Last summer, as federal agents were detaining immigrants moments after they left their court hearings, officers crammed as many as 100 people at a time into a makeshift detention facility on the 10th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper. Covertly recorded video footage showed detainees lying on cement floors with only emergency blankets, steps away from a toilet separated by a waist-high partition. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson flatly denied allegations of 'overcrowding or subprime conditions' as 'categorically false.'
Internal Warnings Ignored
However, newly released emails, text messages, and testimony from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers suggest that they not only knew conditions were deteriorating but were repeatedly raising red flags. One official said they were 'concerned about the safety of everyone there.' Another called conditions 'insane,' while a third said they were 'creating an unsafe environment.'
In an email, ICE official Lige Hampton admitted the facility held at least 200 people, with an estimated 60 additional arrests each day. 'Hopefully we don’t wait until something negative happens,' he wrote. Another official, Ladeon Francis, wrote that ICE was a 'victim of our own success,' noting that officers were arresting more people 'than bedspace can be found locally.' The makeshift detention space was 'never designed for such an operation,' he added.
Desperate Calls for Action
'This is insane,' another official wrote. 'We desperately need to get some detainees out of 26 Fed. … Something has to get done.' Despite these warnings, a Homeland Security spokesperson again told The Independent that 'any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions at ICE facilities' is 'categorically false.'
The documents were released as part of one of the first-ever trials over ICE detentions during the Trump administration. The 10th floor holding rooms at 26 Federal Plaza, which also houses Manhattan’s largest immigration court, include four cells designed only for short-term stays. ICE’s own guidance says they are not intended to hold people longer than 12 hours, but immigrants testified spending days inside without beds or showers.
Detainee Testimonies
Nuvia Ventura Martinez was detained after her ICE check-in appointment and described conditions as 'dreadful.' Women menstruating bled through their clothes, food was 'almost non-existent,' and she lacked access to diabetes medication. 'I was just a body that they crammed into a room, almost as if to be forgotten,' she wrote.
Carlos Lopez Benitez was grabbed after his immigration court hearing, which he attended with his U.S. citizen sisters. An officer held up a phone showing a photo of him weeping and laughed. 'I asked why they were doing this and an ICE officer said ‘it’s a new government,’' Lopez Benitez wrote.
Court Orders Violated
In August, Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered improvements and banned ICE from detaining people in spaces with less than 50 square feet per person. But newly released messages show officials violated the order within days. 'We are in violation of the [temporary restraining order],' wrote Nancy Zanello, an ICE official. The restraining order was 'crippling,' another wrote.
ICE officials were also aware of 'serious medical needs' among detainees but ignored them, according to the lawsuit. Zanello exchanged texts about emergencies including a detainee with monkeypox, someone having a seizure, and a 'cardiac lady.' 'This week has been one gross contagion after another,' she wrote last July.
Broader Context
Thousands across the country have faced arrest after showing up for court-ordered ICE check-ins as part of Trump’s campaign to rapidly deport at least 1 million people annually. The Department of Justice instructed immigration judges to dismiss cases, making immigrants easy targets. A federal judge in a separate case called the practice 'arbitrary' and a 'game of detention roulette' violating due process.
Lawyers for detainees wrote Wednesday that evidence reveals ICE officials 'confirmed that this crisis was a predictable and foreseeable consequence' of the administration’s moves. 'In other words, this crisis was of defendants’ own making,' they said.
