Dear Field Office Director Kelei Walker,
On 26 November 2025, Denis Cabrera Rodríguez (A#: 241-909-042), a Cuban citizen seeking political asylum in the United States, was detained despite having a pending asylum claim. Denis is an artist and human rights activist linked to artistic movements such as the San Isidro and 27N movements. In Cuba, he was censored, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared for his work and activism.
After being arrested, he was taken to the ICE-ERO Center Miramar where he fainted and had to be taken to Memorial Miramar Hospital because he was at risk of suffering heart attack. After three days, ICE took him to the Krome North Service Processing Center.
Denis was diagnosed with diabetes at ten years old. According to his family, prior to his detention, he relied on an insulin pump to manage his blood sugar and administer insulin when needed. Since his transfer to Krome, Denis has not received adequate glucose monitoring, insulin, or food which have dramatically impacted his health. ICE is not permitting him to have his insulin pump while in detention.
Amnesty International has received information that Denis is now experiencing complications that require urgent and consistent medical care that he can only adequately receive outside of detention. Without proper care Denis is at risk of serious medical complications resulting from his underlying chronic illness, including amputation of limbs, falling into a coma, and death.
Denis should have never been detained as authorities cannot lawfully return him to Cuba. Moreover, the dangerous and inadequate conditions at Krome have been well documented by numerous organizations that detail the substandard medical care, unsanitary conditions, abuse and mistreatment that has led to preventable deaths in custody. During the 2025 fiscal year thus far, four individuals have died while detained at Krome – Ramesh Amechand, Genry Ruiz Guillen, Maksym Chernyak and Isidro Pérez – raising serious concerns about access to quality healthcare at the facility. Amnesty International considers that the treatment of individuals detained at Krome constitutes cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Denis is in urgent need of medical care, and his condition is worsening every day. I implore you to ensure that Denis is immediately released and provided with the urgent medical care he desperately needs.
Lisätietoa
Denis Cabrera Rodríguez, age 33, is a Cuban artist and human rights activist linked to artistic movements such as the San Isidro and 27N movements. In Cuba, he was censored, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared for his work and activism. He entered the United States in 2022 and claimed asylum. His asylum application remains pending. On 26 November 2025, he was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Denis was diagnosed with diabetes at ten years old. According to his family, prior to his detention, he relied on an insulin pump to manage his blood sugar and administer insulin when needed. Since his transfer to Krome, Denis has not received adequate glucose monitoring, insulin, or food which have dramatically impacted his health. ICE is not permitting him to have his insulin pump while in detention. His health is deteriorating daily and ICE has denied his requests to be transferred to a hospital.
The Krome North Service Processing Center (Krome) is an ICE detention facility located in Miami-Dade County in the city of Miami. on the edge of the Everglades. The day-to-day operations of the facility are currently handled by Akima Global Services, LLC, which has managed the facility for over a decade. Krome is one of the oldest and largest ICE detention facilities in the United States. For decades, organizations, lawyers and direct service providers have denounced the detention conditions at Krome, including severe overcrowding, chronic limitations in access to adequate quality medical care tied to multiple deaths in custody, degrading and abusive treatment, and procedural failures that undermine individuals’ access to counsel and due process. In 2025, the facility has faced heightened scrutiny after reports of severe overcrowding and several deaths in custody. Independent reporting and human rights investigations have documented systemic failures in intake procedures, medical care, segregation and housing practices, and conditions that may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or torture under international law. These failures occurred against a backdrop of rapidly expanded detention populations and reduced independent oversight.
Research by Amnesty International has found that individuals detained at Krome face serious barriers to accessing adequate medical care, including lack of treatment and delays in assessing and treating of health conditions. During the 2025 fiscal year thus far, at least four individuals have died while detained at Krome – Ramesh Amechand, Genry Ruiz Guillen, Maksym Chernyak and Isidro Pérez – raising serious concerns about access to quality healthcare at the facility.
Under the Trump administration, the use of immigration detention in the United States has substantially increased. On 16 November 2025, there were 65,135 individuals in ICE detention, which is largely considered an undercount because it does not include thousands of people in short-term ICE processing facilities, ICE field offices, federal pre-trial detention, or other facilities. This represents a 64% increase for the number of people in detention in January 2025. Florida has seen a 47% increase (from January to September 2025) of people in ICE detention in the state. At least 25 individuals have died in ICE custody during the 2025 fiscal year (22 after 20 January 2025), compared with 12 individuals in the 2024 fiscal year. At the same time that the Trump administration expands ICE’s detention capacity, detention conditions are dramatically deteriorating. ICE has adopted a policy which makes individuals who entered the US irregularly ineligible for bond meaning that they are forced to remain in detention for the duration of their removal proceedings. This includes individuals with pending asylum claims who are now being detained until their claims are decided. Under international law, asylum seekers should not be penalized for their manner of manner of entry into a country. They should also not be removed from a country until their claim for refugee protection has been properly assessed through a fair refugee status determination process.
The passage in July 2025 of the 2025 Reconciliation Bill, otherwise known as Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, has expanded ICE’s budget to $150 billion of taxpayer dollars to carry out its mass detention and deportation plan, including $45 billion for detention expansion. It is crucial to ensure that facilities where human rights are being violated are held accountable and that individuals in detention are provided with the medical care they need to survive.