A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to improve conditions for migrants it detains in a federal building in downtown Manhattan.
Civil rights groups raised alarm to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan about conditions in the facility, saying migrants were overcrowded, subjected to extreme temperatures and not provided sufficient access to medication and counsel.
The Justice Department acknowledged migrants were only being given two meals per day and not provided with their medication or sleeping mats. But the government contested other accusations and argued the judge shouldn’t intervene because there wasn’t presently overcrowding.
“There seems to be quite a gap between the ICE standards, indeed, and what’s really happening,” Kaplan said at a hearing earlier in the day.
He ordered ICE to provide various items to the migrants upon request, including clean clothing, soap, feminine hygiene products, bedding mats, additional blankets, and access to medication and medical personnel. Migrants must also be given bottled water and a third meal if they want it.
Kaplan’s five-page ruling additionally mandates immigration officials set up dedicated telephone lines so migrants can call an attorney unmonitored within 24 hours of being detained. They must be allowed to make additional calls every additional 12 hours.
The Hill has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.
“Today’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,” Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement. The ACLU helped bring the case.
“We’ll continue to fight to ensure that peoples’ rights are upheld at 26 Federal Plaza and beyond,” Cho continued.
The ruling lasts up to two weeks, and the judge is set to soon consider whether to grant a longer injunction.
“This is a first step, in my view,” Kaplan said at the hearing.
“And my conclusion here is that there is a very serious threat of continuing irreparable injury, given the conditions that I’ve been told about,” he continued. “I have no enforceable way of assuring that any progress that, in fact, has been made won’t backslide very quickly.”
Kaplan is an appointee of former President Clinton.
ICE has setup the holding facility in an office building at Federal Plaza in downtown Manhattan. Civil rights groups have accused ICE of using it to support systematic arrests migrants who appear for immigration court proceedings in the building.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Oestericher said only 26 individuals were currently behind held in the facility, which consists of four rooms. The plaintiffs had said as many as 90 people were recently held in just several hundred square feet.
“Present conditions are relevant,” Oestericher told the judge. “To the extent they are talking about overcrowding, it does not appear presently that there is overcrowding.”
Oestericher said he didn’t have firm numbers yet on the facility’s recent history because of the fast speed of the case but he would provide that answer to the court.
“I think we all agree that conditions at 26 Federal Plaza need to be humane, and we obviously share that belief. I think there is some factual disagreement,” he said.
Democrats have increasingly taken aim, too. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), whose district includes the facility, is suing the Trump administration over allegations he was unlawfully denied access to tour it in June. ICE personnel told him they weren’t obligated to provide access because it is not a “detention facility.”
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