In March 2025, a rumor circulated online that a 500-person-capacity Miami detention center was housing 4,000 detainees for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One Facebook post (archived) – which users had shared more than 16,000 times as of this writing – claimed the center had "slowly begun the process of killing [detainees]" by giving them only one cup of water every 24 hours.
Below, we break down these claims based on available evidence:
Is ICE holding 4,000 detainees in a 500-person capacity Florida facility?
No recent data is available regarding the number of detainees housed at the Krome North Service Processing Center (also known as the Krome Detention Facility) west of Miami.
In a statement to Snopes, ICE spokesperson Nestor Yglesias denied that they were holding 4,000 detainees at Krome, but said ICE does not provide population numbers due to "operational and security concerns." He did confirm that "some ICE facilities are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations."
If the center's population correlates with national data, however, it's likely the number of detainees housed at Krome has ballooned since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. In March, ICE reported that it made 32,809 enforcement arrests in the first 50 days of Trump's presidency, compared with 33,242 of these at-large arrests in all of 2024.
In 2015, official records showed Krome Detention Center had a total bed capacity of 581 and the average ICE detainee population was 443.
(ice.gov)
Past documentation also holds clues to the growth of the center's population over the past 30 years. In 1995, a congressional task force on immigration reform visited the Krome Detention Center and found ICE was holding approximately 400 detainees in the facility, which had the capacity for only 226 at the time. The report (archived) read as follows:
Although Krome's rated capacity [The rated capacity relates to the number of aliens who can be housed inside Krome in compliance with standards set by the American Corrections Association.] at the time was 226, approximately 400 aliens were being detained at the facility immediately prior to the Congressional delegation's visit on June 10, 1995. The review of population levels over a one-year period contained in our original Miami INS report established that large population increases and significant decreases were not uncommon. The male dorm was overcrowded and females were housed in the Public Health Service area. In general, when Krome had more criminal aliens than its isolation cells could accommodate, criminal aliens were housed together with the general alien detainee population. Felons and aggravated felons were housed together with non-felons and juvenile males within the male dormitory. In addition, it was the policy to allow female criminal aliens to be mixed together with the general female population because there was limited space for segregating females.
Investigators followed up in 1996, reporting that because of the completed construction of one additional building, ICE raised the capacity of the facility from 226 to 274.
The facility's capacity increased significantly between 1996 and 2004, when a delegation from the American Bar Association visited Krome. The ABA reported that ICE designed the facility "for a minimum capacity of 435, operational capacity of 580 and an emergency capacity of 850 detainees. On the date of the delegation's visit, the facility housed approximately 570 detainees."
Paul Chavez, director of the litigation program at the advocacy group Americans for Immigrant Justice, told Axios in a March 27, 2025, story that ICE held approximately 200 people at one point in a room meant for 85. "If you have a building that's meant for 600 people, and now you have twice that in there, it'll inevitably lead to issues," he said.
On March 17,
Other videos from the same user show men sleeping side by side under fluorescent lights on the floor and on (and under) chairs, clearly exceeding the room's capacity to hold detainees.
What about claims that detainees died from lack of water?
The widely circulated Facebook post from March 24, 2025, claimed: "They're giving them one cup of water every 24 hours. They've already killed 3 of the detainees this way."
The top comment under the TikTok video above also claimed three people died at Krome due to lack of food and water.
(TikTok user @osiriss982)
In an email to Snopes, ICE denied the claim that they gave detainees water only once in 24 hours, resulting in three deaths.
In a March 23 story, USA Today interviewed detainees who claimed they had no easy access to potable water and that they had to "bang on the window to be given a paper cone of water from a jug in the hallway."
We received messages from Snopes readers inquiring about three detainees who reportedly died in custody: Genry Ruiz-Guillen, Serawit Gezahegn Dejene and Maxsym Chernyak. According to official ICE documentation, all three of these detainees did die in custody, but only two of the three — Ruiz-Guillen and Chernyak — were at Krome.
Ruiz-Guillen, a 29-year-old from Honduras, died Jan. 23. In November 2024, a nurse treated vertigo he was experiencing with three glasses of water, after which he was "feeling better." He died after experiencing breathing difficulty, according to the official report. Dejene, a 45-year-old from Ethiopia, died in Phoenix on Jan. 29. According to the official report, his preliminary cause of death was unknown. Chernyak died on Feb. 20 after vomiting and seizure activity, according to the official report. A hospital physician said the preliminary cause of the Ukrainian's death was "bleeding from the brain."
ICE also emailed Snopes the news release on the death of a detainee from Guyana housed at Krome in December 2024. According to the release, which published on Dec. 18, 2024, the detainee's autopsy was pending and the cause of his death is still unknown. However, a more recent death report shows medical staff were unable to detect a heartbeat and identified asystole as the preliminary cause of death.
As of this writing, we are unable to independently determine whether lack of water caused any of these deaths, or whether the Krome Detention Center is making potable water available to detainees.
In sum
Population data from the Krome Detention Center after 2015 is not publicly available, therefore we can't confirm how many detainees are housed there, though the facility is likely overcrowded. Reports prior to 2015 indicate an upward trajectory in the number of detainees at the facility,
At least two detainees had died in ICE custody at Krome so far in 2025 (as of April 2), but officials did not indicate lack of water as a cause of death on official reports.