court. We don’t know nothing because when you come here, (you) don’t get any information.”

Advocates say facility is overcrowded

Community activists who gathered at the facility said it is now operating as an overcrowded short-term detention facility.

Yareliz Mendez Zamora, policy coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, asked, “How many children are going to sleep tonight not knowing or not if they are going to see their parents tomorrow, especially as (Temporary Protected Status) for Haitians comes to an end?”

Garcia said his detained friends told him they had not been able to shower or brush their teeth.

“They both say the only thing: No let take a shower,” Garcia said. “Say, ‘I can’t brush my mouth. I feel so dirty,’ because they had been coming from work, so don’t have clothes, don’t have showers. All we can do is sit or sleep.”

Earlier this month, Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said the Miramar facility “is supposed to be an administrative check-in facility but is now functioning as a short-term detention site, holding detainees in crowded areas for 72 hours or more without the same humane detention standards that other ICE facilities are required to meet.”

According to a news release from Wasserman Schultz’s office, there were approximately 150 detainees held at the facility when she inspected the site.

Maria Bilbao, campaign coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, said advocates are seeing more detentions involving people with pending immigration cases or temporary protections.

“We are seeing people being detained that have asylum process,” Bilbao said. “We have seen people with TPS being detained, in gas stations, when buying food outside of the store, in parking spaces in Home Depot.”

Shift in asylum processing rules

It comes as U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a rule change to the asylum system that the Department of Homeland Security said is intended to reduce a backlog by allowing USCIS to refer asylum applications to immigration judges without first interviewing applicants.

Immigration attorney Lourna Rosembert-Joseph said she does not believe the system “has the capacity for that.”

Before the change, she said, someone would file for asylum, USCIS would process the application and the applicant would go through biometrics before having an interview with an officer.

“So there are certain qualifications that you have to meet to qualify for asylum,” Rosembert-Joseph said. “If the officer sees everything and these are individuals who are doing this all day, if the officer sees that you have the credible fear, you show the evidence for that, then they could approve it.”

If not, she said, the case would be denied and sent back to an immigration judge.

“They’re working for the government that was essentially going through the applications, doing what they have to do and approving it so that we don’t have to burden or backlog the immigration judges,” Rosembert-Joseph said. “Now it’s just we’re throwing everything in one way, and they’ll make the decision.”

Some immigration court analysts say the change could speed up deportations of asylum seekers who will now be fast-track funneled into the immigration court pipeline before having a chance to make their case in an interview.

“So it’s going to be a mess is what it’s going to do,” Rosembert-Joseph said.

Rosembert-Joseph said the new rule removes the USCIS officer’s decision on whether someone qualifies for asylum.

“So now you have to prove to the judge and they make that decision,” she said. “You’re putting, essentially, these individuals in limbo, honestly.”

Attorney: Judges already have packed dockets

Rosembert-Joseph said the previous setup helped curb the backlog because judges did not have to decide every case.

“So this rule just makes it even more difficult, in essence,” Rosembert-Joseph said. “The issue is that now the judges, their dockets are ramped up. It’s already backlogged now, and it always has been, since I’ve known.”

Rosembert-Joseph said the change may be more efficient for USCIS, but it could create another backlog in immigration courts, which she said already have an issue. She said immigration judges are already handling heavy caseloads.

“I haven’t spoken to them, but you can see the shift as far as mannerisms, attitudes,” she said. “They don’t have time to sit there and ask these questions because a master hearing is like five minutes.”

She said that volume can take a toll.

“So if I have to go through 500 cases and do this five-minute, it’s a lot of toll on them,” Rosembert-Joseph said. “So I don’t think it’s efficient and maybe efficient on USCIS’s part, but not for the immigration judges, because now they’re going to see an influx in a lot of cases that you have to decide now.”

Rosembert-Joseph said her fear as an attorney is that some cases may not receive the attention they need.

“Not to say that the judge is not going to look at it or anything, but it’s just, it’s a lot, it’s a lot on anyone,” she said. “So if we’re overworking them and putting all this on them, how do we expect them to make these sound decisions?”

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