U.S. Judge orders ICE to improve conditions after NYC immigration detainees complain of mistreatment

Members of the NYPD Strategic Response Group enter 26 Federal Plaza, where immigration court is located, June 8, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Heather Khalifa)

NEW YORK — A U.S. federal judge ordered the Trump administration Tuesday to immediately improve conditions at a New York City immigration holding facility, acting on complaints by jailed migrants that cells are dirty, smelly and overcrowded.

Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, ruling in a lawsuit filed on behalf of detainees, issued a temporary restraining order requiring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to limit capacity, ensure cleanliness and provide sleeping mats in so-called hold rooms at 26 Federal Plaza, a government building in Manhattan.

A cell phone video recorded last month by a detainee showed about two dozen men crowded in one of the building’s four hold rooms, many lying on the floor with thermal blankets but no mattresses or padding.

In court filings, detainees complained they had no soap, toothbrushes and other hygiene products. They also said they were fed inedible “slop” and endured the “horrific stench” of sweat, urine and feces, in part because the rooms have open toilets. One woman having her period couldn’t use menstrual products because women in her room were given just two to divvy up, the lawsuit said.

Kaplan instructed federal immigration officials to allocate 50 square feet (4.6 square metres) per person — shrinking the capacity of the largest hold room to about 15 people, down from the 40 or more individuals that detainees said were being jammed into the rooms. The building, home to immigration court, the FBI‘s New York field office and other federal offices, has become a hotbed of arrests and detention amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

The judge ordered the government to thoroughly clean the cells three times a day, provide adequate supplies of soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste and feminine products. Addressing concerns that detainees weren’t able to communicate with lawyers, Kaplan ordered the government to make accommodations for confidential, unmonitored and unrecorded legal telephone calls.

“My conclusion here is that there is a very serious threat of continuing irreparable injury, given the conditions that I’ve been told about,” Kaplan said at a hearing Tuesday where a government lawyer conceded that some of the complaints were valid.

“I think we all agree that conditions at 26 Federal Plaza need to be humane, and we obviously share that belief,” government lawyer Jeffrey S. Oestericher said, adding that he agreed “inhumane conditions are not appropriate and should not be tolerated.”

The lawsuit — filed by the immigrant rights organization Make the Road New York, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union — sought court intervention to end what plaintiff lawyer Heather Gregorio called “inhumane and horrifying conditions.”

Some detainees have been held at 26 Federal Plaza for days or even weeks before being sent to other facilities — longer than the 72-hour norm, Gregorio said.

In a sworn declaration, Nancy Zanello, an assistant director of ICE’s New York City Field Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, wrote that as of Monday a total of 24 people were held in the building’s four hold rooms — well shy of the city fire marshal’s 154-person cap.

Each room is equipped with at least one toilet and sink, and hygiene products are available, including soap and teeth cleaning wipes, and feminine products, Zanello said.

Sergio Barco Mercado, the named plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a court filing that he was held at 26 Federal Plaza for two days last week after his arrest there while leaving an immigration court hearing. He was subsequently transferred to an upstate New York detention facility.

Barco Mercado, a native of Peru who said he sought asylum in the U.S. in 2022, said his hold room was “extremely crowded,” cold and “smelled of sewage,” and that the conditions exacerbated a tooth infection that swelled his face and altered his speech.

“We did not always get enough water,” Barco Mercado said in a sworn declaration. “There was one guard who would sometimes hold a bottle of water up and people would wait to have him squirt some into our mouths, like we were animals.”

Another detainee, Carlos Lopez Benitez, said he fled violence in Paraguay in 2023 and was seeking asylum in the U.S. when he was arrested in July while leaving an immigration court hearing. Officers pressed him to self-deport, he said, and told him he’d be in detention until a 2029 hearing on his asylum application.

Lopez Benitez said an arresting officer showed him a cell phone photo of his arrest and mocked him for crying. In his holding cell, he said, officers kept the air conditioning blasting and doled out meals that “looked like dog food.”

Michael R. Sisak, The Associated Press