Advocates Say ICE Plans to Deport Gravely Ill Krome and Broward Detainees to Africa; DHS Denies It

Families and immigrant advocates say seriously ill immigrants held at two South Florida detention centers, Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami and the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, have been told by immigration officers that they will be deported to African countries where they have no family or other ties. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security calls the reports false and says no sick detainees are being deported.

Advocates said flights could leave as early as Wednesday, Oct. 21, and an immigration attorney estimated two flights were more likely on Oct. 22 and 23, bound for the Central African Republic and possibly Burundi. As of Sunday, Oct. 25, federal officials had not confirmed the schedule, destinations or the people involved, and no published report had confirmed that either flight departed with Florida detainees aboard.

What families and advocates say

About a dozen detained men with serious medical conditions, all held in the same unit at Krome, were pulled aside by immigration officers over a weekend and told they would be sent to Africa that week, without being told which country, USA Today reported. Each has a pending court petition challenging his detention, but advocates told the newspaper those petitions have not slowed the government.

The Workers Circle, a social justice organization in contact with the men, said some were so ill that Mexico had already refused to accept them. Noelle Damico, the group's director of social justice, told USA Today: "Imagine how we'd report on this if this were taking place somewhere else."

Shalyn Fluharty, an immigration attorney who represents people facing removal to third countries, said detainees' accounts pointed to the Central African Republic and probably Burundi. She told USA Today that ICE policy requires medically vulnerable detainees to be cleared to fly and to keep receiving care after landing, and questioned how a man who has been repeatedly hospitalized could be cleared and whether the receiving countries could keep him alive.

The concerns extend beyond Krome. Maria Bilbao of the American Friends Service Committee said a Venezuelan man at the Broward Transitional Center was also told he would be deported to Africa that week, and that he lost his identity documents, immigration papers and medications while being moved between facilities, according to USA Today.

A Cuban detainee with diabetes at the center of the case

The most detailed account involves Noslén Sendra González, 41, a Cuban man held at Krome North who has type 2 diabetes, depends on insulin and has a history of acute pancreatitis. His wife, Anisley Cortés, said he has been rushed to the hospital three times since arriving at Krome, and that Cuba refused to take him back while Mexico turned him away because of his medical condition. On Oct. 18, she said, officers told him he would be sent to Africa.

Sendra came to the United States in 2015 and was ordered deported that year, then lived and worked for nearly a decade under an order of supervision, USA Today reported. His green card application had been pending for more than a year when, in November 2025, he missed an immigration check-in after being hospitalized with pancreatitis. He was detained when he reported afterward.

He then spent five months at the state-run Everglades detention camp known as "Alligator Alcatraz," which has since closed, and lost more than 50 pounds there, according to his wife's account to USA Today. Cortés said he was chained by an ankle to his hospital bed and barred from calling home, and that his most recent triglyceride level was above 2,000. "I'm so afraid he'll end up in Africa, and that he'll die there," she told the newspaper.

His medical records have not been made public, and the details of his condition come from his wife and advocates.

What DHS says

DHS has flatly denied the advocates' account. "No sick detainees are being deported," a department spokesperson told USA Today, adding that detainees are medically cleared before travel and leave with any necessary medications. The department also described third-country removals as an essential public safety tool and said the State Department obtains diplomatic assurances from destination countries.

On Sendra specifically, DHS said he has been consistently cleared and discharged from the hospital following medical evaluation. The department has described him as a criminal illegal alien who was convicted of fraud, larceny and property crimes and ordered removed in September 2015, according to reports. DHS has not said where it intends to send him.

Conditions at Krome

The allegations come weeks after a federal watchdog criticized conditions at the Miami facility. A September 2026 report by the DHS Office of Inspector General found that detainees at Krome were not getting the medical care they needed, USA Today reported. According to reporting on the inspection, Krome North held 1,102 detainees in May 2025 in space designed for 882, and inspectors counted 15 vacant medical positions. Inspectors also found admission holding rooms over capacity, with detainees standing or lying on the floor.

Krome sits in far western Miami-Dade County at the edge of the Everglades. The Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach is a privately operated facility that also holds people for ICE.

The legal fight over third-country deportations

The planned removals are part of a broader Trump administration push to deport immigrants to countries other than their own when their home countries will not take them back. The legality of the policy is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In June 2025, the Supreme Court stayed a lower-court order that had required more process before third-country removals, over the dissents of its three liberal justices. In February 2026, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston ruled that immigrants facing removal to a third country must get meaningful notice and a real chance to argue that they fear persecution or torture there. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that ruling on Sept. 18, 2026. On Sept. 29, the Supreme Court paused Murphy's order and agreed to hear the case, allowing the deportations to continue while the justices weigh their legality. Arguments are set for Dec. 9.

From the start of President Donald Trump's second term through early August, ICE sent nearly 28,000 people to more than 50 countries that were not their own, including more than 500 to Africa, according to a Human Rights Watch analysis of ICE data cited by USA Today. The administration has such arrangements with at least 36 countries, about 14 of them in Africa.

Human Rights Watch has documented deportees sent to Cameroon who went without medication or specialist care for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure and HIV, and several who contracted malaria. The State Department advises U.S. citizens not to travel to the Central African Republic at all, citing armed unrest, kidnapping and terrorism, and to reconsider travel to Burundi because of political violence and crime.

Why it matters in South Florida

South Florida is home to the largest Cuban and Venezuelan communities in the United States, and many families here have relatives in ICE custody whose home governments refuse or are slow to accept deportees. Cuba has long limited which of its nationals it takes back, leaving many Cubans with old removal orders living under supervision in Florida, as Sendra did for nearly a decade.

For those families, third-country removals have turned what used to be a years-long limbo into the prospect of being sent to an unfamiliar country on another continent. Arianne Betancourt, an immigrant rights organizer with the Workers Circle, told USA Today she has heard from deportees in Africa who fell ill and could not get treatment.

What's next

Advocates say they are watching for confirmation of whether any Florida detainees were placed on flights last week. DHS has not released manifests, and families say they often learn of a removal only after it happens. Each of the Krome men has a pending court petition challenging his detention, and the Supreme Court's Dec. 9 argument on third-country removals could reshape how the government carries out such deportations nationwide, including from Florida's detention centers.