Immigrants housed at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan face “crowded, squalid and punitive conditions,” and are being deprived of access to attorneys, according to a class-action lawsuit brought by a Peruvian man against Homeland Security officials on Friday.
According to the complaint, “people are detained for extended periods of time, often for a week or more, sleeping on the concrete floor next to the toilet, in cells that are either freezing or oppressively hot.” The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, New York Civil Liberties Union and Make the Road New York on behalf of Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado and others.
The lawsuit names Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons and other Trump administration officials as defendants. It claims ICE officers “deny individuals access to basic hygiene items, such as soap, clean clothes, toothbrushes, menstrual products and the opportunity to bathe,” and that as many as 70 to 90 people are being held in rooms measuring just 215 square feet.
“ The conditions of confinement violate not only basic human rights,” the NYCLU’s Executive Director Donna Lieberman told Gothamist, “but they violate ICE’s own rules and policies.”
“ This is a practice that has been going on and will continue to go on under this administration,” Lieberman said. “ It’s a practice that cannot be allowed to continue if we call ourselves a civilized society.”
Mercado lives in Ocean County, New Jersey, with his wife and two young children, including an infant, according to the complaint, which stated that ICE agents detained him after a scheduled court appearance on Aug. 8. He is originally from Peru, according to the New York Times.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the White House responded to questions regarding the allegations contained in the lawsuit. City Hall also did not respond to requests for comment.
In one particularly unsettling account from the lawsuit, contained in a footnote, a woman who was menstruating while in detention was deprived of menstrual products “because the guards only gave the women in her hold room two pads to share among them.”
“As a result, she had no way to prevent her underwear and pants from becoming saturated with blood,” the lawsuit stated. “Because she was never given a change of clothes, she had to thereafter remain in her blood-soaked clothes for the duration of her detention.”
The alleged conditions within the federal facility have prompted outrage from immigrant rights advocates, leading to protests on Friday where at least 15 people were arrested.
The lawsuit claims that rooms in which detainees were held have a “horrific stench,” and reek of “sweat, urine and feces.” Detainees are often given just two small rations of food a day, or in some cases, just one.
“Meanwhile, the guards have eaten pizza and hamburgers in front of hungry detained immigrants,” the lawsuit states, “which made them feel like they were being taunted.”
The plaintiffs are asking for relief in the form of limits on overcrowding in cells; improved hygiene access; three meals per day; in-person legal visitation and free access to counsel within 12 hours of being detained; written information regarding protocols for attorney-client communication in several languages; and accurate, up-to-date information on their whereabouts in ICE’s Online Detainee Locator.
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