A federal judge has extended a temporary restraining order that was set to expire this week that dramatically limits the number of people immigration enforcement can hold inside its detention area on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza.
The order — which mandates basic sanitary conditions inside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement lockup and dramatically limits the capacity there — is now in place through Sept. 9.
Spokespeople for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the order.
Since Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued his original order on Aug. 12, attorneys and advocates have observed a dip in ICE arrests inside immigration courthouses. That may be partially related to the restraining order, and also separately due to fewer people showing up to court out of fear they’ll be detained, THE CITY’s reporting has found.
Kaplan’s order came after months of mounting concerns about overcrowding, limited food and unsanitary conditions at the Manhattan facility. Those issues coincided with ICE arrests shooting through the roof in late May, and a surge in the number of people and the length of time they were spending inside 10th floor holding cells. The immigrant advocacy group Make the Road New York, the ACLU and the NYCLU sued on Aug. 8 imploring a federal judge to step in.
In an Aug. 18 memo opposing the judge’s order, Nancy Zanello, the New York assistant field office director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wrote that at that time just eight people were being held on the 10th floor.
She also said that if Kaplan’s order remains requiring 50 square feet of personal space per person, at least eight feet away from a toilet, ICE could keep just 22 people at once across the 10th floor’s four holding areas.
As THE CITY previously reported, far more people than that were held on any given night during the months of June and July. There were regularly more than a 100 people staying there, ICE’s own internal detention data show, and on the evening of June 5 that peaked at 180 people. While the holding areas have no beds and are intended for stays of less than 12 hours, the average amount of time people were spending in the facility was about 58 hours.
Video clips taken by someone held inside 26 Federal Plaza, first reported on by THE CITY, confirmed the squalid and cramped circumstances inside.
Since ICE’s arrest surge began in late May, more than 2,000 people have passed through the 26 Federal Plaza holding rooms, as it serves as the centralized processing location for people arrested by ICE in immigration courthouses, in raids or at ICE check-ins.
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