FDC Miami: Visiting Hours by Unit, Lawyers, Mail, ICE

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

FDC Miami at a glance

FDC Miami is the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ detention center in downtown Miami, Florida: a concrete tower at 33 NE 4th Street holding 1,407 men and women as of September 2026. Few people here are serving a sentence. The building holds people awaiting trial and sentencing in the Southern District of Florida, sentenced people waiting to be designated and moved, a small work cadre and, since February 2025, several hundred immigration detainees held for ICE on the top two floors.

Official name	Federal Detention Center, Miami
BOP code	MIM
Security level	Administrative; men and women
Population	1,407 (as of September 2026)
Visiting	Visiting room open 7:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m. daily; each housing unit has its own days and hours · see visiting hours
Inmate mail	Inmate Name & Register Number · FDC Miami · Federal Detention Center · P.O. Box 019120 · Miami, FL 33101
Send money	Lockbox · Western Union (code city FBOP, DC) · MoneyGram (receive code 7932)
Phone	305-577-0010 · Fax 305-536-7368
Street address	33 NE 4th Street, Miami, FL 33132 · Miami-Dade County
Judicial district	Southern District of Florida
BOP region	Southeast
Housing	Fourteen units, two on each of seven floors · 62 double-bunked cells per unit
Special Housing Unit	Yes · four ranges, one of them for women
RDAP	Not offered
UNICOR	See programs
Camp	None

The tower stands a short walk from the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. United States Courthouse and belongs to the Bureau’s Southeast Region. It is not FCI Miami, the low-security prison eighteen miles to the southwest in the same county, and it has no camp, no satellite low and no complex: the "other facilities" panel on its bop.gov page is an empty template. The rules that matter here — for visits, calls, discovery and lawyers — are written for people whose cases are still open. Both Miami institutions appear on our guide to the federal prisons in Florida.

FDC Miami is not FCI Miami, and there is no “FCC Miami”

Miami-Dade County has two Bureau of Prisons institutions with almost the same name, and confusing them costs families wasted trips and misdirected mail. This page is about the detention center downtown; the other one is a prison.

Institution	What it is	Where it is
FDC Miami (code MIM) — this page	Administrative detention center for men and women, mostly unsentenced	33 NE 4th Street, downtown, at North Miami Avenue
FCI Miami (code MIA)	Low-security prison for sentenced men, with a minimum-security satellite camp	15801 SW 137th Avenue, in the south of the county
Krome North Service Processing Center	An ICE detention facility, not a Bureau of Prisons institution	West Miami-Dade

There is no “FCC Miami.” The Bureau’s roster lists no complex code for either Miami institution, and the “Other facilities at the Miami Federal Correctional Complex” heading on the detention center’s bop.gov page is an empty template panel the site prints for every institution. Krome matters for a different reason: since February 2025 ICE has housed detainees inside FDC Miami, so someone picked up by immigration officers may be inside a Bureau building without being in Bureau custody in the legal sense.

What is the security level at FDC Miami, and who is held there?

FDC Miami is an administrative-security institution, defined by its mission rather than by the point score that sorts sentenced prisoners into low, medium and high. The Bureau’s attorney guide to the building, dated December 2023, describes the population in one sentence: male and female pretrial inmates “of varying security levels” in Southern District of Florida proceedings, “small cadres” of men and women designated to serve their sentences here, and people already sentenced and waiting for transfer to the institution the Bureau has chosen.

Most people arrive as prisoners of the United States Marshals Service, not of the Bureau. Program Statement 7331.05, Pretrial Inmates, governs them: separated from convicted prisoners “to the extent practicable,” not required to work beyond housekeeping in their own cell and unit unless they sign a waiver, supervised as if they held “In” custody, ineligible for furlough, barred from community programs without a court order, and reviewed within days of arrival and at least every ninety days after; our summary of the pretrial inmates policy covers the rest. The same program statement is the legal footing for the ICE units: deportable non-citizens housed in Bureau detention institutions “are considered pretrial inmates.”

Sentencing makes a pretrial inmate a “holdover” pending designation, which is done by the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Texas, not by anyone at FDC Miami, on security points, Public Safety Factors and the judge’s recommendation under the Bureau’s security designation rules — our guide to the security levels explains the scoring. Someone sentenced in Miami can be designated anywhere in the country, and the trip often runs through the Marshals’ air and bus network with a stop at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, which is where the locator placed Ryan Routh seven months after his sentencing.

Women are held here too: the 2023 PREA audit records one general unit for women and a separate range for them inside the Special Housing Unit, and the commissary runs a distinct order form for the female units. The attorney guide also calls FDC Miami “a designated outpatient forensic study site,” where court-ordered competency and criminal-responsibility evaluations are done — and the evaluation clock starts on the day the person physically arrives, which can be weeks after the order.

Who are the notable inmates at FDC Miami?

The best-known people in this building as of September 2026 are Andrew Tate and Alex Saab. A detention center’s population turns over constantly, so any list of well-known prisoners is stale within months.

Name	Bureau record	Case
Andrew Tate	Held here — listed under his legal name, Emory Andrew Tate, register number 52354-506, release date unknown	Arrested in Miami on July 18, 2026 with his brother Tristan on a United Kingdom extradition request on sexual-offense charges both deny. Prosecutors say the brothers are in the Special Housing Unit for their own safety; on September 9, 2026 Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis denied bail
Alex Saab	Held here — Alex Nain Saab-Moran, register number 02538-506, release date unknown	Nicolás Maduro’s former financial intermediary. Pardoned by President Biden in the December 2023 prisoner exchange; deported back to the United States by Venezuela in May 2026; pleaded guilty on September 15, 2026 before Judge Kathleen Williams to money laundering, agreeing to cooperate and forfeit $195 million
Ryan Routh	Former — Ryan Wesley Routh, register number 35967-511, shown at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, in transit to serve a life sentence	Convicted in Fort Pierce on September 23, 2025 of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump; held here through trial; sentenced on February 4, 2026 to life plus seven years
Jimmy Sabatino	Former — James Sabatino, register number 30906-004, is at USP Florence ADMAX in Colorado, projected release April 2035	Ran a fraud from an FDC Miami cell on a smuggled phone; sentenced in November 2017 to twenty years. The officer who brought in the phone, Michael Mazar, got five years and more than $8 million in restitution in June 2018

There is no Bureau record under “Tristan Tate,” which usually means the committed name differs from the public one; the court’s September ruling keeps both brothers in custody.

How do I find someone at FDC Miami?

Use the Bureau’s free Inmate Locator. People held here for the Marshals Service do appear in it — every pretrial defendant in the table above was found that way — so a blank result usually means the name is spelled differently on the charging document or the person is booked under a legal name nobody uses. Search by the eight-digit register number whenever you have it; our guide to how register numbers work explains them.

Immigration detainees are the exception. ICE tracks them in its own Online Detainee Locator System, by nine-digit A-Number and country of birth or by exact name and country of birth. For unresolved problems ICE’s Detention Reporting and Information Line, 1-888-351-4024, is staffed weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern with Spanish-speaking operators. For anyone in the building, [email protected] is the Bureau’s published channel, and it wants the name and register number in the subject line.

How do I write to someone at FDC Miami?

Letters for someone at FDC Miami go to a post office box, not the street address. Use the committed name — the name on the detention order or judgment, which the handbook warns is not always the name they go by — and the register number.

Letters and approved publications	Freight and parcels not sent through the Postal Service
Inmate Name & Register Number FDC Miami Federal Detention Center P.O. Box 019120 Miami, FL 33101	Inmate Name & Register Number FDC Miami Federal Detention Center Attn: Warehouse 33 NE 4th Street Miami, FL 33132

Incoming mail is delivered within twenty-four hours of receipt; mail call in the units is at 3:00 p.m., Monday to Friday. Outgoing general mail goes into the unit depository unsealed — the rule applies to pretrial and holdover inmates too — and is collected by 8:00 a.m. on weekdays. Stamps, blank stationery, unsigned or musical cards, newspapers not sent by the publisher, Polaroids and nude photographs are returned as “nuisance contraband.” The national correspondence rules behind all of this are the Bureau’s correspondence regulations, summarized in our guide to writing to someone in federal prison.

Legal mail is treated differently only if it is marked. The envelope must carry an individual attorney’s name — a firm name is not enough — and the words “Special Mail — Open Only in the Presence of the Inmate” or their equivalent; otherwise it is opened, inspected and read. Legal packages are x-rayed and opened in front of the addressee, and a drop box in the front lobby is the only way to hand-deliver anything; lobby and visiting-room staff will not accept documents. Our page on attorney-client communication in the Bureau explains why the marking matters.

Two rules belong to a courthouse jail. Civilian court clothes are accepted only with prior approval from unit staff, delivered to the front lobby at the time on the approval form and stored in Receiving and Discharge. And a pretrial or holdover inmate sent to court in Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach or Fort Pierce has their property held for thirty days and then shipped to the address on the property form — so tell the person to write yours there.

How do I send money to someone at FDC Miami?

Money for someone at FDC Miami goes through the Bureau’s national lockbox or a wire service, never to the building. Funds mailed to the institution are not deposited, and a visitor may not hand money to a staff member. Every route needs the committed name and eight-digit register number.

Route	Where it goes	Timing and holds
U.S. Postal money order or cashier’s check	Federal Bureau of Prisons Committed Name Eight-Digit Register Number Post Office Box 474701 Des Moines, Iowa 50947-0001	Postal money orders post without a hold; other money orders and non-government checks are held fifteen days. No cash, no personal checks
Western Union Quick Collect	Code city FBOP, DC; register number followed by the last name; committed name on the attention line	Posted within two to four hours if sent between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. Eastern, otherwise by 7:00 a.m. the next day
MoneyGram Express Payment	Receive code 7932, company name Federal Bureau of Prisons, Washington, DC; up to $300 online	Same as Western Union

Make a money order out to the full committed name and register number, with your return address in the corner so it can come back if it cannot be posted; anything else in the envelope is destroyed. Both wire services accept or reject at the point of sale, and the handbook is blunt that money posted to the wrong register number “may not be returned.” Western Union and MoneyGram each charge for the speed; our guide to sending money to a federal prisoner sets the charges side by side. Commissary spending is capped each month, and telephone minutes come out of the same account.

What are the visiting hours at FDC Miami?

There is no single visiting day at FDC Miami. The visiting room is open from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. seven days a week, but each housing unit has its own one- or two-hour windows inside that span, and a family that arrives on the wrong day for the person’s unit is turned away — “Wrong Visiting Day” is one of five pre-printed reasons on the institution’s visit-denial form. Listings that give “7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Saturday, Sunday and holidays” print the room’s outer hours, not a schedule. The schedule is Attachment A of Institution Supplement MIM 5267.09B, Inmate Visiting, dated September 18, 2023 and signed by Warden S. Serrano.

Housing unit	Social visiting windows
5-East	Saturday 5:00–7:00 p.m.; Tuesday 9:30–11:30 a.m. (one hour)
5-West	Sunday 5:00–7:00 p.m.; Tuesday 9:30–11:30 a.m. (two hours); Friday 9:30–11:30 a.m. (two hours)
6-Unit (work cadre)	6-West Saturday 5:00–7:00 p.m. (one hour); 6-East Sunday 5:00–7:00 p.m. (one hour); Tuesday 5:00–9:00 p.m. (four hours); Wednesday 7:00–9:00 p.m. (two hours); Friday 5:00–7:00 p.m. (two hours); no visits Monday or Thursday
7-East	Sunday 7:00–9:00 a.m.; Thursday 9:30–11:30 a.m. (one hour)
7-West	Monday 9:30–11:30 a.m.; Saturday 7:00–9:00 a.m. (one hour)
8-East	Thursday 12:30–3:00 p.m.; Sunday 9:30–11:30 a.m. (one hour)
8-West	Monday 12:00–3:00 p.m.; Saturday 9:30–11:30 a.m. (one hour)
9-East	Sunday 12:00–3:00 p.m.; Friday 7:00–9:00 a.m. (one hour)
9-West	Tuesday 7:00–9:00 a.m.; Saturday 12:00–3:00 p.m. (one hour)
10-East	Thursday 5:00–8:00 p.m.; Sunday 7:00–9:00 a.m. (one hour)
10-West	Wednesday 5:00–7:00 p.m.; Saturday 7:00–9:00 a.m. (one hour)
11-East	Sunday 7:00–9:00 p.m.; Friday 12:00–3:00 p.m. (one hour)
11-West	Tuesday 12:00–3:00 p.m.; Saturday 7:00–9:00 p.m. (one hour)
Special Housing Unit	Mondays only, 7:00–9:00 a.m. or 5:00–7:00 p.m., one hour, ordinarily in the main visiting room; no weekend social visits; no minors if the visit is held inside the SHU

Each person gets one hour on each of their unit’s days and four hours a month, except the work cadre in 6-Unit, whose visits are not charged against the points. The units are named for their floors, and the same slots appear under the letters A to G in the 2022 handbook and a 2010 Spanish supplement, so the timetable has barely moved in fifteen years. The supplement explains the design in its first lines: “the mission of this institution is to facilitate trial preparation … legal visits will always receive priority over social visits.”

Who can visit, and how many

• Pretrial and holdover inmates may list immediate family only — parents, siblings, children and a legal spouse. Someone on a writ from another Bureau institution with an approved list there may also see a significant other and the mother of their children after an NCIC check. Work cadre inmates may list up to twelve people.
• The Unit Team sets up the list within seven days of arrival, but only after the inmate has mailed out and got back the Request for Visitor Approval form and the BP-A0629 Visitor Information sheet. No change is allowed in the first ninety days, and only every ninety days after that.
• How many at once is printed two ways in the same document: the body of the supplement says two visitors at a time, while Attachment A, the handout families receive, says three, as does the 2022 handbook; infants up to three are not counted either way. Ask before bringing a third adult. One social visit a day.
• Special visits for people living more than 250 miles away or abroad: two non-consecutive two-hour periods in one week, once every ninety days, approved only by the Warden, an Associate Warden or the Duty Officer; Florida residents must show a hardship such as illness or a death in the family. The room holds 270 by fire code; when it fills, visits are ended starting with the families who arrived first.

What visitors can wear and bring

Nothing sleeveless and nothing short, for anyone over seven. The supplement bars shorts of any length, sleeveless garments, sweatpants, sun dresses, crop tops, low-cut blouses, halter, tube and backless tops, bathing suits, hats, head scarves, hooded garments, wigs, sunglasses, spandex, tights, anything see-through, and any coat or jacket. A bra is required. Nothing may resemble inmate or staff clothing, from khaki and orange to medical scrubs.

Everything you carry in must fit in a clear plastic bag no larger than twelve inches square: a small clear purse; bills no larger than $5 and no more than $25 in all, for the vending machines; medication for the visit; and for a baby two diapers, wipes, a change of clothing, two bottles, two small sealed containers of food and a receiving blanket. Strollers, diaper bags, food, newspapers, cameras and phones stay in the car, because lockers are issued only to legal and official visitors. A visitor who leaves the room may not return that day, so use the restroom before you are seated.

Identification and screening

Everyone sixteen and older needs a valid state or federal government photo ID; a foreign ID is accepted only with a valid U.S. visa or a passport carrying an I-94 card or stamp. A parent or guardian signs the BP-A0629 for any visitor under eighteen, and children under sixteen must stay with a responsible adult. Screening is a walk-through metal detector and a millimeter-wave scanner, with a hand-held detector for anyone who fails; the supplement acknowledges that an underwire bra or a knee brace can trigger both and says the answer is a “limited visual search,” in private, by staff of the visitor’s sex, with anything fuller requiring the Warden’s personal authorization. Our guide to federal prison visitation and the Bureau’s visiting regulations cover the rules that are the same everywhere.

Getting there

The detention center stands at the corner of NE 4th Street and North Miami Avenue, on the same stretch of the avenue as the Ferguson federal courthouse. The institution’s own directions, unchanged since at least 2010, bring drivers in from the west on the Dolphin Expressway (State Road 836) to I-395 and the 2nd Avenue exit, then along NE 6th Street to North Miami Avenue. There is no visitor parking; several public lots are within walking distance “at a minimal charge,” and the airport is about seven miles west.

How do phone calls and email work at FDC Miami?

Calls from FDC Miami go out, not in. The person inside places them from unit telephones to numbers on an approved list of up to thirty, with a nine-digit access code and a voice print, and every call except a properly arranged legal call is recorded. Under the Bureau’s telephone regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, issued September 3, 2026, the allowance across the Bureau is 510 minutes a month: 300 free for people eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives and 210 more that anyone who has exhausted the 300-minute limit may buy, regardless of eligibility. A single call should generally not exceed 15 minutes, and there must be at least 30 minutes between calls. The 2022 handbook still says 300 minutes a month; that figure belonged to the 2008 policy, and the program statement controls.

Two features of the national policy are written for buildings like this one: collect calls may be allowed for “good cause,” and the program statement’s own examples are new arrivals, people confined at detention centers, pretrial inmates and holdovers; and daytime restrictions “should not be imposed in pretrial/holdover institutions” where people need the phone to prepare for trial. The handbook gives the unit phones as on from 6:00 a.m. to 9:45 p.m., off during counts. Someone not yet sentenced cannot earn the First Step Act credits the free minutes are tied to, so minutes are bought by moving money from the commissary account — a transfer the handbook warns is never reversed. Our guide to federal inmate phone calls explains the mechanics.

Email runs on TRULINCS through CorrLinks: text only, no internet, billed in “TRU-Units” at five cents a unit — one per minute of session time, three per printed page, capped at 600 units a month. The contact list holds 100 names, thirty of them email addresses. Sick-call requests, prescription refills and the fund-withdrawal form run through the same unit kiosks, which is why a lockdown that closes them, as the union described in 2025, cuts off far more than email. Nothing on TRULINCS is privileged, attorneys included. Our page on CorrLinks and TRULINCS has the costs.

How does a lawyer reach a client at FDC Miami?

A lawyer reaches a client at FDC Miami through the institution’s Legal Liaison, mostly by email. The Bureau’s Attorney Guide to the Federal Detention Center, Miami, Florida, dated December 2023, is the institution’s own manual for defense teams; it is not linked from the FDC’s page on bop.gov. Its first instruction is the address, [email protected], with the client’s name, register number and the nature of the request in the subject line. The liaison “will ordinarily respond to routine requests within three business days,” and an email about an initial appearance with “urgent” in the subject line is moved to the front.

Legal visits and the 3:30 p.m. cutoff

Legal visiting runs 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. every day, and an attorney with a bar card and photo ID may walk in without an appointment; the Bureau’s legal activities rules, Program Statement 1315.08, issued May 7, 2026, require pretrial institutions to accept unscheduled attorney visits and say the Warden “generally may not limit the frequency of attorney visits.” The timing rule catches out-of-town counsel: the 4:00 p.m. national count freezes movement, so “all FDC visitor entry and egress will cease at 3:30 PM,” and a lawyer already inside may stay through the count but cannot leave or be brought a client until it clears. No legal visitor is admitted less than thirty minutes before any count or less than an hour before visiting ends.

Paralegals, investigators, interpreters and retained experts need prior clearance — form BP-A0243, a BP-A0660 criminal-history check and an NCIC run — good for a year. Laptops, tablets, external hard drives, solid-state drives, CDs and DVDs may come to a legal visit once the visitor signs the local acknowledgment, form MIM 1315.07-F2; the guide bars thumb drives, flash cards and memory cards. The May 2026 program statement says the opposite about media — it authorizes hard drives and USB thumb drives for discovery and declares CDs and DVDs “not authorized” — and because the local guide predates it, ask the liaison which formats the lobby is accepting before you burn anything.

The rooms themselves have been a problem. In August 2026 a Miami defense lawyer told Reuters that some attorney rooms were unusable because “soaked ceilings collapsed”; the Bureau said two were being repaired and four were available. Clients in the Special Housing Unit are seen in its attorney room or non-contact booth, where an immigration lawyer told Reason in 2025 that documents cannot be passed and “you can’t hear each other.”

Legal calls, discovery and documents

A client may call counsel on the unit phones whenever they are on, but those calls are recorded. An unmonitored call is arranged in advance — a cop-out to the Unit Team from the client, or an email to the liaison from the attorney — and placed from the unit; the guide says pretrial inmates may call their lawyers “as often as institution resources allow,” and such calls do not count against the 510-minute cap. The guide’s most useful sentence reports work in progress: as of December 2023 FDC Miami was “in the process of installing direct, unmonitored telephone lines to the Federal Public Defender’s Office in each housing unit.” The guide does not say whether that work was finished.

Electronic discovery needs written authorization before it is mailed: the attorney completes local form MIM 1315.07-F1, emails it to the liaison and sends the media only after approval. The national rule since May 2026 sorts discovery into “normal access” material a client may hold when not actively viewing it and “sensitive access” material, ordinarily under a protective order, that staff secure and the client reviews in a private, secure area, and says discovery computers at pretrial facilities “should be placed in each housing unit, the SHU, and other locations as determined by the Warden.”

The law library is electronic: the 2022 handbook places the main one on the third-floor Education Department, a basic one in the SHU and a kiosk in every housing unit. A client’s own medical records are the one thing a lawyer can get quickly: with a notarized or sworn consent on DOJ Form 361, a request to [email protected] is “ordinarily processed within 24 hours.” The guide also promises pretrial detainees who need eyeglasses to read discovery will get them “in a timely manner,” a commitment the 2022 handbook does not make. Finally, Program Statements 1315.08 and 7331.05 both require a pretrial institution to keep a written plan for “alternative legal access arrangements” whenever a disruptive event restricts legal visiting for more than twenty-four hours, and to notify the Federal Public Defender, the district court and the United States Attorney. The events of 2025 and 2026 described below are why those clauses matter here.

What can people buy at the FDC Miami commissary?

People at FDC Miami can spend up to $460 a month at the commissary, the national ceiling set by the Bureau’s trust fund rules, Program Statement 4500.13, issued May 7, 2026, which raised it from $360. The limit rises by $50 during the November–December holiday period, for no more than one validation period. FDC Miami’s own documents print something older: the March 2022 handbook sets “$275 per month for Cadre and $225 for all others,” and the June 2014 commissary form prints no figure at all. A warden may set a lower local limit, so the 2022 figures could still be in force. Ask the unit counselor, and treat any site that says $360 as out of date.

Shopping is by unit and by order form. Lists are collected from the unit’s commissary box two days before the unit’s ordering day and the goods come up two days after that; the handbook schedules units A to D in the first week of the month and E to H in the second. An order for someone who is out at court when the cart arrives is tried once more and then credited back.

The form is a Miami document. It stocks Cuban crackers, plantain chips, Sazón, chorizo and jerk pork; it sells a Spanish–English dictionary, a Santa Biblia and a Reina Valera Bible beside the King James, a Koran, Somali rose oil and Al Fajr oil, and greeting cards in English and Spanish; and it caps kosher and halal entrees at fourteen a month. Reading glasses in strengths from 1.00 to 4.00 cost $1.10 a pair. Two contradictions: the 2014 form sells a Sony radio and AA batteries, while the 2022 handbook says FDC Miami “does not allow inmates to have radios in their possession”; and work boots are marked “cadre only.” Our page on the federal prison commissary covers the national rules; the prices above are twelve years old.

What programs are available at FDC Miami?

FDC Miami offers fewer programs than a prison does, by design, and most are closed to the people who make up most of the population. Pretrial inmates cannot be required to work or program, and the handbook says designated cadre inmates get the full Admission and Orientation program while everyone else gets “an abbreviated familiarization.”

Drug treatment: no RDAP

The Residential Drug Abuse Program is not offered here. The handbook says so in terms, and the RDAP location list inside the August 2026 First Step Act programs guide, dated June 4, 2026, does not include FDC Miami among its fifty locations. The building runs the Drug Abuse Education course and the non-residential program, both described in the handbook and both marked for this institution in the guide’s grid.

Education, work and the First Step Act grid

Literacy and English-as-a-second-language classes are the statutory core, 240 hours each, and the handbook says class schedules are posted on each unit’s education board rather than run from a school building. The August 2026 First Step Act guide marks forty-seven approved programs for FDC Miami in its institution grid — Anger Management, Criminal Thinking and Threshold among them — but not one of the guide’s program descriptions names this institution. Forty-five of the forty-seven reach this institution only through a blanket location cell — “may be offered at all BOP institutions,” or, for six of them, the same sentence limited to institutions with designated women — which is permission, not delivery. The other two, Federal Prison Industries and occupational education, carry no blanket cell at all. Either way the grid is the only Bureau record that this detention center offers any of them, and a mark in it is permission to run a class, not evidence that one is running.

Federal Prison Industries is the one entry where the two halves of the guide disagree about Miami: the grid marks FPI for FDC Miami, but the guide’s description of the program lists fifty-four institutions where it runs and Miami is not among them. The named list controls, and nothing in the building’s own documents describes a factory. The guide’s RESOLVE trauma program likewise names its locations without Miami, and the 2022 handbook’s paragraph on RESOLVE was never filled in — it still reads “This institution [has/does not have] a Resolve Program.” Religious Services has three chaplains and contract Christian and Muslim clergy; services are “normally held in the unit chapel,” on the floor rather than in a separate building. Our guides to prison education and religious programs describe the national framework.

First Step Act credits for people who are not yet sentenced

None are earned here before sentencing. The Bureau’s time-credit rules, Program Statement 5410.01 (2022, changed 2023), are explicit: “an inmate cannot earn FTCs during pretrial confinement,” and cannot earn them “when in U.S. Marshals Service custody prior to arriving at their designated facility, regardless of where they are housed.” A year of classes at FDC Miami before a plea produces no time credits; the time itself is credited against the sentence as jail credit under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(b), a different calculation made by the Designation and Sentence Computation Center.

After sentencing, that changes on September 30, 2026. An interim final rule deletes, from that date, the arrival clause in 28 C.F.R. § 523.42(a) on which the program statement rests, so credits begin “after the inmate’s term of imprisonment commences” (91 Fed. Reg. 55740), which under 18 U.S.C. § 3585(a) is when the defendant is “received in custody awaiting transportation to” the prison where it will be served. Credit still requires completing assigned programs or activities; ask the Unit Team in writing what they are.

What is daily life like at FDC Miami?

Daily life at FDC Miami is lived indoors, on one floor, in a two-person cell. The 2023 PREA audit describes fourteen housing units, two on each of seven floors and the last of them the Special Housing Unit, each holding sixty-two double-bunked “wet” cells — toilet and sink inside — on two tiers, with three showers per tier. Men occupy all but one unit and women the remaining one, and the SHU’s cells sit in four ranges, one of them reserved for women. The visiting supplement counts one more: its Attachment A schedules social visits for fourteen general units on floors five to eleven and lists the SHU on its own. Recreation is a deck, opened at 9:00 a.m. once the unit passes sanitation, with a section open to the sky under a cover that immigration detainees described to the Miami Herald as a cage. The handbook’s daily schedule:

	Weekdays	Weekends and holidays
Wake-up and breakfast	6:00 a.m.	7:00 a.m. breakfast; lights on 9:00 a.m.
Cells inspection-ready	7:30 a.m., and kept that way until 3:30 p.m.	By 10:00 a.m.
Counts	8:00 a.m. census, 1:00 p.m. census, 4:00 p.m. stand-up, 10:00 p.m. stand-up	10:00 a.m. stand-up, then as weekdays
Lunch	Unit closes 10:45 a.m.; lunch 11:00 a.m.	Brunch 12:00 p.m. (the food-service section says 11:30)
Mail call	3:00 p.m.	—
Evening meal	5:00 p.m. on the unit schedule; 4:30 p.m. in the food-service section
Unit activities end	9:30 p.m.; cells secured 9:45 p.m.
Telephones	6:00 a.m.–9:45 p.m., off during counts
Full uniform required	7:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m. — cadre in institution clothing, everyone else in a green jumper	—

Meals are cooked by an inmate work cadre of about 120 on a five-week rotating menu and eaten on the unit; Common Fare religious trays are requested through the chaplains and a no-flesh tray through the Food Service Administrator. Nobody may keep more than five books, three magazines and one newspaper in a cell, radios are banned, and each person may own one MP3 player bought from the commissary. Recreation is what a tower allows: board games, dominoes, calisthenics, step machines and exercise bikes, and weekly tournaments in basketball, soccer, handball, dominoes, spades, bingo, bowling and hula hoops.

Sick call is requested by email to a Health Services mailbox, Monday to Friday, with a $2 co-payment for a visit the person asked for; the clinic runs sixteen hours a day, pill lines are at 6:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., and everyone gets a physical within fourteen days of arrival. Routine dental care and the optometrist are, on the handbook’s terms, for designated inmates only, with unsentenced people limited to emergencies.

What do inspectors say about conditions at FDC Miami?

The DOJ Office of the Inspector General has not conducted an on-site inspection of this facility. Its auditors have been in the building — FDC Miami was one of twelve institutions visited before February 2020 for the OIG’s audit of the Bureau’s chaplaincy program (Report 21-091, July 7, 2021) — but that is not an inspection of how people are held, and nothing about FDC Miami is on the Inspector General’s list of ongoing work as of September 2026. The outside record of this building is one Prison Rape Elimination Act audit, GAO’s allegation tables, and what the courts and the press have documented since 2025.

The 2023 PREA audit

James Kenney, an independent auditor working under PREA Auditors of America, was on site from December 5–7, 2023 and filed his final report on January 21, 2024. The facility met forty standards, exceeded one — 115.65, coordinated response — and failed none; the auditor found “no areas of concern or blind spots.” In the twelve months before the audit the institution had logged twelve allegations of sexual abuse — eleven between prisoners, one against a staff member — and none of harassment; ten of the eleven were closed as unsubstantiated and one as unfounded, and the staff allegation was still under criminal investigation. Designed capacity was 1,326, against an average daily population of 1,085 in the year before the audit. The audit’s snapshot of the population on December 5, 2023 is the most detailed on record: 985 people aged nineteen to eighty-seven, 118 with limited English, four transgender or intersex. GAO’s report of May 5, 2026 adds five years of allegation counts: 3, 6, 6, 7 and 13 allegations naming another prisoner for 2020 through 2024, by year of incident, and 0, 4, 2, 1 and 0 naming a staff member, by year reported. Those are allegations, not findings, and GAO does not adjust for population, so they cannot rank one institution against another.

The building: elevators, chillers and water

In May 2025 the president of AFGE Local 501 told Reason that four of the building’s eight elevators were broken, three for more than two years, that management said the Bureau lacked the $8 million to overhaul them, and that the failures were forcing lockdowns; the Bureau confirmed it “has requested additional funding to address elevator repairs and is awaiting funding.” Air conditioning has depended on a portable chiller parked on the street “for multiple years due to ongoing malfunctions within our chiller systems,” the Bureau told CBS News Miami in March 2026; a contract to replace every chiller was signed on February 28, 2026. On July 1, 2026 the water pressure failed and bottled water was handed out until the next day; on July 6 the main chiller failed again. The Bureau says both were fixed within a day and that annual testing shows the water is drinkable; Andrew Tate’s account of “brown and filthy” shower water and families’ accounts of heat, roaches and toilets that would not flush come from the same weeks.

Three deaths in five months

On Saturday November 15, 2025 Anthony Brillante, thirty-seven, sentenced in the Southern District of Florida to 108 months for stalking and cyber harassment, was found unresponsive and pronounced dead; on Monday November 17 James Hurley Edwards, fifty-eight, a former Miami-Dade police sergeant awaiting sentencing on child-exploitation charges, was found unresponsive and died at hospital. The Bureau’s two press releases give those facts and no cause; Edwards’s lawyer told NBC 6 that both were apparent suicides. On Sunday April 12, 2026 an officer found Aled Damien Carbonell-Betancourt, twenty-seven, an ICE detainee, in his cell in what ICE described as an apparent suicide attempt; he died soon after. The handbook reserves its suicide-watch companion program for “designated inmates only” — sentenced people, of whom this building has few.

The ICE units

Under a February 2025 agreement ICE began housing detainees in designated units at five Bureau institutions, and at FDC Miami it took the 10th and 11th floors — four units of up to 125 people each, according to the Miami Herald’s June 2025 investigation. The numbers have never been steady: ICE’s published average of 152 for the first months was called a “bold-faced lie” by a Bureau employee against the 350 to 400 men officers counted, and the Bureau told Reuters in August 2026 it was holding more than 450. On April 15, 2025, after a count that did not clear until 9:57 p.m. left some fifty newly transferred men in a holding cell for hours without food or water, the men flooded the cell and a disturbance-control team put the protest down with flash-bang grenades. On July 11, 2026, after the chiller failed, detainees who refused to lock in were removed to the SHU and staff pepper-sprayed the rest; the Bureau says that incident is under investigation.

What the courts have said

In Khan v. United States, No. 13-24366-CIV-ALTONAGA (S.D. Fla. Sept. 20, 2024), Chief Judge Altonaga, having earlier held the government liable for the malicious prosecution of a Miami taxi driver on terrorism charges later dropped, awarded $6,279,508 in damages after a bench trial, including $500 for each of the 317 days he spent in solitary confinement, most of it in FDC Miami’s Special Housing Unit. Her findings describe that unit in 2011 and 2012: no cellmate, cold, constant noise, “smells of urine and feces,” a forced cell change every two weeks, about 159 visual body-cavity searches, and a “law library” that was an empty cell with a computer and no toilet. The award rested on the prosecution being unjustified, not on the conditions being unconstitutional; the court said so.

That distinction is why the ordinary damages route is closed. In Medina Rodriguez v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-22304-GAYLES (S.D. Fla. May 28, 2025), an ICE detainee sued over the April 15, 2025 grenade incident; Judge Gayles dismissed at screening, holding that after Johnson v. Terry, 119 F.4th 840 (11th Cir. 2024), cert. denied, 146 S. Ct. 101 (2025), a federal detainee’s Fifth Amendment claims for excessive force and bad conditions are a “new context” to which Bivens cannot be extended, because the Bureau’s administrative remedy program is a special factor. Habeas is no substitute: in Knowles v. Carlton, No. 1:21-cv-20515 (S.D. Fla. July 26, 2021), the court dismissed a § 2241 petition about a ten-month pandemic lockdown here, holding that conditions claims must be brought as civil-rights actions. What is left is the grievance process, a Federal Tort Claims Act claim where negligence has caused injury, and the court that controls the criminal case.

For immigration detainees the most important decision of 2026 carries this building’s name. In Hernandez Alvarez v. Warden, Federal Detention Center Miami, Nos. 25-14065 & 25-14075 (11th Cir. May 6, 2026), a published opinion by Judge Marcus, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed habeas relief for a man arrested at a traffic stop in September 2025 and held at the FDC without any possibility of bond. The court held that the no-bond provision of 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) reaches only applicants for admission who are “seeking admission” — people at the border — and not people simply present in the interior, whose detention falls under § 1226 and who are therefore entitled to a bond hearing. It noted that other circuits had reached “distinctly contrary conclusions,” so the question may go higher; but in Florida, Georgia and Alabama it is the law today.

FDC Miami in the news

Recent news about FDC Miami centers on the two extradition and money-laundering defendants held here in 2026 and on conditions in the ICE units; older items concern deaths in custody and the prosecutions of two employees.

• September 15, 2026 — Alex Saab pleaded guilty in Miami federal court to money-laundering conspiracy, agreeing to cooperate and forfeit $195 million; the Bureau’s locator lists him in this building.
• September 9, 2026 — Magistrate Judge Lauren Louis denied bail to Andrew and Tristan Tate, who remain at FDC Miami while they fight extradition to Britain.
• August 12, 2026 — Reuters reported prosecutors’ description of the Tates’ Special Housing Unit placement: “While FDC Miami is not a Marriott, the Tates’ conditions of confinement are reasonable.”
• July 2026 — Families of Cuban ICE detainees protested conditions outside the tower; the Miami Herald’s second investigation described cockroaches, broken toilets, heat and interrupted medication.
• November 15, 2025 — Anthony Brillante, thirty-seven, sentenced in the Southern District of Florida to 108 months for stalking and cyber harassment, was found unresponsive at about 3:40 p.m.; responding employees initiated life-saving measures and he was pronounced deceased by EMS personnel.
• November 17, 2025 — James Hurley Edwards, fifty-eight, a former Miami-Dade police sergeant awaiting sentencing on child-exploitation charges, was found unresponsive at about 12:10 p.m.; while life-saving efforts continued he was pronounced deceased by hospital personnel. His lawyer said both deaths were apparent suicides.
• June 7, 2025 — The Miami Herald’s first investigation of the ICE units: overcrowding, broken elevators and air conditioning, the April 15 flash-bang incident and a “due-process crisis” in lawyers’ access.
• November 1, 2024 — A former FDC Miami correctional officer was arrested on a federal charge of committing a sexual act with an inmate, the Inspector General announced.
• June 28, 2023 — Ruben Montanez-Mirabal, a nurse at the FDC, was sentenced to seventy-two months for taking payments from prisoners to bring in contraband.
• June to August 2020 — the Bureau posted two news releases reporting the deaths of people held at FDC Miami; the Bureau’s releases are listed on its press release page.

Frequently asked questions about FDC Miami

Problems at FDC Miami: where we can help

The problems that recur in this building are those of a courthouse jail under strain. These are the situations we see most often here:

• Getting a lawyer to a client. Legal visits and confidential calls run through a single liaison mailbox on a three-business-day clock; attorney rooms were out of service for water damage in August 2026; and a lockdown of the kind the staff union described in May 2025 closes the unit kiosks that carry both the phones and the discovery computers. When access is denied, the program statements require the institution to arrange alternatives and notify the court.
• Detention and release. Whether someone should be held at all is decided under the Bail Reform Act in the courthouse a short walk away, not by the Bureau; our guide to the federal pretrial process explains the hearing.
• Sentencing and designation. What happens after FDC Miami is shaped by the presentence report, the judge’s recommendation and the Designation and Sentence Computation Center’s scoring; a holdover who has waited months for a designation has options through the Bureau’s transfer and remedy processes. RDAP is not offered here, so the designation request deserves attention before the case leaves the courtroom; see RDAP and early release.
• Jail credit. Pre-sentence days here count against the sentence under § 3585(b); First Step Act credits cannot start before the sentence does. A computation that looks wrong is checked against the Bureau’s sentence computation rules; see challenging a BOP sentence computation.
• Immigration detainees’ bond. After Hernandez Alvarez, an immigrant arrested in the interior and held here without a bond hearing has a habeas claim in the Southern District of Florida.
• Medical and mental-health care, and SHU placements. Sick call runs by email, dental and eye care are limited to designated inmates, and three deaths in five months are the reason a family’s concern about someone’s state of mind should go to the institution in writing, through [email protected], and to counsel the same day. See medical care in federal prison and, where negligence has caused injury, the Federal Tort Claims Act and our guide to tort claims.
• Challenges to the conviction or sentence itself, through a direct appeal or a § 2255 motion, and other routes to early release from federal prison.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. handles federal criminal defense, appeals and post-conviction matters nationwide, and advises families on Bureau of Prisons issues at institutions across the system. Call (843) 620-1100 or contact us to talk through a specific situation.

Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, the firm’s Managing Director, writes and maintains the federal prison policy material on this site. He is not counsel of record; legal representation is provided by Elizabeth Franklin-Best.

Sources and currency

Bureau of Prisons documents

• FDC Miami, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Addresses, telephone and fax numbers, the judicial district and the documents posted for the facility.
• Inmate Visiting, Institution Supplement MIM 5267.09B, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Miami, 2023. Attachment A carries the unit-by-unit visiting schedule; the supplement sets visitor lists, dress, screening and legal visits.
• Attorney Guide to the Federal Detention Center, Miami, Florida, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2023. Legal visits, legal calls and electronic discovery. It is not posted on the institution’s bop.gov page; the link is the copy published by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
• FDC Miami Inmate Admission and Orientation Handbook, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Miami, 2022. Mail, money, telephone, commissary, programs, the daily schedule and medical care.
• FDC Miami Inmate Admission and Orientation Handbook (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Miami, 2022.
• Federal Detention Center Miami Commissary List, Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Miami, 2014.
• Inmate Visiting, Institution Supplement MIM 5267.08C (Spanish edition), Federal Bureau of Prisons, FDC Miami, 2010. Two revisions older than the English supplement.
• Inmate Legal Activities, Program Statement 1315.08, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. Attorney visits, laptops and discovery computers at pretrial facilities.
• Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual, Program Statement 4500.13, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The monthly commissary spending limit and its exclusions.
• Inmate Telephone Regulations, Program Statement 5264.09, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2026. The monthly minute allowance and the provisions written for detention centers and pretrial inmates.
• First Step Act of 2018 — Time Credits, Program Statement 5410.01, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2023. When time credits can and cannot be earned.
• Pretrial Inmates, Program Statement 7331.05, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025. Separation, work, status reviews, furloughs and the treatment of immigration detainees.
• First Step Act Approved Programs Guide, Federal Bureau of Prisons, Reentry Services Division, 2026. Programs by institution and the RDAP locations list.
• Death at FDC Miami, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025. Anthony Frederic Brillante.
• Death at FDC Miami, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2025. James Hurley Edwards.
• Press Releases, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 2020. Includes the two 2020 releases reporting deaths at the FDC.

Audits and inspections

• Federal Prisons: Improvements Needed to Prevent, Detect, and Address Sexual Abuse (GAO-26-107343), U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2026. Sexual-abuse allegation counts by institution, 2020 to 2024.
• PREA Audit Report: FDC Miami, PREA Auditors of America, 2024. Final report of the December 2023 on-site audit by James Kenney.
• Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Management and Oversight of its Chaplaincy Services Program (Report 21-091), U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2021. Lists FDC Miami among the institutions its auditors visited.
• Ongoing Work, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2026. The Inspector General’s list of current audits, inspections and reviews.

Court records

• Hernandez Alvarez v. Warden, Federal Detention Center Miami, Nos. 25-14065 & 25-14075 (11th Cir. May 6, 2026), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, 2026. Bond hearings for immigrants arrested in the interior.
• Medina Rodriguez v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-22304 (S.D. Fla.), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 2025. The May 28, 2025 screening dismissal of a detainee’s claims over the April 2025 disturbance.
• Khan v. United States, No. 1:13-cv-24366 (S.D. Fla.), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 2024. The September 20, 2024 damages judgment describing conditions in the Special Housing Unit.
• Johnson v. Terry, 119 F.4th 840 (11th Cir. 2024), cert. denied, 146 S. Ct. 101 (2025), U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, 2024.
• Knowles v. Carlton, No. 1:21-cv-20515 (S.D. Fla.), U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, 2021. The July 26, 2021 dismissal of a conditions petition brought as habeas.
• Former BOP Correctional Officer Arrested for a Sexual Act with an Inmate, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2024.
• Federal Bureau of Prisons Nurse Sentenced for Contraband Smuggling and Bribery, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2023. Ruben Montanez-Mirabal’s sentence.
• Former Bureau of Prisons Correctional Officer Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, 2018. Michael Mazar’s sentence and restitution.

News and other sources

• Nicolas Maduro Ally Alex Saab Pleads Guilty in Miami Federal Court to Money Laundering, CBS News Miami, 2026.
• Tate Brothers Denied Bail by Miami Judge as They Fight Extradition to U.K., NBC News, 2026.
• ‘Not a Marriott’: Tate Brothers Held in Solitary Confinement in Miami Jail, Reuters, 2026.
• ‘Treating Them Like Animals’: ICE Detainees Face Harsh Conditions at Miami Federal Prison, Miami Herald, 2026.
• Cuban Man Dies in ICE Custody in Miami in Presumed Suicide, Officials Say, NBC 6 South Florida, 2026.
• Man Who Tried to Assassinate Trump in Florida Sentenced to Life in Prison, The Guardian, 2026.
• Downtown Miami Residents Complain Over Federal Detention Center’s Noisy Air Conditioning, CBS News Miami, 2026. The portable chiller and the February 2026 replacement contract.
• Former Miami-Dade Cop Dead of Apparent Suicide Days Before Child Pornography Sentencing, NBC 6 South Florida, 2025.
• ‘Some Cry All Day.’ ICE Detainees Face Harsh Conditions in Miami Federal Facility, Miami Herald, 2025.
• Overcrowding and Dysfunction Produced a Quiet Riot at a Miami Federal Prison Holding ICE Detainees, Reason, 2025.
• First Step Act Time Credits—Revisions, Federal Bureau of Prisons (Federal Register), 2026. Interim final rule, 91 Federal Register 55740.
• 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A), Inspection by immigration officers; expedited removal of inadmissible arriving aliens; referral for hearing, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 8 U.S.C. § 1226, Apprehension and detention of aliens, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 18 U.S.C. § 3585, Calculation of a term of imprisonment, U.S. Code (Legal Information Institute).
• 28 C.F.R. § 523.42, Earning First Step Act Time Credits, Code of Federal Regulations (Legal Information Institute).

Sources reviewed September 2026.

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026