Judge Mulls Stepping In As Detainees Detail ‘A Lot Of Blood' And ‘Terrible Smells' At Federal Plaza

By Gwynne Hogan, The City

Aug. 12, 2025

A 20-year-old high school student was forced to wear blood-soaked clothing for days when Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to provide her a maxi pad. Dozens of people crammed in a room so tightly they had to try to sleep sitting up. A man who watched another prisoner have a seizure for a half an hour before medical help came.

These are some of the accounts to emerge in sworn affidavits of immigrants who were locked inside ICE’s shadowy processing area on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza that the agency has barred members of Congress from inspecting.

On Tuesday morning, a federal judge in Manhattan – Judge Lewis A. Kaplan – will consider stepping in at a virtual hearing where he’ll hear from immigrant rights groups and attorneys for the Trump administration.

Make the Road New York, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union sued on Friday, seeking a temporary restraining order to improve conditions inside 26 Federal Plaza. They want a judge to force ICE to adhere to its own standards for detention sites protocol and provide at least 50 square feet of personal space per person, offer clean bedding and mats for people to sleep on, three meals a day, one every six hours, and access to hygiene products and medications.

The attorneys say they’ve been totally barred from visiting clients there, who aren’t allowed to make confidential phone calls to discuss their legal cases, even as people are detained there for days on end.

Asked for comment on those allegations, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin sent a statement that’s been circulating for a month, denying the floor is a detention center and “categorically” denying reports of “overcrowding or subprime conditions at ICE facilities.”

Last month, THE CITY published video footage taken by someone detained inside the building that provided the first public view of the lock-up there, with people lying on the ground with aluminum emergency blankets.

The “hold room” is not intended for stays of longer than 12 hours, according to ICE’s internal protocol. But an analysis of ICE’s own data by THE CITY showed that as arrests surged in late May, the average time people were imprisoned there shot up to an average of nearly four days, with many spending far longer.

Friday’s lawsuit offered eight additional first-hand accounts of the conditions inside the federal building. In sworn affidavits, immigrants held there describe limited access to food and water, dramatic fluctuations in temperature from sweltering to freezing, overhead lights left on all day and night, and unsanitary conditions as people were kept in overcrowded cells in the same room as toilets, with no way to wash or brush their teeth.

“The room smelled terrible because no one had bathed. There was a bathroom in that room that smelled of urine and feces. There was no bathroom paper, and the guards would throw only a few paper napkins into our room,” wrote Joselyn Chipantiza Sisalema, the 20-year-old Ecuadorean public school student who was recently freed from ICE custody after a federal judge’s order, following her arrest inside immigration court.

Chipantiza Sisalema, who was inside a 26 Federal Plaza holding cell for ten days between June 24 and July 4, described menstruating for five of those days without any access to sanitary pads.

“Guards only gave our whole room two pads for all the women who were there,” she said. “I was not able to get a pad, and my underwear and pants got stained with a lot of blood.”

Hugo Elias Sanchez Trillos, a Colombian construction worker arrested in late June after ICE raided his home looking for someone else, described spending almost three weeks inside 26 Federal Plaza, with a three-day break in between when he was sent to a Nassau County jail between June 26 and July 14.

“I was in the same clothes for 19 days, without ever having an opportunity to bathe,” he said. During the ordeal Sanchez Trillos described losing nearly 20 pounds with limited access to food.

“We were served food only twice a day, once around eight in the morning and again at eight or nine at night. The food was processed and awful; it was difficult to eat. It came inside plastic bags that were usually cold,” he said. “The guards would eat their own food in front of us, things like pizza and hamburgers. We were so hungry and it felt like they were jeering at us.”

Another man from Honduras named Geovani Maradiaga Ochoa, who has a U.S. citizen wife and daughter who lived in The Bronx for 20 years, spent six days inside a 26 Federal Plaza holding room after his arrest at an ICE check-in.

“For six days I was not allowed to brush my teeth or shower, I felt so dirty,” he said. “I feel like I was being treated like a dog.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly blocked members of Congress — who are legally entitled to conduct unannounced oversight at any location that’s used to “detain or otherwise house noncitizens,” — from visiting the 10th floor, with DHS arguing that it’s a processing site for prisoners who are “in transit.”

Last month, New York congressmembers Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman sued to try and gain access.

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.