‘State-sponsored terrorism’: Krome Detention Center in Miami
Maksym Chernyak, a 42-year-old Ukrainian national, died earlier this year while detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Krome Detention Center in South Florida. His death, like many others in ICE custody, was preventable, according to the preliminary autopsy and Mich Gonzalez, the attorney representing Chernyak’s family.
“What [Chernyak’s widow] believes to be true is that he would be alive today if he had not been taken into that detention center,” Gonzalez said. “And we believe that’s true.”
Chernyak’s case is one of many under review by Sanctuary of the South, a newly launched immigrant justice organization led by grassroots attorneys and movement organizers focused on the American South. The legal team is preparing to file a Federal Tort Claims Act lawsuit against the government. Gonzalez said though compensation is “the very least the family is owed,” it’s not the ultimate goal—the objective is systemic change.
“What his wife really wants is for people to understand that her husband did not deserve this,” Gonzalez said. “The hundreds of thousands of people that are living in this country in fear that they’ll be next don’t deserve to be put in a prison and potentially die for the fact that they weren’t born in the United States.”
Gonzalez said that the U.S. immigration detention system is spiraling into a “state-sponsored terror campaign” against immigrant communities, with overcrowding, medical neglect, and indefinite detention becoming increasingly common. Since President Donald Trump’s second term began in January, Gonzalez said, ICE has intensified raids targeting long-settled immigrants.
According to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued on April 29, in Trump’s first 100 days, DHS deputized the Texas National Guard; Drug Enforcement Administration; Bureau of Prisons; U.S. Marshals; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and members of the State Department and the IRS to assist with immigration operations. DHS said it has arrested more than 158,000 undocumented immigrants in 2025 alone. In Florida, ICE arrested 1,120 people within just six days in late April, according to an ICE press release.
“They’re targeting students, they’re targeting tax-paying undocumented families who, despite not being able to benefit from the Social Security that they’ve been paying into for years, are now going to be snatched through ruses,” Gonzalez said
According to Gonzalez, while the U.S. border is closed to asylum-seeking migrants and other unauthorized migrants, detention centers remain full, and often over capacity, because ICE is now pulling people from within the country. Many of them, he alleged, are being misled into reporting to ICE under the promise of leniency or supervision, only to be detained and separated from their families.
“Over the years, immigrant humanity has been stripped away under the law more and more and more, where people can just be held indefinitely in detention,” Gonzalez said.
Alleged targeted violence in detention
Ricardo Gomes, a 42-year-old gay asylum-seeker, fled Brazil in 2021 after gang violence claimed his brother’s life and left his home riddled with bullet holes, according to his close friend and advocate, Ron McCarthy. With threats against his life and no criminal history, he sought safety in the U.S.
When Gomes was picked up by ICE agents on Oct. 30, 2024, at his workplace in Coconut Creek, where he worked as a building janitor, his friends feared the worst. Six months later, those fears have materialized into a nightmarish ordeal involving alleged abuse, medical neglect, and potential legal retaliation that could derail his asylum case and cost him his life.
According to McCarthy, what Gomes has endured inside Krome goes beyond the struggles of a broken immigration system—it amounts to targeted abuse.
“He was moved between three different pods after being repeatedly targeted as a gay man,” McCarthy said. “The guards would antagonize other detainees and tell them, ‘Ricardo doesn’t want to hear you,’ setting him up to be attacked. He had to fake an injury just to escape. When he begged not to be returned, they moved him temporarily.”
DHS and ICE did not respond to Prism’s requests for comment regarding Gomes’ allegations.
In January, Gomes was reportedly beaten by guards, placed in solitary confinement for 60 days, and denied critical medical care, leading to the near-amputation of both legs. He is now facing federal assault charges stemming from what his attorneys call an act of self-defense.
According to his legal team, the violent incident began when guards at Krome tackled Gomes, with one pinning him to the ground by pressing his knee against Gomes’ neck.
“I felt like George Floyd,” Gomes later told his attorneys. In a desperate bid to breathe, Gomes bit one of the guards, his lawyers said. The case was dormant for nearly three months, until just before the statute of limitations expired in April, when U.S. Marshals removed Gomes from Krome and transferred him to a federal courthouse in downtown Miami.
“In denying him bond, the judge cited that Ricardo is HIV-positive, even implying he was trying to weaponize that against the guards,” McCarthy said. “His HIV is undetectable [due to antiviral medication]. It’s illegal and discriminatory.”
Rather than receiving medical treatment or mental health support, Gomes was thrown into solitary confinement, his lawyers said—a move advocates have said was both punitive and retaliatory. During his isolation, he developed serious infections in both knees. Repeated requests for medical attention were reportedly ignored, Gomes’ lawyers allege, with staff only offering Tylenol as his condition worsened.
“Krome should not be a death sentence,” said Katie Blankenship, movement lawyer and co-founder of Sanctuary of the South. “Ricardo is fighting to survive. Now we must fight for him.”
It wasn’t until a second medical opinion was sought that Gomes was hospitalized. According to advocates, doctors diagnosed him with a super-bacterial infection linked to exposure to bird feces, allegedly from within the Krome facility. Emergency surgery was required on both knees, and doctors warned that a further delay would have resulted in the amputation of both legs.
Gomes is now in a wheelchair and being held at the Federal Detention Center Miami. His legal team describes his situation as a “true state of living hell.”
“This is gross physical abuse, medical neglect, homophobic discrimination, and HIV criminalization rolled into one,” Blankenship said. “Ricardo should be receiving care, not punishment, for surviving a near-death experience.”
Reports of abuse at Krome have been mounting. “I reported Ricardo’s assault to ICE, Homeland Security, and the Inspector General. Nothing came of it,” McCarthy said.
Krome, operated by a private contractor, has long faced scrutiny for overcrowding and poor conditions. McCarthy said Gomes’ pod, designed for 66 people, housed 120 detainees. “He chose to go back into solitary confinement just to sleep.”
Gomes’ future remains uncertain. His asylum hearing, initially scheduled for June 30, is now indefinitely postponed due to the federal charges. Meanwhile, his lawyers have opted not to request bond, fearing he’ll be sent back to Krome if released.
“We’ve reached a breaking point,” McCarthy said. “That’s why I’m speaking out now. We stayed silent, hoping the system would work. It hasn’t. And if they deport him, it’s a death sentence.”
A bubbling “crisis”
The federal government has launched an aggressive push for increased immigration detention funding, which will increase from $9.9 billion in 2024 to $45 billion in 2025.
“They’re creating a crisis where the conditions are really deteriorating, and everyone’s reporting about it, and they’re at rollover capacity so that they can justify that additional spending,” Gonzalez said. “In addition to justifying that expansion because of the for-profit prison companies that lobbied for this administration … you see the administration testing the bounds of the law in order to become more authoritarian, in order to become more totalitarian, and they knew they could do that.”
Some of Gonzalez’s clients are unable to be deported to their home countries, due to unsafe or political reasons, and remain caught in a legal limbo. One client, who is Palestinian, cannot be deported back to Gaza and remains incarcerated indefinitely.
“ICE officers are saying, ‘We know this person shouldn’t be here, but we’re not allowed to release anyone,’” Gonzalez said, adding that he was told directives now require approval from Washington, D.C., for any release, a rare occurrence.
Winning your case used to mean you got to go home. Now it means you’re stuck in a cell while ICE figures out where else they can send you.
Mich Gonzalez, immigration attorney
“He will not be able to file a habeas [petition] until six months from the date that his order of removal became final,” Gonzalez explained. “We’re talking about almost a year of his life lost to detention after fleeing a genocide.”
One client, a trans woman from Guatemala, won her legal case in February and was granted withholding of removal, a form of protection for those facing likely persecution in their home countries. She remains in custody, despite orders for her release. According to Gonzalez, the woman was assaulted in detention and transferred without proper notice or legal process.
“Winning your case used to mean you got to go home,” Gonzalez said. “Now it means you’re stuck in a cell while ICE figures out where else they can send you.”
Meanwhile, oversight offered from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties within DHS has been downsized, leaving immigrants with almost no recourse.
Gonzalez said he has received an unprecedented number of phone calls from immigrants and their families seeking support.
“I cannot get to the bottom of my emails,” he said. “It takes my breath away where we are at. I don’t think people understand what the next four years can look like if we don’t do something to stop this.”
