Two videos offer the first glimpse inside the shadowy detention site on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where dozens of immigrants are being held for days at a time, according to an analysis by THE CITY of Immigration and Customs Enforcement data through the end of June.
The clips, shared with THE CITY by the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), show one of several holding rooms on the 10th floor, where around two dozen men were held inside a fluorescent-lit room, some lying on the ground covered with aluminum emergency blankets while others sit on benches.
In one video, the person filming pans the camera to two toilets in the same room, separated from where the men are sleeping on makeshift bedding by nothing but a waist-high wall. One is covered by what appears to be tinfoil.
“Look how they have us,” the person filming says in Spanish, “like dogs in here.”
The video was first sent to Assemblymember Catalina Cruz’ office by a constituent known to her office who was detained at an immigration court appearance last week and had snuck a phone inside. Phones and other personal effects are typically confiscated by ICE agents when a person is arrested, which is why no photos of the 10th floor have emerged until now.
“The American Dream,” the man recording the video says. “Immigration, 26 Federal Plaza.”
In a separate voice memo shared with THE CITY, the man described the room further, saying: “They haven’t given us food, they haven’t given us medicine. We’re cold. There are people who’ve been here for 10, 15 days inside. We’re just waiting.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the detention data or the videos of conditions inside 26 Federal Plaza.
For weeks, immigrants, attorneys and advocates have complained about cramped conditions on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, where people have been detained, out of sight, with nowhere but the ground to sleep, no showers and limited access to food or medical care.
In a statement sent to media outlets last month, DHS said that “any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions is categorically false.”
But Murad Awawdeh, the president and CEO of NYIC, said the video confirms what immigrants who are eventually transferred out of the building have described to their lawyers and loved ones.
“We were being gaslit by this administration saying that there’s nothing happening on the 10th floor,” he said.
“People who were inside and detained there for days and sometimes weeks at a time without a shower, without a change of clothes, having to sleep on the floor, with minimal food and minimal outside contact,” Awawdeh said. “It’s all true.”
‘Flood the Zone’
ICE has repeatedly denied that the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, which serves as a centralized processing area for people arrested by ICE in New York City, is being used as a detention site.
But ICE detention data analyzed by THE CITY, which spans from September 2023 through June 26 this year and was obtained from ICE through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Deportation Data Project, contradicts the Trump administration’s claim that the floor of offices is for processing only.
During May and June of this year, when arrests at immigration check-ins and courthouses began to skyrocket, the data shows immigrants were held for 29 hours on average inside what ICE refers to in its data as “NYC Hold Room.” During those two months, 81 people were detained at the hold room for four days or more at a time.
During the month of June, an average of 89 people were detained inside 26 Federal Plaza each night, the data shows.
The number of detentions peaked on June 5, when 186 people were held there overnight. The average length of stay surged to 103 hours in mid-June, though some people spent as many as eight days imprisoned inside the holding area.
The agency has repeatedly barred members of New York’s congressional delegation — who are supposed to be allowed to conduct unannounced visits to detention centers — from observing conditions inside. Reps. Nydia Velazaquez, Adriano Espaillat, Dan Goldman and Jerry Nadler, all Democrats, have been blocked from entering the 10th floor lockup.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has argued the 10th floor of the building “is not a detention center” but an “ICE law enforcement office,” and thus exempt from a law that allows federal lawmakers to make unannounced visits at “any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.”
Before the recent arrest spike, 1,320 people passed through 26 Federal Plaza between January and April in an average of six hours, the data shows. Just six people spent the night at 26 Federal Plaza in the first four months of the year, and none of them were there for more than 30 hours.
Of the 1,453 people imprisoned inside the building in May and June, 968 of them, or 67%, have not been convicted or charged with any crimes. Those people are characterized by ICE as “other immigration violators,” a category including people who overstayed their visas or were in the country without proper authorization.
‘One Meal Per Day’
While members of Congress and the press have been kept out of the makeshift lockups, accounts have emerged from immigrants and advocates of limited access to food beyond cookies and water, of dozens of people held in a single room, and of nowhere to sleep but the floor or on hard benches.
A source aware of conditions on the 10th floor told THE CITY that as many as 80 people have been held in a single room where ICE has struggled to keep temperatures cool in the sweltering summer weather, a number THE CITY’s own data analysis confirms.
Attorneys have also raised concerns about lack of access to medical care inside the holding area. Melissa Chua, the co-director of the New York Legal Assistance Group’s Immigrant Protection Unit, said many of their clients had been denied routine medications inside 26 Federal Plaza.
One of their clients, previously reported on by Gothamist, had most of his liver removed and was defecating blood for days before he was rushed to a hospital.
According to ICE detention data, 17 people held in ICE custody at 26 Federal Plaza from May through June 26 were rushed to the hospital. Those records also show three of those 17 detainees were hospitalized for more than three days, while one has spent at least 18 days in New York Presbyterian and was still hospitalized as of June 26.
More recent FDNY call logs indicated the hospitalizations have continued. On July 10, a caller told a 911 call operator that someone on the 10th floor was having a seizure, according to a record shared by the FDNY, who rushed a person to the hospital. A call two days later on July 13, the person calling said someone was unconscious. A day later, a man was taken to the hospital having a panic attack.
Derlis Snaider Chusin Toaquiza, a 19-year-old 11th grader at Grover Cleveland High School who was recently freed on bond after being arrested at a immigration court appointment, described conditions inside.
“The room was so crowded that he could not lie down, and he had to sleep sitting up,” his lawyers at New York Legal Assistance Group wrote in legal filings.
Derlis’ attorneys went on to describe a room similar to the one depicted in the videos obtained by THE CITY. “Derlis had to use the bathroom in a connected room with no door and only a waist-height wall providing privacy. He was held in this room for two days and, during that entire period of time, was only given a total of two meals, or one meal per day.”
His attorneys said he was subsequently moved to a gym also inside 26 Federal Plaza.
“The gym was also so crowded that there was no space for Derlis to lie down and lacked access to basic necessities including beds and blankets. For the days he was held in the gym at 26 Federal Plaza, Derlis slept on a crowded hard floor surrounded by strange adults.”
THE CITY reported on an Indonesian man held there who told his family he didn’t have access to a toothbrush, a shower or a change of clothes, and was given only granola bars and cookies to eat for over a day he was there.
High schooler Joselyn Chipantiza-Sisalema, 20, who was recently released from ICE custody and reunited with her family following a federal judge’s order, described 10 days inside the facility when the lights were never shut off, and temperatures were unbearable in the summer heat.
“We had to beg the people working there that they gave us something to eat, they didn’t even give us water. Sometimes a few cookies they’d throw in there. A human being doesn’t deserve to be treated that way,” she previously told THE CITY. “It was a horrible thing I wouldn’t wish on anyone. They had us in there like animals.”
Last month, William Joyce, the deputy director of the New York ICE field office, publicly conceded the agency was “approaching capacity” and that conditions in ICE detention centers are deteriorating nationwide, as the agency has jailed a surging number of immigrants, more than 56,000 as of mid-July.
Congress’ recent spending bill gives ICE an unprecedented $75 billion in new funding, which will go towards nearly doubling the number of detention beds and hiring thousands of new ICE agents.
On Monday, after an off-duty federal agent was shot in a park in upper Manhattan during a robbery attempt by an undocumented immigrant, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, vowed to “flood the zone” with ICE agents in response to New York City lawmakers’ “sanctuary city” protections meant to limit cooperation with federal officials.
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