ICE must improve conditions in NYC migrant holding cells, judge rules

A group of federal agents from various agencies in a hallway outside immigration courtrooms at Federal Plaza in Manhattan, July 11, 2025. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday, Aug. 12, 2025, to swiftly remedy conditions inside migrant holding cells in New York City where detainees have complained of squalid and overcrowded conditions. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

By Luis Ferré-Sadurní

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration earlier this week to swiftly remedy conditions inside migrant holding cells in New York City where detainees have complained of squalid and overcrowded conditions.

The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold fewer people in the 10th-floor holding cells of its lower Manhattan offices at 26 Federal Plaza. ICE has been accused of detaining dozens of migrants for days or weeks there in tight quarters meant to hold detainees for just a few hours.

The judge also ordered ICE to allow migrants to place calls to their lawyers and to ensure access to proper medical and hygienic care following allegations that detainees were deprived of showers, given meager meals and forced to sleep on the concrete floor without any bedding.

Tuesday’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court Friday by legal organizations representing a Peruvian immigrant, Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, who was arrested by ICE and held at 26 Federal Plaza last week.

Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order while he fully reviews the case and considers whether to issue a longer-lasting order. ICE has repeatedly denied that the cells at 26 Federal Plaza are overcrowded or that conditions are inadequate.

The ruling is a short-term victory for immigration activists who have spent months denouncing the conditions in the holding cells. They have filled up as ICE has increased arrests in New York’s immigration courts, straining the agency’s detention capacity. Many of the more than 3,200 people ICE has arrested in the New York City area since Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump’s second term began, have been detained at 26 Federal Plaza at some point, according to new federal data released this week.

The holding cells emerged as a flashpoint this summer as migrants shared details of overcrowding so severe that some of them slept sitting upright or on the floor by the toilets, which filled the cells with a “horrific stench,” according to the lawsuit. A cellphone video recorded by a detainee last month offered the first glimpse of the conditions, escalating criticism by congressional Democrats who have been denied access to inspect the cells.

The lawsuit argued that ICE was violating its own policies and the Constitution by holding detainees in the cells for longer than 72 hours and by depriving access to lawyers. The legal groups representing Barco Mercado are the American Civil Liberties Union; the New York Civil Liberties Union; Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group; and Wang Hecker, a law firm.

The lawyers in the case are seeking to certify the suit as a class-action lawsuit on behalf of the thousands of immigrants who have been detained or could be detained at 26 Federal Plaza.

In legal filings and public statements, ICE said that the cells were used only for short-term confinement while detainees were processed and transferred to other detention facilities.

In filings submitted Monday, Nancy Zanello, the assistant director of the ICE New York City field office, said that the agency was holding 24 detainees in its four holding cells, which she said had a capacity of 154 people.

Zanello wrote that most detainees are usually transferred to other facilities within 72 hours and that only six detainees held at 26 Federal Plaza on Monday had been there for longer.

Zanello acknowledged that the cells did not have private sleeping quarters but said that detainees were provided blankets and that the cells and toilets “are cleaned with industrial cleaning products multiple times a day.” She said that detainees were given two meals a day, permitted to receive prescription medication and allowed to make legal calls if requested.

During a hearing Tuesday, Kaplan — who was appointed by President Bill Clinton — expressed skepticism about the agency’s claims and questioned whether ICE had recently moved people out of the cells because of the threat of litigation.

“What is the history of the number of people in these rooms over, say, the last three weeks, day by day?” he asked the government’s lawyer at one point. “You have that information, but you haven’t provided it.”

The judge ordered ICE to allot at least 50 square feet per person in the cells, which means ICE would be limited to about 35 detainees across the four holding cells, a dramatic reduction in capacity.

ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling.

The agency’s assertions stood in stark contrast to the accounts submitted by eight detainees in sworn affidavits and by 10 lawyers. They described an opaque, bureaucratic maze that made it impossible for them to contact clients or to even confirm if they were being held at the detention facility in lower Manhattan.

The migrants described temperatures that fluctuated between stifling and freezing, and an overpowering smell from one or two toilets that have little privacy other than a waist-high barrier, forcing detainees to go to the bathroom in front of others. They also said they were given inedible meals that led one detainee to lose almost 20 pounds during the nearly three weeks he was held there without being able to bathe.

Another detainee, Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, a 20-year-old woman from Ecuador, said she was held for 10 days without access to sanitary pads during the five days she was menstruating.

Carlos Lopez Benitez, a Paraguayan whose arrest last month was documented by The New York Times, said an ICE officer mocked him for crying during his arrest and tried to pressure him to self-deport, threatening to keep him in detention for four years, until his next asylum claim hearing in 2029. Lopez Benitez said he spoke with detainees who had been there for 10 and 15 days, and was never told by ICE that he could request a call with his lawyers.

“Many people in the room with me were getting sick,” he wrote in the affidavit. “And people are depressed, thinking of accepting their deportation.”

In a written order issued after the hearing, Kaplan ordered ICE to furnish the cells with “clean bedding” mats for each detainee, as well as soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes and toothpaste.

And he ordered ICE to allow detainees to make “confidential, unmonitored, unrecorded” calls with lawyers within 24 hours after being detained and at least once every 12 hours after.