US immigration officials have been increasingly detaining people in small, secretive holding facilities for days or even weeks at a time in violation of federal policy, a Guardian investigation has found.
These holding facilities – located at ICE offices, in federal buildings and other locations around the country – are typically used to detain people after they have been arrested but before they are transferred or released. In many cases, they consist of small concrete rooms with no beds and are designed to only be used for a few hours.
Previously, ICE was prohibited by its own internal policies from detaining people for longer than 12 hours in these holding facilities. But in a June memo, the agency waived the 12-hour rule, saying people recently arrested by ICE can be detained in the holding rooms for up to three days.
There is extremely limited oversight of ICE holding facilities nationwide, leading to concern among advocates about unknown troubling conditions inside.
The Guardian analyzed data on ICE holding facility book-ins, first published by the Deportation Data Project, that cover a period from September 2023 until late July of this year, the most recent month for which it is available.
The Guardian’s analysis found that:
ICE has used at least 170 ICE holding facilities nationwide, including at 25 ICE field offices.
The Trump administration and its campaign of mass deportation has led to a near across the board increase in the time people are forced to spend in detention in holding rooms. After Donald Trump’s inauguration, the average time that people spend in detention increased at 127 hold rooms across the country.
Despite ICE’s rule change in June, the agency is continuing to violate its own policy by detaining people at these sites for multiple days at a time.
In some cases, such as a New York City holding facility located on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, time in detention increased by nearly 600% on average after the June rule change.
In one case the Guardian discovered by looking through agency data, ICE documented that a 62-year-old man was held inside that same New York City holding facility for two and a half months.
The Guardian also found an additional 63 people at the site who were held there for longer than one week, between Trump’s inauguration and late July.
Across the country, ICE has been criticized for its use of holding facilities, which are not subjected to traditional audits, inspections and general oversight that larger ICE detention centers are required to face.
Now, advocates and former ICE officials are sounding the alarm that their extended use puts people in unsafe conditions, raises the risk of abuse and medical neglect, and violates due process rights. The facilities are secretive and face minimal oversight, and detainees have very little contact with family members or attorneys.
The Guardian sent a detailed request for comment to the DHS and ICE. ICE responded by requesting an extension to the deadline in order to provide the Guardian “the information needed to ensure a factual story”. Despite that communication, neither the DHS nor ICE provided a comment in time for publication.
In various instances, including in court records and when members of Congress have attempted to visit holding facilities, homeland security officials have said holding rooms are not detention centers, so they are not subjected to the same kind of scrutiny as other ICE facilities. In August, the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, said ICE does not detain immigrants in field offices, some of which contain holding facilities, and instead say they are offices where people are processed.
However, former agency officials with extensive knowledge of conditions inside holding facilities have expressed concern at their prolonged use.
“People were not supposed to spend more than 12 hours in there,” said a former ICE official, who worked on oversight and detention issues and who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. “I actually think it’s wildly, wildly fucked up.”
The former official said that the risk of people experiencing sexual abuse or assault while in a holding room – either from ICE staff or fellow detainees – increases the longer they are held. “You’re just putting them all in there with minimal oversight,” the former official added.
An overcrowded system
People are typically taken to holding facilities after being arrested by ICE or its partner agencies, or while they are awaiting transfer to courts, detention centers or other detention spaces.
As arrests surge amid the Trump administration’s widespread immigration crackdown, officials are continuing to skirt the law by detaining people for longer than legally allowed in holding facilities. Officials are arresting more people, leading to a backlog of people to process, while they increasingly rely on the network of holding facilities. A backlogged court system and overfilled detention centers mean people are being held here longer and longer.
A data analysis from the Guardian shows that in major holding facilities throughout the country, immigration officials were already detaining people for multiple days at a time even before the memo was signed.
Advocates say ICE’s June policy change was made in an effort to move the legal goalposts and lessen any potential ramifications from the agency’s nationwide crisis of overcapacity at holding facilities, as officials have rounded up hundreds of thousands of people in its dragnet.
Language in the ICE memo supports that claim, reading that the rule was changed in order to “avoid violation of holding facility standards and requirements”, among other reasons.
Despite the rule change, however, court records, interviews and arrest data show ICE has been detaining people for longer than the three-day limit, in violation of its new policy. In the New York City holding facility, for example, located on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, the average time of people detained in the hold rooms increased by nearly 600% after the June memo was signed.
The ICE official who signed the memo, which was first included as an attachment in a federal court filing in a New York-based lawsuit against ICE, justified the policy change by pointing to the major increase in immigration-related arrests by the Trump administration.
“This is ICE trying to give themselves a buffer to keep holding people in conditions they know are unsafe,” said Amelia Dagen, a senior attorney with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “They are giving themselves an ‘out’, legally, through the waiver.”
A lack of oversight and troubling conditions
ICE’s holding facilities have come under increased scrutiny this year, as the Trump administration aggressively escalates immigration enforcement operations.
While larger immigration detention facilities are subject to oversight mechanisms, holding facilities are not because they are supposed to only be used for limited time. Attorneys are not allowed into the holding facilities; ICE’s detention standards do not apply to them; it is unknown whether homeland security watchdog agencies, like the inspector general’s office, conduct site audits at the holding facilities; and some members of Congress, who have attempted to enter the facilities to conduct congressionally mandated inspections, have been prevented from doing so because ICE says they are not traditional detention centers. ICE has conducted sexual assault audits in holding facilities in the past, but has not published a single audit since late 2024.
The DHS inspector general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“There is a total lack of oversight,” said Paige Austin, supervising litigation attorney at Make the Road New York, a non-profit organization that sued ICE for its use of the New York City holding facility. “The lack of communication and lack of access to counsel for people in these sites is a way of preventing oversight, transparency and accountability.”
Austin added that when Make the Road New York and other organizations sued ICE, the agency did not acknowledge any oversight taking place in holding facilities.
Holding facilities throughout the country, used to detain men, women and children, are designed only to temporarily detain people while they process their arrest. The rooms are in many cases small, concrete-only spaces with benches, sinks and toilets lacking privacy, where multiple people are detained at once.
People detained have complained of lights being constantly on, depriving them of sleep. They also have extremely limited contact with the outside world, including with attorneys and family members.
There is a shocking lack of oversight and ICE has put forward its own inconsistent statements about conditions, but news reports, court records and leaked videos have offered some troubling glimpses into these facilities.
In June, the Guardian reported on a Los Angeles ICE holding facility in a building’s basement, where people, including families with children, were held for days with little food or water. A recent report from the Times of San Diego said people had been held inside an ICE holding facility in the basement of a courthouse. And a story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution alleged people have been held for long periods of time inside an ICE holding facility in the basement of the agency’s own offices.
Few external observers have seen conditions inside holding facilities, but in July, the New York Immigrant Coalition published a video from inside the New York City holding facility that had been surreptitiously recorded by a detained man. The video showed more than 20 people in a brightly lit room, standing around, lying on the concrete floor or sitting on concrete benches with foil blankets. Two toilets are seen in the video, partitioned from the rest of the room by a short wall.
According to court declarations reviewed by the Guardian in a New York-based federal lawsuit against ICE, people have been held at the New York City holding facility for multiple days at a time. One person was held there for five days, another for eight, another for 10 and one person for more than two weeks.
“We spoke with multiple people who had been in there for more than a week, more than 10 days – in the same clothes, not having bathed and no access to toothbrushes,” said Austin.
In mid-September, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to improve conditions for detained migrants at the holding facility. ICE began providing sleeping mats, three meals and toothbrushes in response to the court’s order, according to Austin. The judge also required that people detained by ICE be given the opportunity to consult with their attorneys.
‘A problem of ICE’s own making’
In Baltimore, a similar case is playing out in the Maryland federal court.
Located on the sixth floor of the George H Fallon federal building, the Baltimore holding facility has five cells, total, with the three largest cells having the capacity to detain up to 35 people each. It has faced accusations of medical neglect and overcrowding, according to a lawsuit filed in a Maryland federal court. The Trump administration attempted to dismiss that lawsuit by saying that the detained immigrants who sued had already been transferred out, so the Maryland federal court had no legal jurisdiction.
According to Dagen, who is on the legal team litigating the Baltimore holding facility lawsuit against ICE, attorneys are particularly concerned about medical care in the facility.
“We have found out – through the course of this litigation – that there is no one who is a licensed medical practitioner, in any way shape or form,” Dagen said. “No nurse, no doctor on-site to assess people for the need to go to the hospital if they are having some sort of medical issue.”
In response to public criticism, ICE in mid-March began providing air mattresses to detained immigrants in Baltimore. However, court records hint at inconsistent statements from ICE: during litigation, ICE officials told the court that they were providing pre-made and ready-to-eat meals to detained immigrants inside the holding rooms. But when attorneys received a first batch of discovery documents from ICE as part of their lawsuit, they discovered supermarket receipts instead. ICE, attorneys speculate, had been making sandwiches for detained people, not the full, ready-to-eat meals like they had originally claimed.
Due to heightened pressure on ICE, members of Congress throughout the country have attempted to enter ICE field offices with holding facilities. After much prodding, some members of Congress have been able to visit select holding facilities including the one in Baltimore.
But according to a separate lawsuit filed against ICE in Washington DC, lawmakers have been denied entry into the New York City, Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Washington ICE field offices for oversight inspections. Those facilities all detain people recently arrested by ICE.
The government shutdown is further preventing congressional oversight into holding facilities. Recent court filings by the Trump administration say that due to the lapse in federal funding, a certain oversight rule has been overridden, preventing members of Congress from inspecting holding and ICE detention centers overall.
This is a problem of “ICE’s own making”, Dagen added. “They are imposing their own arrest quotas on themselves that are unrealistic and absolutely arbitrary, and then trying to meet those quotas, while fully knowing they don’t have the ability to hold people in conditions that are safe and constitutional.”
