ICE Detention Security Guard Caught on Camera Robbing $5,000 Cash From Migrant Right Before Deportation

A security guard at Miami's Krome detention centre has been arrested on a felony theft charge after surveillance video allegedly caught him pocketing £3,950 ($5,382) in cash from a migrant who was about to be deported.

Matthew Christian Torres, 31, of Palmetto Bay, was taken into custody on Monday 24 August 2026 at the Krome North Service Processing Center, located at 18201 SW 12th Street in Miami-Dade County, according to the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office.

Torres, who worked at the facility as a contracted security guard for Akima Protective Services, is accused of taking the cash from a detainee's property during routine deportation processing and never logging it.

He has been charged with third-degree grand theft, a felony under Florida law, and his arrest has renewed scrutiny of the private contractor that runs the facility on behalf of ICE.

Surveillance Footage Captures the Alleged Theft

According to the arrest report, the theft came to light when staff at Krome were preparing deportation paperwork for a detainee identified only by the initials W.J.

The detainee told staff he was missing £3,950 ($5,382) in cash from his property. A Department of Homeland Security representative at the facility then supplied investigators with surveillance footage recorded on 19 August, days before the theft was discovered.

The footage shows Torres placing the detainee's money inside a property logbook but never recording it in the system, according to an account of the arrest report. A deputy who reviewed the recording wrote that Torres was seen 'concealing the money inside his black jacket' before entering an employee restroom, then returning to the property area and removing 'the clear plastic bag containing the money from the inside of his chest area'.

A separate account of the footage, reported by NBC affiliate WTVJ, said the cash was later seen moved into a pocket of his trousers.

A Felony Charge and a Swift Booking

Torres was booked into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center and held on a £1,834 ($2,500) bond, according to the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department's online booking system. Third-degree grand theft applies in Florida to property valued at more than £550 ($750), making the charge a felony rather than a misdemeanour.

Investigators said Torres never reported the money to a supervisor and that it was never entered into the facility's property records at any point, and that the discrepancy was only caught because the detainee himself flagged the missing cash before his removal from the country.

It was not immediately clear whether W.J., the detainee who reported the missing cash, had already been deported by the time Torres was arrested, or whether the money had been returned to him. Local 10 News reported that it had contacted both US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Akima seeking comment on the arrest, and that neither had responded publicly as of Tuesday morning.

Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office deputies were called to the facility on Monday afternoon after staff flagged the discrepancy, and the arrest followed within hours once the surveillance footage had been reviewed on scene.

Court records had not yet listed a date for Torres's first appearance at the time of publication, and it remained unclear whether Akima had suspended or dismissed him following the arrest.

A Contractor With a Documented History of Complaints

Krome, formally known as the Krome North Service Processing Center, is described by the Associated Press as the United States' oldest immigration detention facility, built on the edge of the Everglades to process Haitian boat refugees in the 1970s.

In the early 2000s, the same reporting noted, the facility was the subject of accounts describing guards sexually assaulting or coercing sexual favours from female detainees, with several guards facing criminal charges at the time.

It has operated for more than a decade under contract to Akima Global Services, a company owned by the Alaska Native corporation NANA, under a federal agreement worth roughly £502.9m ($685.5m), according to a contract notice reviewed by GovCon Wire.

A Department of Homeland Security Inspector General audit found that Akima's guards at Krome had violated federal use-of-force standards on multiple occasions, including placing a detainee in a chokehold and pepper-spraying another through a solitary confinement door slot despite no apparent threat.

A Human Rights Watch report published last year documented overcrowding and unsanitary conditions at the facility and said Akima's only response to its findings was a statement that the company could not 'comment publicly on the specifics of our engagement'.

Krome's Population Has Surged Under the Current Administration

Krome's population has grown sharply amid the wider immigration crackdown under President Trump, with the facility holding hundreds more detainees than its listed capacity at points over the past year, according to Associated Press reporting on ICE population data.

The same reporting found that the federal government's detention ombudsman office had received more than 2,000 complaints from detainees held across the country's immigration facilities in the early part of the year, and that the overcrowding had at times left the facility housing nearly three times its listed capacity.

Torres's arrest adds a criminal case involving facility staff to a broader set of allegations that have followed Krome for years, most of which have concerned conditions for detainees rather than the conduct of individual guards.

Reporting from last autumn, reviewed by Alaska Public Media, found that four people held in ICE custody at Krome had died since the start of 2025, a toll that advocates have repeatedly cited when pressing for outside oversight of the facility. A

kima has told reporters in the past that it could not discuss the specifics of its work for the government, and the company had not issued a public statement on the Torres case by the time this article was published.

The case adds a guard's own alleged theft to a list of complaints that has followed Krome for years, even as the fate of the missing £3,950 ($5,382), and of the detainee who reported it gone, remains unclear.