(NewsNation) — A migrant woman with a history of mental illness spent a month in solitary confinement at a Florida detention center and experienced abuse and neglect, a civil rights complaint filed last week alleges.
The woman, named only as Ana, suffers from PTSD, anxiety and depression, yet her intake forms at the Baker County Detention Center in Macclenny, Florida, categorized her as having no “major mental illness such as . . . major depressive (disorder),” the ACLU of Florida said in the complaint, co-filed with the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization.
Still, she was placed in isolation in a “filthy” and “dark” cell without a mattress, according to the complaint, which was submitted to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
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Ana, a 33-year-old domestic violence and human trafficking survivor from an unspecified Spanish-speaking country, arrived at Baker in May 2023 under U.S. Immigrations and Enforcement custody.
Her intake forms incorrectly identify English as her spoken language, the complaint says. The language barrier and lack of translation services exacerbated her abusive experience in the detention center.
The jail operates in part as an immigration detention facility and has faced multiple civil rights suits since 2022.
This year, a Baker officer was convicted of sexual battery on an inmate and sentenced to 25 years.
“Ana’s experiences at Baker illustrate many of the most egregious patterns of abuse at the facility, including sexual abuse in the form of voyeurism, abuse of solitary confinement,” the complaint says, “the improper use of force and restraints, denial of mental health care, denial of access to counsel, failure to provide language access services and incomplete and falsified records.”
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A Florida lawmaker wants the facility shut down.
“What I saw was horrible. I saw conditions that no human should have to live in,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., in an Instagram video call with the ACLU of Florida on Monday.
Frost said he visited the ICE facility before.
“We are talking about the medical unit. The problem here too is a lot of that medical unit is being used to house people, or being used as a solitary confinement,” Frost said. “Do what’s right — shut down this facility.”
Baker County Sheriff Scotty Rhoden praised the facility’s staff in a Facebook post Monday from the Baker County Sheriff’s Office page, saying, “I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to our dedicated Detention staff. They do an outstanding job, and I am incredibly proud of their unwavering commitment to the citizens of Baker County.”