Staff played volleyball and blew bubbles with their families outside Miami Correctional Facility on Wednesday, a striking contrast with the facility’s recently announced new role: holding up to 1,000 people being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
And it’s not just any ICE facility.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem branded the Indiana facility with a colorful moniker: “Speedway Slammer.” Indiana is the second high-profile example of a large, state-run facility holding undocumented immigrants, after Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Noem thanked Indiana Governor Mike Braun on X for the state’s partnership. Braun announced he’d be keeping ICE detainees at the state prison in a press release last week.
The Indiana Department of Corrections isn’t expanding the prison. It’s using existing open beds.
The Miami prison currently runs at partial capacity and has struggled to keep staff, who have described the prison as “out of control.”
According to data from the state, the high medium security prison has capacity for 3,100 inmates, but it’s only using about 60 percent of those beds. There are 185 staff vacancies.
In nearby Peru, Indiana, locals are divided on the state’s plan.
Wendy Spence, a registered nurse who lives in Bunker Hill, was in town Wednesday for her first haircut in two years. She said she’s worried about overcrowding at the prison and an influx of dangerous people.
“I know that it's needed, but at the same time I don't want it in my backyard,” she said.
Outside of a downtown tobacco shop, retired boat mechanic Jim Woodward puffed a cigar.
“I mean, they got to keep them somewhere,” he said. “It's a secure facility, for sure.”
Peru native Joseph Hiles stood nearby with one foot on an electric scooter. He’s served time at other prisons at the state but said he knows Miami by its dangerous reputation.
“I don't think that's a place they should be putting immigrants," he said. “I don't think that's a place most of them prisoners should be, you know what I'm saying? They should be getting help, and that place ain't helping nobody.”
States can enforce federal immigration law through an agreement with Homeland Security through what’s called the 287(g) program. It’s been around since 1996.
Inmates at the large prison camp in the Everglades of Florida have gone on a hunger strike to protest conditions such as maggots in their food, flooding and being held without charges.
The Trump administration contends that harsh conditions will encourage people who entered the United States illegally to voluntarily self-deport.
Some Peru residents like Woodward say they support Trump’s tough approach to illegal immigration.
“These are illegal immigrants. They broke the law to get here, and you break the law, there's consequences to it,” he said.
Hines disagrees. His grandson is the child of an undocumented immigrant from Honduras. He said even if people break the rules, he thinks they shouldn’t be punished for seeking a better life.
“They ain't guilty really of nothing,” he said, “so I don't think they should be locking them up like that.”
