Lawyers accuse ICE of overcrowding holding rooms, violating court-mandated limits

Lawyers for several detainees accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of overcrowding temporary holding rooms and denying access to medical care in Baltimore, in violation of a federal court order.

In a March 6 court order, U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin cited several health and safety risks at the facility at 31 Hopkins Plaza. The facility is designed to hold people for 12 hours, though ICE received a waiver allowing detainees to remain there for up to 72 hours. Rubin’s preliminary injunction required ICE to abide by capacity limits, facilitate access to prescription medications, clean the cells daily and provide hygiene supplies.

All detainees were moved from the facility for a short period following the order.

Lawyers for detainees said in court documents filed on Aug. 13 that ICE “regularly, routinely, and with alarming indifference” violated the court’s order that mandated the federal agency kept no more than 56 people at once across five holding cells.

Data obtained from ICE that showed how many people were in the holding cells each day between March 7 and June 30 was analyzed by Graeme Blair, a professor and researcher for the Deportation Data Project, and submitted in the most recent court filings.

Blair found that cells were over capacity 59% of the time over the 116-day period. Blair also concluded that there were more than 40 instances in which the number of people in a cell exceeded the court-ordered capacity by 50% or more. There were another 18 instances in which ICE exceeded the cell limits by 100% or more, according to court documents.

The detainees’ lawyers, including attorneys from Crowell & Moring, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and the National Immigration Project, added that there was also a “wholesale failure” at the facility to provide detainees with their statement of rights and their medications, calling it an “ongoing and dangerous” violation of the court order.

The Department of Homeland Security said in an emailed statement that Hopkins Plaza cells are part of “a processing facility not a detention facility” where people are moved quickly to more permanent housing.

The department also added that it provides “comprehensive medical care” including “medical, dental, and mental health services as available, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”

Rubin’s order from March said that the ICE facility “failed to facilitate the medical care or medications of individuals with broken bones, diabetes, high blood pressure, HIV, and Leukemia.”

In email correspondence between the immigration lawyers and Brendan Moore, a Department of Justice lawyer, Moore said the methodology used by the legal team to track violations was “tenuous if not invalid” when they emailed him in July.

The court filing from the detainees’ lawyers included first-person testimonies from people who were held in the cells from April to June. Several people reported that they were packed into cold rooms, served little food and were not given medications. Some said they were given little to no hygienic items, including one man who said he had to brush his teeth with a bar of soap.

Juan Erasmo Bermudez, a Salvadoran man detained in June, said he was hospitalized after not having medications needed for his health conditions. He said he was brought back to the facility but said that “ICE did not fill the prescriptions until I repeatedly complained that I was feeling sick again.” He lost 11 pounds in the holding cell, he said.

Rodrigo Hermogenes Gonzalez-Vargas, an immigrant man from Nicaragua who was detained by ICE in May, said that the cell he was in was so crammed that they “touched each other’s toes” when lying down to go to sleep at night. Another man, Everardo Enrique Bardales Pineda, who was arrested in June, said “we had access to water, but the water tasted rancid and I did not drink from it.”

The facility at Hopkins Plaza has been at the center of scrutiny since The Banner reported on poor conditions there over a year ago. Maryland Democrats who visited the facility in March following the federal order that cited safety issues there arrived to find empty cells.

Construction for an ICE facility in Elkridge resumed this month after U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson reinstated the project’s permits, which were revoked by Howard County leaders in February.

There will be a hearing regarding the potential court order violations at the Baltimore facility in September.

Banner reporter Daniel Zawodny contributed to this article.