ICE held Venezuelan asylum-seeker eight days past its own 72-hour standard in unsanitary conditions, then barred a congresswoman from seeing her

On July 19, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained Claudia Rodriguez Caglianone, a 28-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker, at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport as she attempted to board a domestic flight to visit friends. Rodriguez had lived in South Florida since 2017, had a pending asylum case in immigration court for nine years, held Temporary Protected Status from 2023 until the Trump administration ended TPS for most Venezuelans in October 2025, and had no criminal record. ICE held her for eight days at its Enforcement and Removal Operations field office in Miramar, a facility Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said ICE described to her as a 72-hour check-in point, before transferring her to the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach. She was released on bond August 3, 2026.

Rodriguez said she and dozens of other women slept on an unpadded floor in the same clothes for eight days, without a shower, in a room she said was cleaned only twice and where toilets went uncleaned; she said detainees were told to drink water from the sink. "I feel like I was an animal in a zoo on the floor, dirty," she said. She said staff discouraged medical examinations for pregnant detainees to avoid documenting their pregnancies, and described elderly detainees and others with chronic conditions going without needed medication or follow-up cancer treatment. ICE did not respond to a request for comment on Rodriguez's specific allegations about conditions.

Separately, on July 30, 2026, when Wasserman Schultz made an unannounced oversight visit to the Broward Transitional Center while Rodriguez was held there, ICE officials barred the congresswoman from seeing Rodriguez in person despite a signed privacy release from Rodriguez's family, telling her she would instead need to submit a form 24 hours in advance — a requirement Wasserman Schultz said defeated the purpose of a surprise inspection and violated the statutory right of members of Congress to communicate with constituents in federal custody. She was permitted to speak with Rodriguez only by phone.

Updates

2026-07-30 — Wasserman Schultz introduced two ICE-reform bills citing Rodriguez's case [4]

During the same unannounced Broward Transitional Center visit in which ICE barred her from seeing Rodriguez in person, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz announced two bills responding to the case: the No PREJUDICE Act, which would bar DHS from using race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, workplace location, or language/accent -- including speaking Spanish, Haitian Creole, or accented English -- as grounds for an enforcement action, and the Build Homes, Not Hate Act, which would redirect $70 billion in ICE funding to affordable housing. Wasserman Schultz's office named Rodriguez as the constituent whose detention prompted the legislation, saying "ICE agents are overrunning airports to catch law-abiding residents like Claudia, upending lives, wasting taxpayer dollars, and betraying America's values."