Judge orders ICE to meet basic living standards at NY holding area for immigrants

A federal judge on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order requiring that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding rooms in New York City meet certain minimum conditions, including that the agency offer sleeping mats and toiletries and allow detainees to make calls with attorneys.

The order, following a raft of complaints about conditions at the facilities at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, comes after civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Make the Road New York, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration last week.

The suit alleges that the ICE holding rooms had “crowded, squalid, and punitive conditions.” Migrants detained in the holding rooms told Gothamist, in an article referenced in the lawsuit, that they received insufficient food, slept on the floor, and were held overnight in rooms with 100 people.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan wrote that the order will remain in effect for 14 days, while the litigation continues.

Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said in a statement that the “order sends a clear message: ICE cannot hold people in abusive conditions and deny them their Constitutional rights to due process and legal representation.”

She added: "We’ll continue to fight to ensure that peoples’ rights are upheld at 26 Federal Plaza and beyond.”

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement released Wednesday, denied the allegations in the lawsuit and said the agency would appeal the judge’s decision.

“This order and this lawsuit are driven by complete fiction about 26 Federal Plaza,” McLaughlin said in the statement. “Any claim of subprime conditions at ICE facilities are categorically false.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow for the Washington D.C-based American Immigration Council, called the ruling the "first major victory involving conditions of confinement at ICE field offices."

Detainees at 26 Federal Plaza include immigrants who have recently been arrested by ICE and await transfer to other, more permanent ICE detention centers.

Under the temporary restraining order, ICE “hold rooms” – as the agency refers to them – at 26 Federal Plaza will be required to provide at least 50 square feet per detainee. The new requirement would drastically reduce the capacity across the facility’s four hold rooms, to about 35 people, based on the size of the rooms. A fire marshal previously set the capacity for the four rooms at 154 people, according to the affidavit of Nancy Zanello, an assistant field office director for ICE in New York City.

The agency is also required, under the court order, to allow detainees to make “confidential, unmonitored, unrecorded” and free calls to lawyers within 24 hours of being detained and at least once every 12 hours thereafter.

ICE must also provide detained immigrants with a written notice of their rights, informing them that they can consult with an attorney and request – and receive free of charge – clean clothing, a private area to change clothes, additional blankets, bottled water, one additional meal per day, and the services of a medical professional.

The required written notice must notify detainees that they can request to keep their own prescription medications, and they must be provided free toiletries including soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, and feminine hygiene products.

The lawsuit also alleges that ICE’s Online Detainee Locator System, a virtual tool to find the location of ICE detainees, does not accurately display a person’s location when they are detained at 26 Federal Plaza. Instead of indicating a detention center, the website often merely says “Call Field Office.” Attorneys say they’re not able to get through to anyone at the number provided.

Kaplan’s order requires that ICE’s Detainee Locator System accurately identify where detainees are located “in real time or as close thereto as is reasonably possible.”

The lawsuit cites ICE rules requiring immigrants be detained in ICE hold rooms for no longer than 72 hours. However, several immigrants have said in court affidavits they’ve been held for longer than that — for nine, 10, and 15 days.

ICE rules, referenced in the lawsuit, also require that detainees be provided a meal every six hours. But immigrants told Gothamist they sometimes received just one meal a day. A government attorney said in a hearing on Tuesday that detainees receive two meals per day.

Government attorneys confirmed in court on Tuesday complaints from detainees that they can’t access certain medication or receive in-person visits with attorneys.

Zanello, a local assistant field office director for ICE, said in an affidavit that detainees are given a change of clothes, blankets, and additional meals upon request. She said hygiene products, including soap and feminine hygiene products, are "made available.” She also said detainees can make unlimited free, unmonitored legal calls.

In sworn affidavits, nine immigrants detained at the facility and other lawyers of detainees describe temperatures fluctuating from freezing to sweltering, inadequate food, insufficient toilet paper, strong foul smells, and limited calls including to lawyers. The lawsuit also mentions a video of the facilities, taken by a migrant detained there and first published by the news outlet The City, that shows dozens of men held in a fluorescent-lit room, and some lying on the ground, covered in aluminum emergency blankets.

Joselyn Chipantiza Sisalema, from Ecuador, said in an affidavit that her clothes were stained with blood from her period, because the guards gave the women in her room just two feminine pads to share among them.

Carlos Lopez Benitez, from Paraguay, claimed in an affidavit that the officers who arrested him mocked him for crying. Another detainee, Hugo Sanchez Trillos from Columbia, said in an affidavit that he lost 24 pounds during his over two-week stay, a loss he attributes to lack of food, sleep, and an illness he incurred during his detention.

“ICE treats the people at 26 Federal Plaza like animals,” Sanchez Trillos said in his affidavit. “What I experienced was a severe trauma.”

This story was updated with additional information, including comment from ICE.