By admin 
After being picked up by immigration agents at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in July and transferred between two South Florida immigrant detention facilities, Claudia Carolina Rodriguez Caglianone, a Venezuelan immigrant, is now a free woman following her family’s pleas for her release and intervention from a congresswoman.
Read more ‘This is a kidnapping,’ says aunt of man arrested in Pisgah National Forest ICE raid
Rodriguez Caglianone was released Monday evening, but she said her heart remains with the people still locked inside the detention centers.
The 29-year-old, who recently earned her master’s degree from St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, was moments away from boarding a flight to North Carolina when she was detained. She entered the United States in 2017 on a tourist visa, applied for asylum within six months and was granted Temporary Protected Status in 2023. Her asylum case is still pending, and she is awaiting her day in court, she said Tuesday during a news conference alongside U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“The recent termination of TPS for Haitians and Venezuelans is only making this worse,” Wasserman Schultz said Tuesday. “It’s why we need to call out and end this cruelty.”
Rodriguez Caglianone’s cousin, Gabriel Dominguez, said that her detention was the hardest blow the family has had to go through.
Wasserman Schultz had been advocating for the release of Rodriguez Caglianone, one of her constituents. Last week, she made an unannounced visit to the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, where Rodriguez Caglianone had been transferred after spending eight days at the ICE office in Miramar.
READ MORE: Rep. Wasserman Schultz says Broward ICE facility full of people with ‘lawful status’
Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat, represents Florida’s 25th Congressional District in the U.S. House. She is running to represent the 20th district following the Florida Legislature’s redrawing of congressional boundaries.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.
Rodriguez Caglianone described her time at the Miramar facility like being “an animal in a zoo.”
“All they did was give us food—sometimes expired food, sometimes we’d open it and find mold,” Rodriguez Caglianone said in Spanish.
Rodriguez Caglianone said she shared a room with dozens of other women. She said they were forced to sleep on the floor and were unable to bathe or change their clothes.
Read more ‘We need help.’ Copper thieves troll the Midlands targeting telephone poles
The Miramar office is not designed to be a long-term holding facility. Officials there obtained a waiver allowing ICE to hold people for up to 72 hours instead of the usual 12. But Wasserman Schultz said that explanation did not match what happened to Rodriguez Caglianone, who remained there for eight days.
“This is a check-in facility, not a detention facility,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Rodriguez Caglianone said she was finally able to shower after being transferred to the Pompano Beach facility, which Wasserman Schultz described as “well run” and cleaner than facilities like the Miramar office.
“Still, they kept treating us like criminals; we didn’t feel normal. We didn’t feel like we were going through a fair immigration process because we lacked good communication with the outside world—we couldn’t talk to family or lawyers—which is everything people inside need,” Rodriguez Caglianone said in Spanish.
Rodriguez Caglianone said she met women who suffered miscarriages because of inadequate medical attention and limited resources inside detention facilities.
“I personally knew two people who, sadly, lost their babies while in detention … the stress, the agony, and the lack of medical resources,” she said.
Rodriguez Caglianone cried as she spoke about a woman she said she met who was battling breast cancer and was unable to receive chemotherapy treatments while in detention.
She said detainees had to submit written requests on paper whenever they needed medical care, but responses often took a day or two. As a result, many people suffering from pain or other medical issues waited at least 24 hours for assistance, even when they needed immediate care, she said.
Wasserman Schultz said Rodriguez Caglianone’s account directly contradicts what officials at the detention facilities have told her. According to the congresswoman, officials have repeatedly said detainees receive regular medical attention, doctor visits and even chemotherapy treatments.
Now free, Rodriguez Caglianone said she wants to be a voice for those still going through immigration detention.
“ I am no longer afraid,” she said, because she knows its “the right thing to do—not for me, but for all those people”.
Read more ‘We need help.’ Copper thieves troll the Midlands targeting telephone poles
Miami Herald staff writer Churchill Ndonwie contributed to this report.