Leaked video of ICE detention center

 

The investigation into the leak will be swift and awful. Somebody is going to get the worst treatment possible.

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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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’s 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.”

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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."

  The City

Reports from three detention centers in Florida are just as horrific.

Human Rights Watch, which gathered testimony from detainees, relatives and lawyers, documented alleged abuses at three centres in southern Florida and said people were subjected to degrading treatment, lack of medical care and overcrowding.

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Former detainee Harpinder Chauhan,56, a British entrepreneur and father of two, recounted an incident in April in which dozens of men were denied food for hours. They were allegedly crammed into a single cell with their feet shackled and hands tied behind their backs.

Food was eventually given to them on chairs, but they remained restrained, recalled Mr Chauhan, who Human Rights watch said was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody because of problems with his taxes. “We had to bend over and eat off the chairs with our mouths, like dogs,” said Mr Chauhan. He was eventually deported back to the UK.

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According to Human Rights Watch, Mr Chauhan had lived in the US since 2016 and first entered the country on an E-2 investor visa. ICE officers detained him on February 11 after he ran into tax problems.

He and other former and current detainees described filthy, overcrowded centres where migrants are treated poorly. One woman spoke of being held at Krome North Service Processing Centre, which is usually reserved for men in South Florida.

“There was only one toilet, and it was covered in faeces,” she said. “We begged the officers to let us clean it, but they just said sarcastically, ‘Housekeeping will come soon.’ No one ever came.”

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"Any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centres are false," [ICE's assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin] told The National.

  The National News

So, ICE centers in Florida have prime conditions. Like a 5-star hotel.

Under President Donald Trump, the number of people detained by ICE has increased dramatically as he continues to crack down on illegal immigration. As of late last month, an average of 56,000 people were being held in immigration detention centres per day, a 40 per cent increase from the same time last year and the highest in US history.

UPDATE 07/23/2025: