Judge orders DHS to improve conditions at NYC facility holding detained migrants
Last month, videos obtained by ABC News appeared to show the conditions inside the facility on the 10th floor at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan's Foley Square. Videos shared by a detainee with a local civic group appeared to show over a dozen people inside the room, with several detainees lying on the cement floor on thermal blankets. It also showed two toilets that were separated from the rest of the men by only a waist-high wall.
Attorneys representing one of the migrants detained there submitted nearly two dozen declarations that claimed individuals were held in crowded conditions and were not given the opportunity to shower, change clothes or brush their teeth despite being held for a week or longer.
MORE: 'Like dogs': Video appears to show migrants held in federal building in NYC
"They have access to only one or two toilets shared among 40 to 90 people, and the toilets are in open view of the room, so some have resorted to try to wrap their aluminum sleeping blanket around themselves for privacy," attorney Heather Gregorio said at a court hearing earlier Tuesday.
In addition, detainees have claimed they were detained for several days or even weeks in the facility.
The Department of Homeland Security has said claims of overcrowding and unhygienic conditions at the facility are "categorically false" and that migrants are only being "briefly processed" there before being transferred elsewhere.
In a statement last month in response to the videos reviewed by ABC News, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: "26 Federal Plaza is not a detention center. It is a processing center where illegal aliens are briefly processed to be transferred to an ICE detention facility."
In court proceedings Tuesday, a lawyer representing the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York disputed some of the claims the detainees had made and stressed that the facility was designed for a short-term stay.
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"Doesn't your argument, to the extent it relies on the fact that the particular facility was intended for short-term use, boil down to saying that unconstitutional conditions of confinement are OK as long as they don't go on too long," U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan asked.
"I wouldn't put it that way, your Honor," Attorney Jeffrey S. Oestericher said in response.
Oestericher also disputed that the rooms in the facility were overcrowded saying that presently there are about 26 people spread across four different rooms.
The judge pointed to affidavits filed by groups representing detainees that claimed as many as 90 people were being held in several hundred square feet of space.
MORE: Federal law enforcement agents are interviewing unaccompanied migrant children at shelters
Kaplan said he wondered if one could infer that conditions had improved in anticipation of a lawsuit after videos of the facility were published in media outlets.
During the proceedings Tuesday, Oestericher said he did not dispute that the detainees at the facility were only being given two meals instead of three per day, that the toilets were in the holding area where the migrants were being detained and that they were only being given blankets, not beds or sleeping mats.
According to the complaint filed by the ACLU and other civic groups, one woman detained at the facility was not able to obtain menstrual products "because the guards only gave the women in her hold room two pads to share among them." She had to remain in her blood-soaked clothes for several days, the groups claimed.
In his order, Kaplan said the holding areas should be cleaned three times a day and supplied with soap, towels, feminine hygiene supplies and other hygiene products.
DHS was also ordered to provide all detainees "within one hour" of their arrival, a notice of their rights informing them they are entitled to consult with attorneys confidentially.
Several attorneys had complained that they have been unable to locate their clients who they believed were held at the facility.
"Today's order sends a clear message: ICE cannot hold people in abusive conditions and deny them their Constitutional rights to due process and legal representation," said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project in a statement. "We'll continue to fight to ensure that peoples' rights are upheld at 26 Federal Plaza and beyond."
ABC News has requested comment from DHS on the judge's order.
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