Title: Squalid Conditions at ICE's Manhattan Facility

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Amina Srna: It's The Brian Lehrer Show. I'm producer Amina Srna filling in for Brian today. In lower Manhattan, behind closed doors on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, immigrants in ICE custody have been sleeping on the floor, some go days without showers or clean clothes. Many say they can't get enough food, water, or even basic hygiene. They've been denied visits and private calls with their attorneys. Last month, the city published a video taken by someone inside. People packed shoulder to shoulder, lying on the floor under thin aluminum blankets, inches from exposed toilets behind a waist-high wall.

It's a space ICE says is meant for short processing stops of under 12 hours, but records show people are held there for days at a time. Now, weeks after complaints and a lawsuit from immigrant rights groups, a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to make changes from limiting crowding to guaranteeing three meals a day. The order lasts through August 26th, but the judge's questions in court suggest doubts about whether ICE will comply and about why the public, including members of Congress, have been kept from seeing inside.

Gwynne Hogan, senior reporter at THE CITY and former WNYC and Gothamist reporter, is on this story, and she'll join us now to share some of her reporting on it. Hi, Gwynne. Welcome back to WNYC.

Gwynne Hogan: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Amina Srna: Listeners, we can take your calls on the conditions at ICE's Manhattan facility. You can help us report this story if you're in any way connected to it, certainly if you or someone you know has been through ICE's processing or detention system in New York or elsewhere. Call or text 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Gwynne, can you start by explaining what this 10th-floor facility is and who ends up there?

Gwynne Hogan: Absolutely. This is an ICE processing floor. It's on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, which is a federal building that has offices of all different kinds, and also ironically, two floors of immigration courts. The ICE has a field office also in this building, and people arrested in the field office area are regularly taken to the 10th floor for processing before they can be assigned to an actual detention center. The field office area obviously covers New York City, but it also covers Long Island. It covers parts of upstate, like up to Poughkeepsie and Newburgh. People from the entire region can be sent here as a layover before they get on a plane at JFK to be sent to Louisiana or Texas.

What we saw, my colleague, Haidee Chu, has been able to analyze ICE's own detention data. We saw for a long time through back as far as 2023, which is when we have numbers, people would spend four to five hours here, and only about seven to eight people a day would go through it, but we started to see a spike in arrests in late May. As that happened, the time people were spending in this facility went up to more than a day, sometimes four days. We found cases of people who had been there for more than eight. Longer and longer times and more and more people in these rooms.

That is the context for the video then that we were able to obtain of inside of this room that showed people just lying on the floor in a condition that the person taking the video said they were being kept like animals.

Amina Srna: You've spoken to people who are held there. What are they saying are the day-to-day conditions like?

Gwynne Hogan: It's really hard to get a sense of what it's like today or yesterday because people are there, and then they're transferred, and then they talk to their lawyers from other facilities, but we have, through court documents, really been starting to get a better picture. Most recently, like you mentioned, Make the Road New York, the ACLU, and NYCLU sued on Friday. Over the course of the past four days, they've submitted more than a dozen affidavits of people who were held inside. The stories are very similar, where people have two meals a day, they've been told, and they're described as slop, as one person put it, like a plastic bag that's then heated up that seems like leftovers and has a bad smell.

People are regularly describing not having access to water. One man's affidavit said that immigrants were forced to line up, and he sprayed a bottle of water into each of their mouths most recently, which is a really extreme situation. Everyone describes the lights being left on for 24 hours. There are no beds. ICE does not contest that there are beds. People are laying on the floor, although many people said it was too crowded to even lie down, and they had to try to sleep while sitting up.

Amina Srna: One woman said she menstruated for five days without being given a pad. How common are stories like those in the affidavits?

Gwynne Hogan: That's correct. Her story, this young Ecuadorian woman, she's 19, she's a public school student. She's been released from ICE custody since, and I was lucky enough to be there when she arrived and was reunited with her family at the Port Authority Bus Terminal a few weeks ago. She was released through a federal lawsuit, a writ of habeas corpus, and a federal judge ordered her released. Yes, her story was extremely striking. She said that she was in a room full of women. Many of them had their periods, and ICE offered them two pads to split between them and she was not lucky enough to get the pad, so she was covered in blood for five days, she said, during the entire time that she was menstruating.

Yes, people that are held here say they cannot bathe, they cannot brush their teeth, they do not get a change of clothes, which in theory, this room was meant for less than 12-hour stays, but when you're spending seven to eight days here, four, five, without these basic sanitary elements, it obviously becomes a situation that's untenable. That is what the judge's order has mandated. It's strictly limiting capacity. It's also requiring ICE to provide three meals a day instead of two, and it's also requiring these basic sanitary elements to be provided. Soap, menstruation pads for women, that type of thing.

Amina Srna: As you were just saying, ICE's own policy says the space is for short processing stops of under 12 hours, but as you've said, you've found people there held for days, even more than a week. Why is this happening?

Gwynne Hogan: What we're seeing is that ICE has just dramatically increased the number of arrests that it's making. At the same time, it hasn't really built up capacity to keep all these people. I think that this will start to change in the coming months as the funding from Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, as he's called it, hits the wires and they're able to build just way more places to keep people. In the interim, as that capacity is being built up, people are getting trapped in this limbo area as ICE tries to figure out where to send people. A field officer has admitted as much. He was pressed for answers by two members of Congress the other day, and he was like, "Well, we're basically at capacity."

You get sent to this site while ICE tries to figure out where to find you a bed, and that's the part of this situation. I should say, we've been hearing from also detention sites all over the city that there are also bad conditions, people sleeping on the floor. It's not like you're suddenly in a better situation when you get transferred to Texas or Louisiana, but there is this sort of logjam right now because the number of arrests is just through the roof we've seen.

Amina Srna: Before the show even started, we had a text from someone with experience in Texas. Listener writes, "My partner's two brothers got ICEd in Midland, Texas, stopped for a broken taillight. Cops took all their money and turned them over to ICE. They had work visas which were slightly expired. Fortunately, they got deported to Mexico instead of Guantanamo or El Salvador. There were 100 men crammed into one room. The Mexican American guards at the detention center laughed at them when they asked for water, told them to drink from the toilet."

Listeners, we'll invite more of your comments or questions, especially if you have any experience or know anyone, or work as an immigration lawyer. 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Gwynne, now a federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to make changes, like limiting crowding and guaranteeing three meals a day. How does that compare to what detainees are actually getting?

Gwynne Hogan: ICE admitted that they were giving two meals a day, so they're going to be getting-- The judge is ordering them to get a third meal. ICE has also admitted that it's been logistically difficult for them to get you in touch with your lawyer, but the judge is ordering that to occur if your stay is over 24 hours, and then every 12 hours after that. You have to be able to make a confidential call with your lawyer now. That is also different. The judge is ordering these things that we mentioned. Sanitary. The room has to be cleaned three times a day. They have to be provided with sanitary products to be able to keep themselves clean.

If the Trump administration is to abide by this order, we should see conditions improve. I will say, the other really dramatic element of this ruling is that the judge has said that every person needs 50 square feet of space, and that dramatically limits the amount of people that ICE can keep in this facility. An ICE agent submitted an affidavit saying that there are four hold rooms with a total of about 1,821 square feet of space. If you're only allowing 50 people in that space, that's about 36 people in total that can be there.

We know from data, again, that was published by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by my colleague, Haidee Chu, at THE CITY, that most nights in the past two months, there have been way more people than that. There was a spike in early June, that was around 170 people there at night. We're talking about way fewer space. This presents a logistical issue for the agency all across the region, if it doesn't have this place where it can now take people that it's arresting, if it plans to continue to abide by this judge's order. I do think it is a question.

The judge, like you mentioned, was very skeptical that the agency would follow suit, but at least in the interim, ICE swore or said in court, their attorneys, and in an affidavit, that just 26 people were inside the 10th floor currently as of Monday. That, again, is a huge drop from the numbers that we have most recently through the end of July, where it was around 100 people, 60 people, as many as 170 people a night.

Amina Srna: The order lasts through August 26th. What happens after that? Is there any path for it to be extended?

Gwynne Hogan: Yes, absolutely. This is a temporary restraining order that the attorneys asked for, just because of the urgency of the conditions and the extremity of the situation that people have been suffering now for weeks, but there is definitely a briefing. I'm not exactly sure on the briefing schedule, but the government has more time to present information, like the logs of number of people that have been staying there and other evidence to the court that it's in compliance with these rules. That'll come out in the coming weeks, and then you could imagine that the judge would extend that or possibly end it if he is convinced that the Trump administration has improved conditions inside of the building.

As attorneys for the plaintiffs, Make the Road, ACLU, and the NYCLU have said, "We do not trust that ICE is going to continue to comply without an extended court order." That's what they're asking for. They're asking for the judge to remain involved, obviously, after the end of August.

Amina Srna: I see that medical care is another issue. One detail in your story was about a man who had a seizure for half an hour before he was offered any medical help. Can you tell us that story?

Gwynne Hogan: That's right. This is something else that we've done some reporting on. We were able to get 911 calls from this floor. We did find a number of people who were taken to New York Presbyterian, which is a very close hospital for seizures, for panic attacks, this type of thing. What we heard more frequently from attorneys, from immigrant advocates, and their relatives is that people would complain, say that they had some urgent medical need, and have it be ignored for hours and hours before it got to the point where somebody was called. That's indicative of this one man's affidavit, who said he watched somebody having what seemed like a seizure for 30 minutes before a nurse came.

ICE has said that there is medical help. I'm aware that there are some nurses on staff that assess people's needs, but there's definitely a question about how appropriate that medical care is. We've also heard cases of people, for example, who did not have their meds when they were arrested, had their medical conditions worsened dramatically, and even had ICE called them, being like, to the wife, "Bring the meds now." That's definitely an ongoing issue that the Trump administration has totally contested. They have said over and over and over again, "We categorically deny any issue you've described. Everybody has access to food and medical care, and nothing is wrong here."

Amina Srna: We have a caller, I think, on, unfortunately, a similar point, Sunny in lower Manhattan. Hi, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling.

Sunny: Hi, my name is Sunny, as you had said. I volunteer as a court observer and escort at immigration court. I'm also a licensed physician. I wanted to just share with you what happened the first day that I volunteered. As soon as I walked into 26 Federal Plaza, I noticed that there was an immigrant, or somebody who appeared to be an immigrant, who looked like they may have passed out, sitting in a wheelchair, surrounded by four DHS guards doing nothing for her. I walked over, I said, "Hey, I'm a physician. What can I do? Is there something I can do to help? I've done this before on airplanes, everywhere." They said, "Unless you can prove you're a doctor, we need you to move away."

I've never had that happen when I've offered to help. Luckily, for the first time in my life, because of Trump, this past March, when I renewed my medical license, I got a wallet-sized medical license. I was able to prove that I was a physician. When I assessed the patient, I said, the first thing I asked is, "Did you call 911?" They said yes. I did a medical assessment. I thought maybe she needed some juice. I said, "Can you get me some juice?" They said, "No, the family has to go," but the family were too scared, so I had to run across the street and get orange juice and come back.

When I came back, there was a nurse there, to my shock, from DHS. She had her back to me, and I said, "Hey, I think she might be hypoglycemic. I have some orange juice." She said, "I don't need that." I said, "Well, can I just leave it?" She wouldn't even look at me. She said, "No, get away." There was another volunteer with me who was an EMS, and he was able to prove he was EMS. He told me that when I left to get orange juice, he pulled out his phone for the third time to say, "Listen, why isn't 911 here?" He had to call 911. They told me they had called 911, but they had not.

Amina Srna: Sunny, thank you so much for your story. We really appreciate your call. Gwynne, who staffs these places? Are ICE agents working as correctional officers, basically, and medical staff? I mean, what's going on?

Gwynne Hogan: That is our understanding, that these facilities are staffed by ICE. There are some nurses that work in the facility. They're either directly employed by ICE or a subcontractor. A little unclear. Still working out the details there, but yes, we've heard that ICE agents are the ones that are preparing the meals. I think that there's also a capacity issue. The number of agents that is needed is just dramatically different from when they were just seeing seven people in this facility.

Amina Srna: One more text, Gwynne, on this. Listener writes, "I'm a social worker in Westchester, and one of my families was just deported, a mother and her daughter. They were scooped up at Federal Plaza at a regular immigration check-in appointment. Mother had been told to show up to appointment with an airline ticket to Guatemala for her and her daughter. Why was she told to buy tickets?" Have you seen any of that? I know that's very particular.

Gwynne Hogan: I haven't seen that being told to buy a ticket. I've heard a number of situations where they might be like, "You have to leave." If you go through an immigration judge, they might say, "Okay, you can leave on your own accord. You have to buy a ticket by this date." That seems strange to me. Yes, we are seeing detentions at ICE check-ins. That is another big number of arrests that has ramped up, at the same time that we've seen the spike in courthouse arrests. We've seen all these different ways that ICE is detaining people increase at once.

Yes, check-ins tend to be when you already have a removal order, so you're a little bit further along in the deportation process. You had your chance to go before a judge, whatever. You might have missed a court date and had a removal order, or a judge decided that you didn't merit asylum, and then there's a removal order, and often, ICE has not deported you right away. Typically, you would have an annual check-in with the agency, where they're like, "Okay, did you commit any crimes? No? Okay, you're free to go."

That's a situation that we've seen escalating in the past few weeks, where people are told, "Okay, instead of an annual check-in, you have to come every three months, or you have to come every day this week," which is obviously extremely destabilizing for people. Some people live in Long Island, and they have to come to Federal Plaza every day for a week. We are seeing people-- It's hard to say increasingly, because it's a little bit hard to say what the numbers are, but definitely, people are being detained at these check-ins. We don't really have a family detention network. There's no place to put kids, which is something that was disbanded during the first or after the first Trump administration.

Those people tend to be deported very quickly, held in one of the few family detention sites, usually in Texas, and then sent to a different country within a matter of days.

Amina Srna: Let's go to another call. Nuala in Jackson Heights. Hi, you're in WNYC.

Nuala: Morning. My name's Nuala O'Doherty-Naranjo. I run the Jackson Heights Immigrant Center here in Jackson Heights, Queens. I think the most disturbing thing I've seen, which I've seen a lot, is I have a family, who the son was taken into our custody. He's under 18, so he's not in ICE custody, but they won't release the son to the family unless the father goes and checks in personally with ICE. It just sounds like a setup that they're going to take the father in custody to release the son. As a lawyer, how do you tell someone to check in with ICE when they regularly arrest people?

Gwynne Hogan: Yes. That is such a question that attorneys and obviously people who have these check-ins and who have court appointments are struggling with. If you don't go, they can order you deported. If you do go, they can arrest you and deport you. I think it puts people in these extremely difficult situations where, yes, the attorneys that I'm talking to are like, "I do not know what to advise right now." These are people that are trying to follow the rules that our system has.

You can malign the immigration court system, that it's backlogged, that it takes too long, but these were the rules that were set up for people, and people are trying to follow the rules. To then suddenly be turning these places into traps for people is-- It's a really dramatic moment that I think is going to have an impact for our immigration system for years to come.

Amina Srna: Another issue in your story. Members of Congress have been barred from visiting the floor despite a federal law saying they can inspect detention facilities. What's ICE's explanation?

Gwynne Hogan: That is correct. Right. If you are a member of the House, you have oversight powers, and in a number of spending bills, it's been written into the law that you or a member of your staff should be able to inspect unannounced any location that the Department of Homeland Security is using to detain and/or house immigrants is how it's phrased in the law. We have seen complaints about this 10th-floor facility have been mounting since late May. We've seen several New York Congress members try repeatedly to gain access to this floor and exercise their constitutional right to oversight and see what conditions are like.

We've seen Congress members Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez going twice, and then Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler also going. Every time, they've been turned away. The explanation, which I was there when Goldman and Nadler tried to talk to this ICE agent, William Joyce, and so I got to hear in real time what his explanation was. What the Trump administration's line is that this is not a detention center, and thus it is exempt to those oversight rules. I will say that Dan Goldman tried to go to MDC, which is a federal jail that's now also housing ICE detainees. He's been barred from entering that as well, even though he requested a visit in advance and all this stuff.

They keep moving the line on what the rule is, but ICE says, "This isn't a detention site. People are in transit here, so that's why you can't visit them." Although we know from ICE's own detention data that in transit could mean nine days inside this room. I think it's pretty hard to imagine that not being a place that's used to detain and/or house, as the law says. There is a lawsuit about that. That's a separate lawsuit. A number of Congress members, including Goldman and Espaillat, have joined that national lawsuit, which is in DC, also before a federal court, because that's not just happening here in New York.

There are Congress members all over the country, Democrats who have been denied access to detention sites and also processing sites like the ICE field office. That's another issue before a different judge.

Amina Srna: You've talked about local officials who've called for the inspections. What has the city said about its ability or inability to intervene?

Gwynne Hogan: This is another very interesting and perplexing question, which hasn't really been litigated. It's one of those things that we don't know what the answer is exactly. We saw left-leaning Democrats, Comptroller Brad Lander and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, both of whom have gone repeatedly to observe the courthouse arrests over the past couple months, they called on the mayor to use the city's power to inspect conditions that are possibly in violation of local law's building and fire code. If this type of facility was in another building, we've seen them shut down illegal hotels for overcrowding and fire issues. They urged the mayor to send inspectors to assure that the local laws are being followed.

City Hall, which is a very particular case, obviously, our mayor had federal charges that were dropped and has said that he will not openly criticize, although his administration has sued the Trump administration a number of times and has argued that it is standing up to the Trump administration when it sees fit. The mayor has said, "Oh, no, the city does not have any oversight over federal buildings inside New York, even though they're inside New York." If you look at the building record, it's a little bit confusing. There have been cases where building inspectors have inspected that building. Then there are other cases where a complaint was made, and the inspector was like, "We don't have authority here."

I think it's a question, if you had a different mayor, they might at least try to conduct an inspection and possibly use whatever oversight they think they have. Maybe it would be litigated, maybe it wouldn't go through, but we have seen Mayor Eric Adams not interested in being adversarial the way that we might see from a different type of Democrat, namely some of his opponents who are running for office now.

Amina Srna: One more call. Let's go to Brandon in Harlem. Hi, Brandon. Thanks for your call.

Brendan: Hi, it's Brendan. Yes, thanks so much for coming on the air and talking about this. I think it's just really important that we bring this to light. I've been court watching frequently since early June. Over that time, I've watched ICE increasingly push the boundaries of what they're able to do. Now, even when I watch a judge say to someone, "You have a new court date. You're free to go. Have a nice weekend." ICE still detains the person anyways. I and lawyers tried to ask, like, "You're not allowed to do this. You have to show a warrant." They say, "We have a warrant." Then we'll also say, "The judge said that they can go." They go, "The Department of Justice doesn't override us."

I'm really glad that there's work on what you're doing, but I'm really curious how it can be enforced.

Amina Srna: Brendan, thank you so much. Gwynne, because we're running out of time, unfortunately, let's take Theresa in Jamaica, Queens. Hi, Theresa, you're on WNYC.

Theresa: Hi, good morning. How are you? Thanks for taking my call. I was just a little concerned about some of the stories that you were telling us about how these illegal immigrants were being treated. I do work for Homeland Security, and I have to say, if any one of us did any of those things, especially the story about lining up some people and giving them a water bottle, throwing water in their face [unintelligible 00:28:26] fired. I mean, these are US citizens. A lot of officers here have parents that immigrated from El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti. We're human beings, and the way that you're making us out on your stories that these people are telling you, I just can't see it happening.

Amina Srna: Theresa, I--

Theresa: There's checks and balances--

Amina Srna: Thank you so much for--

Theresa: There's so many checks and balances in the system.

Gwynne Hogan: Thank you so much for your call. I mean, one of the struggles here is how we get our information, right? What I'm able to cite is affidavits that are submitted to a judge. Somebody has sworn that this happened and signed it with their name on it, and that's in the court record, and obviously, interviews with people and getting all sides of the story is super important to me, so I appreciate you calling in. If you'd like to talk, I would love to hear more about your experience, but we have what the Trump administration has told us, which is a categorical denial of everything that somebody says. We're trying to report this out as fairly as possible. Yes, thank you.

Amina Srna: Theresa, thank you so much for that call and for giving us the other side of that story as well. Gwynne, in our last minute here, stepping back, how does this fight over one floor in a Manhattan building fit into the broader picture of Trump era immigration enforcement in New York?

Gwynne Hogan: Wow, that's a big question. I do think that 26 Federal Plaza has become the epicenter currently of his enforcement efforts in our city. It's very different from what it looks like in LA right now or what it looks like in any other major city. In fact, I had a story earlier this week with my colleague, Haidee Chu, and some work from a mathematician, Joseph Gunther, that looked at the court's own data. We're seeing more courthouse arrests in New York than any other city by far. 26 Federal Plaza, like I mentioned, it has two floors of courts. It has a floor of ICE detention, essentially, or processing. There's ICE offices all throughout the building.

It really is where this is happening day in and day out. This is not to say that there are not raids happening and enforcement in other ways, but this has become a symbol of what it's like here in New York currently. I think it could change any day now, just based on judges' decisions and the administration's whims, but I think there's a reason why you've seen so many protests in and around this building, because this is really what it looks like under the second Trump administration in New York currently.

Amina Srna: A very succinct answer to a bird's-eye view question. We'll leave it there for today with Gwynne Hogan, senior reporter for THE CITY, and former WNYC and Gothamist reporter. Gwynne, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this story with us today. We really appreciate it.

Gwynne Hogan: Thanks for having me, Amina.

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