Judge Says NYC ICE Facility Was a ‘Black Site’ for Detainees - Newsweek

A federal judge admonished the Trump administration's immigration enforcement efforts Thursday, writing that arrests of alleged illegal immigrants in New York City had led to overcrowded, degrading conditions at a key U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) site, which effectively cut them off from attorneys.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, said that conditions at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan violated the Constitution, in part because arrests had increased so rapidly that appropriate detention facilities were not available.

The site, which houses federal government agencies including ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), has come under intense scrutiny during the second Trump administration, with local Democratic leaders leading court watches and seeking greater oversight of conditions.

In his ruling, Kaplan said he believed ICE had created poor conditions at Federal Plaza in an effort to force immigrants to self-deport.

"ICE knew, or should have known, that how it was treating detainees was wrong, yet it continued to do it anyway," the judge wrote. "It did so to inflict punishment on detainees and induce them to self-deport."

Kaplan ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to make immediate changes to the site, and said all future detainees there must be held in better conditions.

"We are pleased that the judge issued such a thorough, detailed opinion confirming the harms from the overcrowding and abuses people have suffered at 26 Federal Plaza and the need for a permanent injunction to prevent our government from inflicting that same harm in the future," Carmen Iguina Gonzalez, deputy director of immigration detention at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, told Newsweek in a statement.

"Defendants in this case already demonstrated how important it will be for us to monitor compliance closely to protect class members rights, and we will be ready to do so with respect to this permanent injunction."

Newsweek reached out to DHS for comment via email Thursday afternoon.

The original case was brought by one ICE detainee, Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, an asylum seeker who said he had been attending his immigration court hearings and complying with immigration requirements when he was detained at Federal Plaza.

He had lived in the U.S. for more than three years before his arrest. While he was being held at the site, he claimed he was held in overcrowded conditions with inadequate food and water.

One of the major concerns raised by Kaplan stemmed from another allegation from Barco Mercado—that he was only allowed brief phone calls and was not informed of his right to legal counsel.

Kaplan wrote Thursday that, despite insistence from DHS that detainees were given numerous opportunities to contact legal counsel, "the evidence proves otherwise."

"26 Fed essentially was a black site before this Court issued the [Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction]," Kaplan said, referring to previous orders in August 2025.

"Attorneys had no way to get in touch with detainees other than through ICE staff, who persistently delayed scheduling attorney-client calls by erecting procedural roadblocks, claiming that 26 Fed was too busy (again, a problem of ICE’s own making), failing to update the location of detainees in its online tracker such that attorneys were unable to find their clients, or lying and saying that a detainee currently being held at 26 Fed was 'in transit.'"

Even after his initial orders, Kaplans said, ICE continued to keep detainees from contacting attorneys. The judge accused the government of violating the First and Fifth Amendments, and pointed to similar rulings around the country.

Since the initial ruling in August 2025, ICE had argued conditions had improved and said it was complying with Kaplan's original order. The agency also repeated its view that detainees did have adequate access to legal counsel.

Throughout his ruling, Kaplan repeatedly said that ICE was arresting more people than it could house, adding that detention capacity was insufficient.

"As ICE reacted to increasing immigration arrests by holding more detainees in 26 Fed for longer periods, the conditions of confinement in the tenth-floor hold rooms worsened dramatically," he wrote.

Between May and August 2025, the judge said the number of people being held in so-called hold rooms rose from fewer than 10 people to upward of 100. The ruling contained diagrams of the largest hold room, showing the capacity being stretched as more immigrants were forced to sit or lie packed together.

Kaplan said ICE officials had frequently sought to downplay accusations of overcrowding, and called one official's failure to provide even a rough estimate of the numbers being held as "unbelievable," particularly as other officials had testified that the conditions were as the allegations stated.

The judge said that the large numbers of detainees being held at 26 Federal Plaza followed the national effort to arrest large numbers of immigrants without status as part of the administration's mass deportations target.

While a 72-hour holding limit was put in place at sites like Federal Plaza, Kaplan said some individuals were held for far longer because there was not enough room at longer-term ICE detention facilities.

"The hold rooms have no showers, no beds, no cots, no windows, and lack many other things found in prisons and detention facilities," Kaplan wrote. "But ICE has been arresting as many people as it can—more people than it can accommodate in appropriate detention facilities or remove from the country."

Kaplan detailed testimony from immigrants who chose to self-deport rather than continue staying in the conditions at the Manhattan facility.

"ICE knew, or should have known, that how it was treating detainees was wrong, yet it continued to do it anyway," Kaplan said. "It did so to inflict punishment on detainees and induce them to self-deport."

Other immigrants were also encouraged to self-deport, or voluntarily depart, through posters in English and Spanish posted on the walls of hold rooms and elsewhere.

Those posters outlined how detainees could receive DHS' $2,500 stipend and a flight home, rather than face further ICE detention.

“Today’s order rightly affirms that ICE cannot continue subjecting people to dehumanizing, abusive conditions at 26 Federal Plaza,” Molly Biklen, Legal Director at the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “We’ll continue to hold the Trump administration accountable and fight to end ICE’s cruel, unconstitutional detention conditions across New York.”

Kaplan ordered DHS to place limits on detention capacity at 26 Federal Plaza and ensure access to counsel for immigrants held there. The ruling applies to all current and future detainees.

"Unless the number of persons arrested is reduced or the number of empty spaces in more appropriate detention facilities increased so that detainees can be housed properly in appropriate facilities—and neither seems likely in any reasonable span of time—the overcrowding and other abuses of the hold rooms at 26 Fed will resume," he said.

Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Gray R. Thomas