Migrants languish in US detention centres amid dire conditions, long waits

Felipe Hernandez Espinosa spent 45 days at " Alligator Alcatraz," an immigration holding centre in Florida where detainees have reported worms in their food, toilets that don't flush and overflowing sewage. Mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.

For the past five months, the 34-year-old asylum-seeker has been at an immigration detention camp at the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas, where two migrants died in January and which has many of the same conditions, according to human rights groups. Hernandez said he asked to be returned to Nicaragua but was told he has to see a judge. After nearly seven months in detention, his hearing was scheduled for Feb. 26.

Prolonged detention has become more common in President Donald Trump's second term, at least partly because a new policy generally prohibits immigration judges from releasing detainees while their deportation cases wind through backlogged courts. Many, like Hernandez, are prepared to give up any efforts to stay in the ..