Democrats Demand Access to ICE Office in Manhattan

Descriptions of the conditions at the center, the New York City field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have prompted several congressional Democrats to demand that they be allowed inside for oversight purposes. Those demands have been denied.

On Friday, nine New York City Democrats escalated their efforts to get onto the 10th floor by sending a letter to Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the immigration agency, known as ICE. In the letter, they accuse the immigration authorities of violating federal laws that allow members of Congress to tour facilities where migrants are being held.

From New Jersey to California, ICE premises have turned into political battlegrounds over President Trump’s immigration agenda, leading to the arrests of several Democratic officials.

“Congressional oversight is essential to bring transparency to the conduct of the Department of Homeland Security,” the lawmakers say in the letter. “Given the overaggressive and excessive force used to handcuff and detain elected officials in public, DHS’s refusal to allow members of Congress to observe the conditions for immigrants behind closed doors begs the obvious question: what are you hiding?”

The letter is signed by Representatives Dan Goldman, Jerrold Nadler, Adriano Espaillat, Nydia Velázquez, Ritchie Torres, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Grace Meng, Yvette Clarke and Gregory Meeks.

The lawmakers also said that immigration authorities were playing word games by arguing that the 10th floor was not technically a detention facility despite migrants being held there temporarily.

The 41-floor office building at 26 Federal Plaza, which also houses one of the city’s immigration courts, has become a flashpoint as federal agents arrest migrants showing up for routine immigration court hearings and appointments in recent weeks.

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller and a Democratic candidate for mayor, was arrested there by federal agents on Tuesday as he escorted a migrant whom the agents were trying to arrest.

Many of the migrants are taken to the 10th floor, where there are four holding cells, along with desks staffed by ICE officers responsible for processing the detainees’ transfers to detention facilities outside the city, according to those who have been held there and their lawyers.

Detainees are typically divided by gender in the cells, which have bathrooms and long benches built into the walls but no beds, according to one former ICE official who worked at the center and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The cells are not meant for overnight stays, and they have filled up as ICE makes more arrests, leading to reports of unsanitary conditions and people sleeping on floors.

Mr. Espaillat and Ms. Velázquez were denied access when they showed up there on June 8. An agency spokeswoman said then that the building was not a detention center but that they would have been given a tour had they not arrived unannounced.

On Wednesday, ICE denied access to Mr. Goldman — who said he had told the agency twice that he planned to visit — and to Mr. Nadler.

They were met in the building’s lobby by the agency’s deputy field director in the city, William Joyce, who acknowledged in a brief exchange that some of the detainees had spent several days on the 10th floor, sleeping on the floor or on benches.

The congressmen argued that that made the area a “detention facility,” giving them the right, as members of Congress, to inspect it at any time.

Mr. Joyce, who said his superiors had told him to deny the lawmakers entry, insisted it was a “processing facility” and that those who stayed overnight were “in transit” to different locations.

Federal law allows members of Congress to enter and conduct oversight at “any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens.” But ICE has said in official guidance that its field offices fall outside the law’s requirements because “ICE does not house aliens at field offices.”

The letter to Ms. Noem argues that Mr. Joyce’s admission that the field office was effectively housing migrants, even temporarily, meant it should be open to congressional visits.

“When individuals are deprived of their liberty in a secure facility for multiple days, they are unquestionably being ‘detained’ or ‘housed’ under the plain language” of the law, the letter says.

In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, reiterated that 26 Federal Plaza was not a detention center.

“These congressional members do not have the authority to disrupt ongoing law enforcement activities and sensitive law enforcement materials,” she said.

Mr. Goldman said in an interview that he was not trying to “create hullabaloo or create a chaotic situation” by trying to visit the 10th floor.

“We were trying to give them every opportunity to allow us to do our jobs, and they still refused,” he said. “We’re very concerned about the overcrowding, the sanitation issues — food and water and hygiene — and basic treatment of these people who have been ripped away from their families and their communities when they’re trying to do things the right way.”

Gwyneth Hesser, an immigration lawyer at Bronx Defenders, said one of her clients, a man from Colombia, had been held on the 10th floor for three days after being arrested following an immigration court hearing this month.

The man, like many who have been held at 26 Federal Plaza, was transferred to a detention center in Newark that has also attracted complaints, about overcrowding and dismal meals served at irregular hours. The poor conditions, Ms. Hesser said, have been a particular problem for her client, who she said is diabetic and whose blood sugar levels have spiked.

“He said they don’t see any sunlight, like they can leave their cell, but they never go outside,” she said of the conditions at the center, known as Delaney Hall.

A group of detainees held at Delaney Hall staged an uprising last week that led to the escape of four men, three of whom have since been captured. The Department of Homeland Security has insisted there was no unrest at the facility.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting.

A lower-court judge had concluded that the protests were not severe enough for Mr. Trump to use a rarely-triggered law to federalize the National Guard over Mr. Newsom’s objections. But the panel, which included two appointees of Mr. Trump and one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., disagreed with the lower court.

“Affording appropriate deference to the president’s determination, we conclude that he likely acted within his authority in federalizing the National Guard,” the court wrote, in an unsigned opinion on behalf of the entire panel.

The ruling was not a surprise. During a 65-minute hearing on Tuesday, the panel’s questions and statements had telegraphed that all three judges — Mark J. Bennett, Eric D. Miller and Jennifer Sung — were inclined to let Mr. Trump keep controlling the Guard for now, while litigation continues to play out over California’s challenge to his move.

Mr. Trump praised the decision, saying in a Truth Social post late Thursday that it supported his argument for using the National Guard “all over the United States” if local law enforcement can’t “get the job done.”

Mr. Newsom, in a response on Thursday, focused on how the appeals court had rejected the Trump administration’s argument that a president’s decision to federalize the National Guard could not be reviewed by a judge.

“The president is not a king and is not above the law,” Mr. Newsom said in a statement. “We will press forward with our challenge to President Trump’s authoritarian use of U.S. military soldiers against citizens.”

The Trump administration had urged the appeals court to find that the judiciary could not review Mr. Trump’s decision to take control of a state’s National Guard under the statute he invoked, which sets conditions like if there is a rebellion against governmental authority that impedes the enforcement of federal law.

The appeals court declined to go that far.

Supreme Court precedent “does not compel us to accept the federal government’s position that the president could federalize the National Guard based on no evidence whatsoever, and that courts would be unable to review a decision that was obviously absurd or made in bad faith,” the appeals court wrote.

But, the judges said, the violent actions of some protesters in Los Angeles had hindered immigration enforcement, and that was sufficient for the judiciary to defer to Mr. Trump’s decision to invoke the call-up statute.

The appeals court also rejected the state’s contention that the call-up order was illegal because Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, sent the directive to a general in charge of the National Guard, even though the statute says any such edict must go “through” the governor. The court said the general was Governor Newsom’s agent, and that was good enough.

“Even if there were a procedural violation, that would not justify the scope of relief provided by the district court’s” order stripping Mr. Trump of control of the guard, the ruling added.

The state could choose to ask the full appeals court to rehear the matter, or it could directly ask the Supreme Court to intervene. But the state might also just move on from the current part of the dispute, since the ruling on Thursday pertains to a short-lived temporary restraining order that will soon be obsolete anyway.

Either way, litigation in the case is set to return on Friday to the San Francisco courtroom of a Federal District Court judge, Charles Breyer, for a hearing. He is weighing whether to issue a more durable preliminary injunction restricting what Mr. Trump can do with some 4,000 National Guard troops or 700 active-duty Marines his administration has also deployed into Los Angeles.

Judge Breyer’s temporary restraining order concerned only the National Guard and whether it was lawful for Mr. Trump to mobilize them under federal control. At the hearing on Friday, he is also set to address a state request to limit troops under federal control to guarding federal buildings, and to bar them from accompanying Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the workplace raids that sparked the protests.

That request centers on a 19th-century law, the Posse Comitatus Act, that generally makes it illegal to use the military for domestic law enforcement. The Trump administration has argued that the troops are not themselves performing law enforcement tasks, but rather are protecting civilian agents who are trying to arrest undocumented migrants.

Mr. Hegseth suggested that he might not obey a ruling from the lower court, telling senators on the Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that he doesn’t “believe district courts should be setting national security policy.”

Conditions in Los Angeles have calmed significantly over the past week, and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles announced on Tuesday that she was ending the downtown curfew, a week after it had first been imposed. She said local law enforcement efforts have been “largely successful” at reimposing order.

California officials have said from the beginning that local and state police could handle the protesters, and that Mr. Trump’s decision to send in federal troops only inflamed matters. But speaking with reporters outside the White House on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he felt empowered to send troops anywhere violent protests erupt.

“We did a great job. We quelled that thing,” the president said of the demonstrations in Los Angeles. “And the fact that we are even there thinking about going in, they won’t bother with it anymore. They’ll go someplace else. But we’ll be there, too. We’ll be wherever they go.”

Greg Jaffe contributed reporting.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, indicated to reporters earlier in the day that she was not aware of any plans by Mr. Trump to sign a holiday proclamation. In the past week alone, he’d issued proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill — none of which are among the 11 annual federal holidays.

In response to a reporter’s question about Juneteenth, Ms. Leavitt acknowledged that Thursday was “a federal holiday,” but noted that White House staff had shown up to work during a briefing that focused primarily on the matter of whether Mr. Trump would order strikes on Iran.

Mr. Trump, who has often used holidays as an occasion to advance his political causes and insult critics and opponents on social media, chose the occasion of Juneteenth instead to float the idea of reducing the number of federal holidays, claiming that they are costing businesses billions of dollars. While most federal employees get those holidays off, private businesses have the choice to close or remain open.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day when a Union general arrived in Galveston, Texas, nearly two and a half years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, to finally inform enslaved African Americans there that the Civil War had ended and that all enslaved people had been freed. Months later, the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery in the final four border states that had not been subjected to Lincoln’s order.

It is the youngest federal holiday, enshrined into law in 2021 by Congress and then-President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Mr. Trump cannot undo it without an act of Congress.

The lack of revelry at the White House for a holiday that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans was perhaps not a surprise. Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has moved to purge the federal government of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and sanitize — or even erase — references to Black history.

Even so, the decision not to mark the holiday was an abrupt reversal from his last term, when Mr. Trump issued statements on Juneteenth for three years, before it was ever a federal holiday.

“Melania and I send our warmest greetings to all those celebrating Juneteenth, a historic day recognizing the end of slavery,” he wrote in 2017, extolling Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger’s announcement in Galveston that all slaves were free.

In 2018 he invoked Granger again, and praised “the courage and sacrifice of the nearly 200,000 former enslaved and free African Americans who fought for liberty.”

But Mr. Trump’s second term has been marked by a widespread effort to slash funding for diversity initiatives, prompting backlash from states, schools and the corporate world. Some cities and institutions that have had their funding cut reported that their Juneteenth celebrations would be smaller this year.

Mr. Trump’s critics dug in sharply, using the holiday to call attention to what they called the administration’s attempts to bury Black history.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, accused the White House and Mr. Trump’s allies of engaging in “an intentional effort to turn back the clock” and divide the country by banning books about Black history, dismantling D.E.I. programs and undermining the citizenship protections of the 14th Amendment.

“Today, we celebrate the freedom that Black Americans long fought for and the rich culture that grew from that great struggle,” Mr. Jeffries, the first Black leader of a party in either chamber of Congress, said in a statement. “That struggle roars on.”

The holiday also came as Mr. Trump marked a new low in his relationship with the N.A.A.C.P., the oldest and largest U.S. civil rights organization, which said this week that it would not invite Mr. Trump to its national convention, breaking from a 116-year tradition of inviting the president to its marquee event.

President Biden established Juneteenth as a federal holiday in 2021, after interest in the history of the day was renewed during the summer of 2020 and the nationwide protests that followed the police killings of Black Americans including George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

During his presidency, Mr. Biden held a concert on the South Lawn of the White House to commemorate the holiday and gave remarks. On Thursday evening, Mr. Biden attended a Juneteenth celebration at Reedy Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Galveston, sitting at the head of the church next to local leaders. He was honored for signing the federal holiday into law and praised for his appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.

Speakers did not name Mr. Trump, but criticized his administration’s policies, especially on diversity.
“Black history is American history,” Mr. Biden told the crowd to cheers, according to a live stream of his remarks.

Mr. Biden also took to task those who thought Juneteenth should not be a federal holiday.

“Some say to you and to me that this doesn’t deserve to be a federal holiday,” Mr. Biden said. “They don’t want to remember what we all remember — the moral stain, the moral stain of slavery.”

The extensions have placed TikTok, which has more than 170 million U.S. users, in a state of legal limbo. They have also tested the limits of presidential power, with companies like Apple, Google and Oracle effectively relying on Mr. Trump’s assurance that they will not incur significant financial penalties for making TikTok available in the United States.

TikTok said in a statement that it was “grateful for President Trump’s leadership and support in ensuring that TikTok continues to be available” to its users in the United States.

The company said it continued to work with the office of Vice President JD Vance, whom Mr. Trump has charged with finding a buyer for the app. A possible deal for the sale of the app was upended in April when Mr. Trump announced tariffs on Chinese imports.

The law that could ban the app stemmed from longstanding concerns that TikTok’s Chinese ownership could pose national security threats. Lawmakers have worried for years about a Chinese company’s having access to the personal data of Americans who use the app, and feared that Beijing could use the service to spread its propaganda.

But in guidance released this month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement asks members of Congress to give at least 72 hours notice for a visit to its facilities. Asked about the policy, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, went even further, suggesting that federal officials would not be allowed entry unless they provided a week’s notice.

“A week is sufficient to ensure no intrusion on the president’s constitutional authority,” the spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said in a statement. She added that “any request to shorten that time must be approved” by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem.

As Democratic lawmakers criticize the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and accuse officials of abusing executive power, ICE facilities have become the battlegrounds of a political showdown.

Members of Congress have repeatedly been denied access to ICE facilities this month as they try to conduct oversight visits, and some of them have been involved in high-profile clashes with immigration officials.

In its new guidance, ICE asserts that it has broad power to “deny a request or otherwise cancel, reschedule or terminate a tour or visit” by lawmakers or their staff under a number of circumstances that include “operational concerns” or if “facility management or other ICE officials deem it appropriate to do so.”

The new policy, updated since February, also denies that ICE field offices are subject to the provision in federal law about congressional oversight visits. Detained immigrants have been held in some of those offices for days waiting for officials to process their cases.

Democratic lawmakers in California, Illinois and New York have been turned away from ICE field offices and processing centers in recent days, sometimes after trying in vain for hours to gain access to buildings that they say they are authorized to visit.

Representative LaMonica McIver, Democrat of New Jersey, was charged with assault last month after an encounter with immigration officers outside a Newark detention center. And Senator Alex Padilla, Democrat of California, was shoved out of a room and handcuffed after trying to question Ms. Noem during a news conference last week.

Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, criticized the new ICE policy as an attempt to skirt congressional oversight. In a statement, he said the new guidance was “an affront to the Constitution and federal law.”

Mr. Thompson singled out the guidance on field offices, which he called a “smoke screen” to prevent members from visiting offices that “are holding migrants — and sometimes even U.S. citizens — for days at a time.”

Ms. McLaughlin, the Homeland Security spokeswoman, said in her statement that requests to tour ICE field offices and processing facilities must be approved by Ms. Noem, a policy made in response to “a surge in assaults, disruptions and obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.”

The department’s new guidance spilled into public view more clearly on Wednesday.

Four Democratic representatives from Illinois were denied access to an immigration processing facility in suburban Chicago where they believed immigrants were being held for days without access to lawyers.

And Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Dan Goldman, Democrats of New York, were both denied access to an ICE office in Manhattan, even as an official acknowledged that detainees were held there overnight. Both lawmakers said they requested a visit in advance.

During an exchange in the building’s lobby, William Joyce, the deputy director of the New York ICE field office, told Mr. Nadler and Mr. Goldman that “we were told not to” allow them in.

In an email to a congressional office this week, an ICE official said that federal immigration officials were “not facilitating any visits to ICE Field Offices or suboffices” currently because of their “high operations tempo,” according to a congressional aide who was not authorized to discuss the message publicly.

Democratic lawmakers have said that the Trump administration’s escalation is precisely the reason they want to visit facilities, and that the federal government’s large-scale immigration crackdown and accelerated deportation efforts demand more thorough oversight.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, accused the Trump administration in a statement of a “deep fear of accountability,” adding that “Congress has legal authority to oversee the administration and it will continue to, regardless of whatever Secretary Noem and her lackeys scribble on a piece of paper.”

The agency’s new guidance also explicitly says that visitors cannot “have any physical or verbal contact with any person in ICE detention facilities” without prior approval, and that violating that policy could lead to tours being cut short.

Nate Schweber contributed reporting from New York.