Detainees describe horrific conditions inside Minnesota federal building awaiting deportation: ‘There was no humanity’
The Trump administration may be pulling some of its immigration agents out of Minneapolis, but detainees say they have continued to face severe mistreatment, like being denied food, proper sanitation, and legal counsel inside a federal building being used as a detention center.
The Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, a federal complex containing an immigration court and agency offices, has also housed scores of individuals arrested as part of the White House crackdown.
Inside, detainees allege they’ve been kept in abhorrent conditions in a building not designed for long-term detention.
One former detainee, a legal refugee with a pending green card, told the Minnesota StarTribune she was shackled at the ankles and held in a locked bathroom with three men, a room that had no bedding or pillows and a sink that didn’t work.
The detainees were fed one sandwich a day, the detainee alleges.
She was later moved to a different locked bathroom, where she said guards didn’t give her access to menstrual products, and ignored her requests for medical care even as she felt dizzy and vomited.
“There was no humanity,” the woman told the paper through a translator.
Others told the paper that conditions were so crowded they had to take turns lying down in their cells.
Detainees have also largely been unable to access their rights to legal counsel, they alleged.
One refugee told the StarTribune he was held in Whipple for a night, then flown to Houston without being able to inform his attorney. He was then released without his ID after nearly a week, only to be returned to Minnesota when a nonprofit came to pick him up.
Federal agencies disputed the allegations and accounts in the StarTribune’s investigation.
“Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE,” a spokesperson told the paper. “ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
The Whipple Building is also subject to an ongoing class-action lawsuit, which alleges detainees have had insufficient access to legal counsel.
“Individuals who have been detained at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Minneapolis reveal violent arrests, extreme overcrowding, and constant shackling,” the law firm Advocates for Human Rights said in a statement last week after filing the case. “DHS is further perpetuating these horrific conditions by blocking detainees from accessing legal counsel to seek their freedom.”
