For months, the Trump administration repeatedly blocked members of Congress from visiting federal immigration holding cells in New York City that had grown overcrowded with detained migrants, prompting concerns about squalid conditions.
That changed on Friday, when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency allowed two Democratic congressmen from New York to get a firsthand look at the cells on the 10th floor at 26 Federal Plaza, in Lower Manhattan.
Representative Daniel Goldman arrived at the building, trailed inside by a throng of reporters and armed with a court ruling that ordered ICE this week to allow federal lawmakers to visit detention centers without notice.
After knocking on the 10th-floor doors for a few minutes, Mr. Goldman was escorted inside by the leaders of the ICE field office in New York, while journalists waited outside. Another Democratic congressman, Adriano Espaillat, showed up shortly after and was also let in.
Emerging from their visit, the lawmakers said that the four cells, which have held thousands of migrants this year, were holding just nine detainees on Friday. They said that federal workers, probably because of the congressional visit, were mopping the floors: “It was spick and span,” Mr. Goldman said.
The conditions, they said, appeared to have improved since a federal judge ordered ICE in August to limit the number of migrants being held to 22, following reports that hundreds of migrants had spent days at a time there earlier this year.
But Mr. Goldman criticized the lack of showers or beds in the cells for detainees. “You’re essentially sleeping on the hard floor with blankets, thin blankets,” he said.
He said that Kenneth Genalo, the ICE field office director in New York, told the lawmakers that about 60 percent of the people ICE detains in New York have no criminal histories. Many were arrested by the agency at immigration courthouses or after being summoned to check in at the ICE offices.
“ These are not violent criminals, and what ICE is very clearly doing is targeting the easiest people to arrest, detain and deport, which are not the criminals,” Mr. Goldman said at a news conference after the visit.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shut out of power in Washington, Democrats in Congress have sought to use their oversight powers to scrutinize immigration detention facilities, hoping to exert political pressure on President Trump and his growing mass deportation campaign.
Detention centers across the United States have reached record levels of capacity, holding more than 65,000 migrants as of late November. From California to New York, the centers have emerged as political flash points amid reports of overcrowding, poor conditions and inadequate access to health care.
Mr. Goldman, and other Democratic members of Congress, had been demanding access to inspect the cells at 26 Federal Plaza since June, showing up several times, only to be denied access by ICE. The lawmakers accused the agency of violating federal laws that allow members of Congress to tour facilities where migrants are being held.
ICE repeatedly argued that the lawmakers did not have a right to visit the cells because they were not technically in a detention facility, but rather inside the agency’s New York field office, where migrants are processed and held temporarily.
On Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington ruled that ICE must allow members of Congress — whose access to detention compounds has been restricted across the country — to make unannounced visits to immigration detention facilities.
In her 73-page ruling, the judge, Jia M. Cobb, an appointee of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., wrote that the agency’s attempt to block lawmakers from ICE field offices where migrants are being detained, even if temporarily, was “contrary to statute.”
The New York holding cells began drawing scrutiny during the summer, as ICE launched a sprawling effort to detain migrants who were showing up for routine court hearings at immigration courts that are just a few floors above the holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza.
The pace of arrests overwhelmed the limited capacity of the holding cells, which are cramped and bare spaces traditionally used by ICE to hold detainees for just a few hours before transferring them to detention centers outside the city.
But the cells became packed with hundreds of migrants. They were held for days, sometimes for longer than a week, in violation of the agency’s own guidelines, which limit stays at such facilities to 72 hours. Many were forced to sleep on the concrete floor or sitting upright, according to migrants, lawyers and video footage that emerged in July.
A lawsuit filed on Aug. 8 accused ICE of holding migrants in squalid conditions, without access to lawyers, proper meals, bedding or showers, and subjected to a “horrific stench” from the metal toilets inside the cells.
The lawsuit led a federal judge to order ICE to swiftly remedy the conditions inside the cells at 26 Federal Plaza on Aug. 12. The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, appointed by President Bill Clinton, ordered the agency to limit the number of migrants it holds there to 22, and to ensure that they have access to proper medical and hygienic care.
During Mr. Goldman’s visit on Friday, he said that he spoke to a Pakistani man who had been detained during his annual ICE check-in. The man, Mr. Goldman said, had been in the United States since 1995 and had been ordered removed from the country by a judge in 2007, but never left.
The man claimed he did not have a criminal record, and was worried for his wife and four U.S.-born children.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a Times reporter covering immigration in the New York region.
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