President Donald Trump speaks as he visits the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to see the new blue protective coating being applied as part of a renovation project, Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Washington, D.C., as White House border czar Tom Homan and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin listen (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).
A federal judge in New York City has issued a blistering ruling that chides the Trump administration for intentionally subjecting detained immigrants to “overcrowded, squalid, and degrading rooms for excessive periods of time” in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
In a sprawling 127-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, granted a permanent injunction aimed at improving living conditions for people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at 26 Federal Plaza, the large federal complex located adjacent to Manhattan’s Chinatown neighborhood.
“ICE objectively deprived detainees of sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care,” the opinion, issued Thursday, reads. “Some of these deprivations impacted detainees immediately; others only after longer periods. ICE knew, or should have known, that how it was treating detainees was wrong, yet it continued to do it anyway. It did so to inflict punishment on detainees and induce them to self-deport.”
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Starting in early 2025, ICE officials began using the 10th floor of the building as a “processing facility” for detained immigrants.
In August 2025, the plaintiffs sued. The 24-page complaint alleges the 10th floor is used literally, noting several instances in which immigrants were forced to sleep “on the concrete floor.” At least one government official is cited admitting as much about the floor.
In September 2025, Kaplan issued a preliminary injunction geared toward establishing stringent rules at the facility. In that earlier order, the court found ICE was “failing to comply with the Constitution and their own nationwide standards governing detention facilities.”
Since then, very little has changed, the court found. Rather, after having a full trial on the merits, Kaplan determined the abuses at the New York City facility are comparable to those in several other ICE detention facilities that are the subject of litigation across the country.
“This much now is clear: 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,” the opinion goes on. “Accordingly, the Court grants permanent relief.”
What has changed since last year is an upsurge in detention — which has made these abuses even worse, the court said.
“ICE kept more and more detainees in the hold rooms for longer and longer periods because its own policy — a policy ultimately found to be illegal by almost every court to consider it — precluded their release, and it had nowhere else to put them,” the opinion continues.
A great deal of the lengthy opinion is dedicated to detailed descriptions of the “inhumane conditions of confinement” at the Manhattan facility. Kaplan also says ICE has acted with “deliberate indifference” to such conditions.
The opinion elaborates:
The hold rooms have no showers, no beds, no cots, no windows, and lack many other things found in prisons and detention facilities. 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. ICE has dealt with those resource constraints by misusing the hold rooms. It has overcrowded severely the 26 Fed hold rooms, subjecting detainees for extended periods to inhumane conditions that violate the Constitution, not to mention any decent concern for the Golden Rule or the demands of humanity.
The court notes that ICE has made “some improvement in conditions” but has continued to violate earlier court orders by exceeding detention capacity, denying detainees confidential access to their attorneys, and using other floors of the building “in an apparent attempt to circumvent” its obligations.
“ICE’s ongoing noncompliance and the cognizable danger that it, amid rising immigration arrests, again will use 26 Fed as the ‘give’ in the system prove that a permanent fix is needed to protect the Constitution against the administration’s mass deportation program,” the opinion goes on.
Kaplan takes the opportunity to discuss the dynamics between the branches of government in immigration law.
“Make no mistake, decisions about immigration and related enforcement policies are largely committed to the political branches of our government — Congress and the Executive, not the courts,” the judge writes. “But there are limits. The Constitution demands humane treatment of everyone in government custody. It requires that they receive due process of law. And it limits the Executive to enforcing the laws that Congress has enacted rather than doing whatever it wishes.”
The post ‘Demands of humanity’: Court slams Trump admin for ‘ongoing noncompliance’ with orders and says ‘ICE knew’ about ‘degrading’ conditions at immigrant detention center first appeared on Law & Crime.
