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US judge orders humane conditions for migrant detainees at NY site / Photo: © AFP
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US judge orders humane conditions for migrant detainees at NY site
A US judge ordered Tuesday that migrants being held at a Manhattan federal facility where individuals are often arrested after attending court hearings to fight deportation be kept in humane conditions.
Images have emerged showing unsanitary and cramped conditions in a holding room in New York City's 26 Federal Plaza, where migrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are detained.
Manhattan Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order directing that no detainee be kept in less than 50 square feet (4.6 square meters) of space, without clean bedding and hygiene products, or be deprived of private attorney-client calls.
ICE "shall not retaliate in any manner against Plaintiff (including in his or her immigration proceedings...) for complaining about any alleged violation of this temporary restraining order," Kaplan ordered.
Hundreds of migrants have passed through the facility as immigration officers have stepped up their arrests of those going through the immigration court in a downtown skyscraper.
Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to deport large numbers of migrants, has encouraged authorities to be more aggressive as he seeks to hit his widely reported target of one million deportations annually.
Since Trump's return to the White House, Homeland Security agents have adopted the tactic -- criticized by rights groups -- of waiting outside immigration courts nationwide and arresting migrants as they leave at the end of asylum hearings.
Armed agents with badges from different federal agencies loiter outside court hearings in the tower block in central New York, holding paperwork with photographs of migrants to be targeted, AFP has seen.
In the complaint filed Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Foundation sued the Department of Homeland Security on behalf of Sergio Mercado and other unnamed detainees.
The filing alleged that "immigrants (are) being detained in crowded rooms at a federal building in the heart of Manhattan without beds, sufficient food, hygiene products, access to showers, or the ability to communicate confidentially with attorneys."
"They bring this action to challenge these unlawful conditions of confinement and ban on attorney access," said the class action suit.
Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project, said "today's order sends a clear message: ICE cannot hold people in abusive conditions and deny them their Constitutional rights to due process and legal representation."
"We'll continue to fight to ensure that peoples' rights are upheld at 26 Federal Plaza and beyond."
The judge set a deadline of August 18 for the government to respond to the claims in the complaint ahead of a ruling on a preliminary injunction.
M. de Jesus--JDB
