Human Rights Crisis in ICE Detention Centers

IN EARLY AUGUST, the number of people in immigration detention in the U.S. surged to an all-time high of more than 60,000. While the Trump administration waited for massive new detention centers to open, it turned to federal prisons and jails, hastily constructed state facilities, and temporary holding cells that were never meant to house people for any extended amount of time. The overcrowding, combined with negligence and malevolence, has led to inevitable abuses that are too large to ignore or deny.

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On August 12, a federal judge ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to drastically improve conditions in migrant holding cells in its New York City offices, where detainees were kept in overcrowded, squalid cells for days and even weeks at a time.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered officials to provide more spacious cells, bedding for each detainee, adequate hygiene supplies, three meals a day and water on request, and access to calls with lawyers. The order was in response to a lawsuit filed by an ICE detainee, who alleged he and other detainees were not given access to medical care or showers and were kept in cells so crowded that they didn’t have space to lie down.

Another federal judge found similar deficiencies in a temporary ICE holding facility in Los Angeles, ruling in July that plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the government were likely to succeed on their claims that detainees there were being unconstitutionally denied access to legal services.