By Human Rights Watch

Since January 2025, the United States government has dramatically expanded immigration detention in Florida, detaining thousands of immigrants—many without criminal convictions—in overcrowded, unsanitary, and abusive conditions. This report documents serious human rights violations at three detention centers in South Florida as detention numbers have increased: the Krome North Service Processing Center, the Broward Transitional Center (BTC), and the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Miami. Detainees described being shackled for hours on buses, confined in freezing, overcrowded cells without bedding or access to hygiene, denied essential medical and mental health care, and subjected to degrading treatment by guards. Women were held in male-only facilities without access to gender-appropriate care or privacy. The subpar medical care may have been linked to two deaths, one at Krome and one at BTC. The report is based on interviews with eleven currently and recently detained individuals, some of which took place at Krome and BTC; family members of seven detainees; and immigration lawyers, as well as data analysis. It finds that the conditions in these facilities flagrantly violated international human rights standards and the United States government’s own immigration detention regulations. The abuses documented—ranging from denial of medical care to punitive isolation and excessive use of force—amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Human Rights Watch calls on the US government to end the use of immigration detention as a default response, terminate harmful state-federal enforcement agreements, ensure international and national detention standards are upheld, and guarantee rigorous oversight and accountability.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2025. 98p.

By Trey Walk, and Maria Burnett,

  Since 2021, political leaders in the US state of Florida have reshaped K-12 schools through laws and policies that censor, distort, and discriminate. Such efforts include passing laws restricting classroom instruction about race in US history, sexual orientation and gender identity, banning books available to students, and setting inaccurate and misleading civics and history standards. “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” documents the impacts on students of Florida’s denial of access to accurate information about Black history, systemic racism, and about their health, when related to sexual orientation or gender identity. Florida leads the United States in the number of books banned from classrooms and school libraries, primarily literature written by or about LGBTQ people and people of color. Students and teachers report that new legal and curriculum changes have created an environment more conducive to harassment and discrimination in the classroom on the basis of race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Parents and teachers describe the difficulty of providing children with an education free from discrimination in the increasingly hostile environment. Human Rights Watch, Florida Rising, and Stanford Law School Rule of Law Impact Lab call on Florida to rescind its discriminatory policies and promote a curriculum that counters discrimination and prepares students to live healthy lives in a diverse society. They also call for a bold federal response to address this civil and human rights crisis in US public schools.  

New York: Human Rights Watch, 2024. 107p.