Maksym Chernyak, a Ukrainian man being held at Miami’s Krome Service Processing Center, died after experiencing vomiting and seizures. He is the second detainee to die at the facility since Trump took office on January 20.
Chernyak was taken to a Miami hospital, where medical staff found he had internal brain bleeding and pronounced him brain dead.
On January 23, a Honduran man named Genry Donaldo Ruiz-Guillen died after being held at Krome. According to a statement made by ICE, Guillen experienced months of symptoms related to dizziness and epileptic seizures before he passed away.
The Krome Service Processing Center is a detention facility in Miami. A man by the name Osiris Vásquez posted a series of videos on TikTok showing the harsh conditions in the facility. In one of the videos, Osiris pleads for help as he explains that detainees are not allowed to make phone calls and are forced to sleep on the floor, with some detainees having spent over a month in detention.
Krome is made to operate at 580 detainees, with emergency capacity of 850, however immigration attorneys estimate that the number of detainees in the facility is triple the operational capacity, with thousands allegedly being housed at the facility at the time of this writing in March 2025.
According to Miami New Time, ICE stated that facilities “are experiencing temporary overcrowding due to recent increases in detention populations.” The agency claims they are upholding their commitment to humane treatment, however, immigration attorneys and ex-detainees believe what’s taking place at Miami’s Krome Detention Facility is a “humanitarian disaster.”
During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to lead the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. Since January 20, the Trump Administration’s actions, such as cancelling existing migrant appointments and enacting city-wide raids, had led to the recent spikes in detention facilities such as Krome.
