After a federal judge commanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to improve conditions inside a crowded detention space in New York City, government lawyers pushed back on orders to make sure immigrants detained there have access to toothbrushes.
Giving detainees a toothbrush could be a “potential safety concern,” officials told a judge Thursday.
In court filings attached to a lawsuit against the facility, detainees reported spending as much as three weeks inside without a chance to bathe or brush their teeth.
But “providing toothbrushes, rather than teeth-cleaning wipes, presents a potential safety concern for other aliens in custody as well as ICE personnel because toothbrushes can be readily improvised as weapons,” according to a letter to the judge from Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton.
District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Thursday he will continue to allow ICE to ban toothbrushes from the facility, for now, while a legal challenge continues.
While jails are notorious for hand-made knives carved from toothbrush handles, it’s unclear how serious a threat they actually pose inside the facility at 26 Federal Plaza. They’re easily available at many jails across the country — people jailed inside Metropolitan Detention Center in nearby Brooklyn can buy them for less than a dollar.
Immigrants in detention centers across the country are also “routinely” provided with toothbrushes, and “ICE’s own policies provide for them,” according to attorneys for detainees in the Manhattan facility.
The agency’s national detention standards state that “each detainee shall receive, at a minimum … one tube of toothpaste” and “one toothbrush.”
“There is no basis to deny individuals detained at 26 Federal Plaza basic hygiene products that are customarily made available at other immigration detention facilities across the country,” attorneys wrote.
Immigrants’ rights groups, lawyers and lawmakers have warned for weeks about deteriorating conditions inside the building, which also houses immigration courts.
The “hold room” is not intended to hold people for longer than 12 hours, according to ICE’s internal guidance. In May and June, when arrests at courthouses began to skyrocket, immigrants were being held inside the room for 29 hours on average, according to a review from New York City news outlet The City. Within those two months, 81 people were detained there for four days or more at a time.
Detentions peaked on June 5, when 186 people were held there overnight, The City found.
Detainees are fed inedible “slop” and were forced to sleep in cells surrounded by the “horrific stench” of sweat, urine and feces in rooms with open toilets, according to the lawsuit.
Thousands of people across the country have faced arrest after showing up for court-ordered ICE check-ins and immigration court hearings as part of Donald Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Unlike federal district court judges, immigration court judges operate under the direction of the attorney general’s office.
The Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review has issued guidance to judges to grant motions from government lawyers to immediately dismiss immigrants’ cases, making them easy targets for arrest and removal.
Half of all immigration court arrests nationwide were in New York City between May and June, The City found.
On Thursday, New York District Judge Dale Ho ripped into the Trump administration’s “arbitrary” practice of arresting immigrants as they leave their immigration court hearings, creating what he calls a “game of detention roulette” that violates due process.
Hazmat teams were deployed to the building Thursday evening after envelopes containing a mysterious white powder were allegedly discovered, according to city officials and federal law enforcement agencies.
ICE personnel reportedly found envelopes containing “an unknown white powder” on the 9th floor, according to the FBI. Five envelopes were allegedly found in the mail room of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations headquarters.
