ICE ordered to improve conditions at NYC facility after lawsuit alleges unsanitary cells where immigrants lack food and water
A federal judge in New York has ordered Donald Trump’s administration to improve conditions inside a makeshift detention center in downtown Manhattan, where detainees reported little access to food and water, sleeping on cement floors and not having anywhere to bathe for days or weeks at a time.
The order from District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday arrived just hours after Department of Justice lawyers admitted that immigrants inside the holding facility don’t have access to medication and aren’t allowed to meet with lawyers in person.
A lawsuit from civil rights groups includes several grim accounts from inside the facility on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, including allegations that a 20-year-old detainee was forced to wear blood-soaked clothing after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents didn’t provide her with a pad.
In court filings, detainees said they were fed inedible “slop” and were forced to sleep in cells surrounded by the “horrific stench” of sweat, urine and feces in rooms with open toilets.
Other detainees reported spending as much as three weeks inside the facility without a chance to bathe or brush their teeth. Another man said he watched a detainee have a seizure for 30 minutes before medical help arrived.
Kaplan ordered ICE to improve detainees’ access to personal hygiene products and medical care, as well as free, unmonitored and confidential calls with lawyers within 24 hours after they are detained.
Cells must also be cleaned three times a day, according to the order.
The order also prohibits people from detaining people in spaces with less than 50 square feet per person, which shrinks the capacity of the largest hold room to roughly a dozen or so people.
Tuesday’s order “sends a clear message: ICE cannot hold people in abusive conditions and deny them their constitutional rights to due process and legal representation,” according to Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, among groups that sued the administration over conditions at the facility.
The Independent has requested comment from the Department of Homeland Security.
In court filings, Hugo Elias Sanchez Trillos described spending nearly three weeks inside that facility, with a three-day break in between when he was transferred to Nassau County jail.
“I was in the same clothes for 19 days, without ever having an opportunity to bathe,” he wrote.
The room “smelled terrible because no one had bathed,” according to Joselyn Chipantiza Sisalema. “There was no bathroom paper, and the guards would throw only a few paper napkins into our room,” she wrote.
Detainees were served food only twice a day, around 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., and “we got water only when the guards felt like it,” Sanchez Trillos wrote.
