Judge faults ICE over ‘cherry-picked’ stats to hide poor conditions in Manhattan detention facility

MANHATTAN (CN) — Federal immigration authorities provided “flawed and likely misleading” statistics to make the conditions at a Manhattan detention facility seem more humane than they really are, a federal judge found Wednesday.

In an 84-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan expanded on a previous order that demanded improved treatment for detainees at 26 Federal Plaza, rejecting the government’s arguments that things were already taking a turn for the better without court intervention.

“Defendants offer a few statistics supposedly going to the duration of detentions at 26 Fed and to the issue of overcrowding,” the Bill Clinton appointee wrote. “Those few pieces of data selected from much more complete information concededly in defendants’ possession but not shared with plaintiff or the court give every indication that they were cherry picked to put the best possible face on this.”

Officials are accused of holding arrested noncitizens in squalor at the controversial Manhattan facility for days or in some cases even weeks at a time.

In court filings, detainees describe the conditions as “horrific” and “inhumane.” A 20-year-old woman claims she was denied feminine hygiene products — guards only gave the women in her holding room two pads to share among them — and was forced to wear blood-soaked clothes throughout her detention when she got her period.

Other inmates complained of malnutrition, with one claiming to have lost 18 pounds during the course of detention and another saying she was given just a single 8-ounce bottle of water per day.

“Additionally, detainees describe having been tormented and taunted by guards, who ate pizza and hamburgers in front of them,” Kaplan noted in his ruling. “One detainee tells of a guard who responded to some requests for water by ‘holding up a bottle’ and ‘squirt[ing water] into [thirsty detainees’] mouths, like [they] were animals.’”

Detainees also claim holding rooms were crowded beyond capacity, with a 215-square-foot room filled with up to 90 people who weren’t ever allowed to shower or change clothes.

In his ruling Wednesday, Kaplan chided the government for trying to downplay these concerns with deceptive declarations. The judge found that federal officials emptied the entire facility on Aug. 11, then immediately submitted a filing boasting that there were only eight detainees in a bid to buck the overcrowding claims.

The government also used maximum capacity requirements from the fire marshal to show the facility was not illegally crowded, which Kaplan found to be “entirely inapplicable in these circumstances.”

“The safe occupancy for a given space that people are free to leave at will at any moment is quite a different matter from confining numbers of people in such a space for 24 hours a day, day after day, without adequate hygiene and toilet facilities as, indeed, relevant regulations reflect,” the judge wrote.

Nestled on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, the makeshift jail is just two floors below immigration courtrooms, where many immigrants and asylum-seekers are being abruptly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement following routine court hearings.

ICE had argued that its conditions could be afforded some leeway since the facility was designed for short-term holding. For the same reason, the agency claimed it didn’t need to provide detainees immediate and confidential access to counsel.

But the judge found detainees were often held for much longer than a short-term stay, and in other cases, the lack of immediate access to a lawyer directly led to their uncontested removal.

“For example, one attorney declarant attests that an inability to communicate with his client delayed his filing of motions to reopen and for a stay,” Kaplan wrote. “His client was moved from 26 Federal Plaza, to New Jersey, to Arizona, and then to Texas within a few days and then was removed from the United States before the Executive Office of Immigration Review ruled on the motions submitted.”

The judge ordered that all detainees are given confidential access to their counsel within 24 hours of their arrival at the facility.

Kaplan acknowledged that given the scope of the administration’s emphasis on mass deportations there were bound to be some logistical issues, but he said that was no excuse for constitutional violations.

“Whatever the merits of the administration’s determination to deport illegal aliens — and the court expresses no view of that issue, which is beyond the scope of this case — we must remember that this is the United States of America,” he wrote. “We aspire to treat all Americans — and those among us — with humanity.”

Kaplan’s ruling grants the detainees class certification in the ongoing lawsuit challenging conditions at the facility; any inmates who have or will be detained for at least 12 hours at 26 Federal Plaza will be part of that class.

The ruling also grants the class a preliminary injunction, extending Kaplan’s prior order that detainees must be given adequate space, the ability to phone counsel and access to hygiene supplies like toothbrushes — even after ICE had argued that it can’t provide them, as they could be fashioned into “weapons.”

“Today’s ruling is an important win for immigrants’ rights and affirms what we’ve known all along: ICE’s conduct at 26 Federal Plaza is inhumane, illegal and a direct violation of the Constitution,” Eunice Cho, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement Wednesday.

Despite the judge’s findings, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that 26 Federal Plaza is not a “detention center" at all, but rather a “processing center where illegal aliens are briefly processed to be transferred to an ICE detention facility.”

“Any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions at ICE facilities are categorically false,” she said in a statement to Courthouse News. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers.”

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