San Francisco ICE holding rooms are 'squalid,' inhumane: lawsuit

SAN JOSE, Calif. - A team of immigrant rights lawyers, including the ACLU, sued the federal government on Thursday in a class action suit, alleging that the conditions of the ICE facility in San Francisco are "squalid" and inhumane, where immigrants have been held for up to six days, made to go to the bathroom in front of each other, and forced to sleep on the floor under bright lights, which is essentially a form of torture. 

‘Squalid, inhumane’ 

The suit was filed in the San Jose branch of the U.S. District Court in Northern California and names the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and two of the dozen defendants. 

The attorneys are representing four immigrants: Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, 30, an asylum seeker from Guatemala with no criminal record anywhere in the world; Yulisa Alvarado Ambrocio, 24, a breast-feeding mother and asylum seeker from Guatelmala with no criminal record anywhere in the world; Ligia Garcia, an asylum seeker from Colombia, who has no criminal record and was arrested Thursday following her immigration court hearing, and Martin Hernandez-Torres, a noncitizen who has lived in the United States for 30 years and has cancer, who was arrested Wednesday during a "reasonable fear" interview. 

U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts is presiding over the case. 

On Tuesday, Pitts ruled that Pablo Sequen may not be re-detained unless she is given a pre-detention bond hearing before a neutral immigration judge. 

At this point, she is the only person that the judge has made a ruling on. He has not yet ruled on the class action, which stems from an earlier suit filed in August solely on Pablo Sequen's behalf. 

DHS says claims are false

A spokesman for ICE on Friday said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation and referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which provided a four-paragraph statement on Sunday from Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

"Nothing in the constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them," McLaughlin said. "The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense."

McLaughlin said that arresting people at courthouses "conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be" and that these immigrants have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons.

In terms of the "squalid" conditions, McLaughlin emphatically said that these claims of "subprime conditions" at ICE detention centers are false.

"In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens," McLaughlin said. Everyone is provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and can communicate with lawyers and their family members.

McLaughlin also said that they provide "comprehensive medical care" inside a detention center, which is "the best healthcare many aliens have received in their entire lives."

"The ACLU should just change its name," McLaughlin said. "It’s clear they only care about illegal aliens—not Americans."

Up to 6-day detentions

Among the allegations in the 54-page suit, the plaintiffs say that because of ICE's "zeal to maximize" the number of arrests, immigrants are being held at San Francisco's ICE facility for more than 12 hours, which is a time limit that has existed nationwide for more than a decade. 

In June, ICE waived this limit, and immigrants can now be held in these "hold rooms" for up to three days, even though no physical changes have been made to these rooms, like giving people a place to sleep, shower or get their medications, the lawsuit alleges. 

Therefore, immigrants are forced to sleep on metal benches or the floor, and have only thin plastic or foil to serve as a blanket. Plus, lights are kept on all night, forcing immigrants into sleep deprivation, the lawsuit alleges. 

"The conditions at 630 Sansome are punitive and inhumane," the lawyers wrote. 

One of these rooms is on the sixth floor of ICE's Sansome Street building in San Francisco. 

The immigrants' lawyers described this room as a "squalid, makeshift jail," where immigrants have been held for up to six days, as ICE waits to transfer people to other facilities in California, Arizona, Washington, Texas or Hawaii. 

The suit claims that immigrants have to go to the bathroom in an open toilet in front of each other and then are forced to clean the toilet with wads of toilet paper.  

Impeding access to attorneys

In addition to the conditions in the holding rooms, according to the suit, the federal government is violating the rights of immigrants by not allowing them to get fair hearings, speak with their lawyers past 3 p.m. or on the weekends, or appear before immigration judges without fear of reprisal.

Because of this atmosphere, the plaintiffs' lawyers wrote, immigrants who are "dutifully" attending their immigration court hearings in San Francisco "have been under siege," where masked federal agents "lurk" outside of courtrooms to "violently ambush" them, shackling their hands and feet and "whisk" them off to detention.

These arrests have caused widespread fear and caused a major dilemma for many immigrants: Do they show up to their required hearings and risk immediate arrest or skip their hearings and flout the law?

"Converting required hearings into a trap in this manner undermines the public’s basic expectations of a fair day in court before a neutral body," the plaintiffs' attorneys wrote. 

The attorneys representing the immigrants include the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California, the Central American Resource Center of Northern California, and Coblentz Patch Duffy & Bass LLP. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was updated on Sept. 22 after the DHS provided a statement two days after it was published.