A United States federal judge has ordered immigration authorities to improve conditions at a New York City facility following reports of overcrowding, inadequate food, and unhygienic conditions. Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order that mandated Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to implement reforms at 26 Federal Plaza, a government building in Manhattan where one floor contains holding cells for migrants and asylum seekers.
The restraining order requires the government to limit capacity at the holding facility, ensure cleanliness, and provide sleeping mats. Kaplan concluded that there is a “very serious threat of continuing irreparable injury” given the conditions he had been told about. Under Kaplan’s order, the government will be forced to thoroughly clean the cells three times a day and provide adequate supplies of soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste, and feminine products.
The changes come in response to a complaint filed by lawyers for a Peruvian asylum-seeker named Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, who was taken into custody on August 8 after appearing for a scheduled court date. Barco Mercado testified that the holding room was “extremely crowded” 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.” Barco Mercado has since been transferred to a facility in upstate New York.
In court filings, other detainees complained that they had no soap, toothbrushes, or other hygiene products while locked in the 26 Federal building. They also said they were fed inedible “slop” and endured the “horrific stench” of sweat, urine, and faeces, in part because the rooms have open toilets. One woman having her period could not use menstrual products because women in her room were given just two to divvy up, the lawsuit said.
A mobile phone video recorded last month showed about two dozen men crowded in one of the building’s four holding rooms, many lying on the floor with thermal blankets but no mattresses or padding. At Tuesday’s hearing, a government lawyer conceded that “inhumane conditions are not appropriate and should not be tolerated.”
The government also tried to downplay allegations of overcrowding at the facility and inhumane conditions. In a sworn declaration, Nancy Zanello, the assistant director of ICE’s New York City Field Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, wrote that 24 people were held in the building’s four holding rooms as of Monday. That number was well below the 154-person limit imposed by the city fire marshal for the floor.
The 26 Federal Plaza site has become a flashpoint in New York as the city contends with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigration. Critics have denounced such arrests as violations of the right to due process. They warn that, by carrying out arrests in court buildings, officials could discourage foreign nationals from pursuing lawful paths to immigration.