U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been delaying appointments without warning in Miramar.
Maria Bilbao, of the American Friends Service Committee, and Randy McGrorty, of the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Legal Services, were among those concerned.
Bilbao said immigrants with appointments to appear at the ICE field office location, at 2805 SW 145 Ave., had been turned away for the third day amid unexplained delays.
“They pay a lot of money for someone to get them there,” Bilbao said, adding their lives are being disrupted by the lack of reliability that ICE is demonstrating.
Bilbao said an alleged air conditioning malfunction three-day delay is just one more example of the way U.S. immigration authorities often dehumanize and disrespect migrants.
McGrorty said periodic closures there are not uncommon.
“ICE locally at Miramar is charged with kind of fixing a lot of the irregularities that were created at the border,” McGrorty said.
The migrants appear at the ICE office in preparation to take their cases before an immigration judge.
“They don’t have the resources that they need to properly address the caseload they have,” McGrorty said.