Indiana ICE facility detainees spend weeks in solitary and face 'medical crisis,' lawsuit says

CHICAGO (AP) — Three people detained at an Indiana immigration facility known as the “Speedway Slammer” say detainees languish in solitary confinement for weeks, are denied essential medical treatment and are subjected to abuse and racial slurs by facility officials.

The detainees alleged in a lawsuit filed Thursday that conditions at the Miami Detention Center in Bunker Hill, Indiana, are inhumane, and officials' neglect has created a “dangerous medical crisis," according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit in federal court in the Northern District of Indiana.

The AP has previously reported on medical neglect , dangerous conditions and human rights abuses at immigration detention facilities across the country. At least 37 people have died in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this fiscal year, the most in the agency's history, according to the Migration Policy Institute .

Two people have died at the Indiana facility this year — Tuan Van Bui, a 55-year-old Vietnamese man, and Lorth Sim, a 59-year-old Cambodian man. Sim’s son sued ICE in August saying it withheld information about his father’s death.

The Miami Detention Center, around 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Indianapolis, was a maximum security prison before the Trump administration converted it into an immigration detention facility last year. As a prison, it had a record of inhumane conditions , violence and inmate deaths .

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations in the lawsuit.

None of the three detainees in the lawsuit have ever been convicted of a crime in the U.S., according to the complaint. While the Trump administration has said its immigration crackdown is focused on immigrants with criminal records, recent data shows most of those arrested have no criminal convictions.

The plaintiffs say officials deny detainees medical treatment for severe conditions, leaving some in agony and crisis.

Cynthia Acevedo, a Guatemalan national arrested by ICE in July, suffered from multiple seizures a week after officers at the facility switched her to a medication less effective at treating her epilepsy, and officials often failed to give it to her regularly, according to her attorneys. She also alleges she was sexually assaulted soon after arriving at the facility, and that officials waited days to take her report and never provided her with a rape kit, HIV test or medication.

A man who could barely walk due to inflamed leg wounds also received no care despite multiple requests for help, according to the complaint.

Officials at the facility use “abusive forms of punishment” on detainees and “excessive force bordering on torture,” attorneys wrote in the complaint. State staff direct racial slurs at detainees, and have told them to go back to their country and referred to them as a “plague,” they added.

Sergei Vasenin, a Ukrainian-born man who has been detained in the facility for more than a year, was once thrown in solitary confinement for around nine weeks, according to the complaint. He “spent up to 23 to 24 hours per day in a tiny, frigid cell,” his lawyers wrote. Vasenin talked out loud to himself “to stay sane” and contemplated suicide multiple times, they added.

Recently, one man attempted suicide after other detainees “begged” officers to help him for days, the complaint said. Officers instead locked him in a cell and failed to remove a cable that he then used to hang himself.

Detainees are held in cells “smaller than an average parking space” with one small window slit, according to a description and image included in the complaint. Solitary confinement cells are so cold that some people stuff toilet paper in the vents to try to staunch the frigid air. Detainees are allowed to leave to shower “every few days,” the complaint said.

Kemoye Muslar, the third plaintiff in the lawsuit, alleged his cell flooded with sewage water for three days, which he spent trying not to “slip and fall into human waste," his attorneys wrote. They said that staff wear masks to keep out the smell of blood and feces on the floor and clogged toilets.

Mayes-Osterman is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.