Ingrid left her home on Long Island for a mandated immigration check-in in Lower Manhattan on an early December morning with her 4-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son in tow.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Honduran immigrant, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears speaking publicly would harm her pending immigration case, said she’d only been notified about the Dec. 20 appointment the afternoon prior through a message on a government phone app, which requested that she appear with her family. She wondered if it was good news: Maybe U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would remove her ankle monitor.<\/p>\n
She soon learned how wrong she was. After arriving at 26 Federal Plaza at 7 a.m., Ingrid said, she and her children were detained in hold rooms for 12 hours, along with three other families. She said her family received just one meal and that her daughter \u2014 who had a fever \u2014 was denied medicine.<\/p>\n
Under ICE\u2019s own rules<\/a>, children aren’t supposed to be detained in hold rooms unless they have \u201cdemonstrated or threatened violent behavior, have a history of criminal activity, or pose an escape risk.\u201d That means even for short periods of time, said Eunice Cho, an ACLU attorney representing detainees at 26 Federal Plaza and who has reviewed the internal regulations.<\/p>\n But Ingrid\u2019s children are among the dozens who have been detained under President Donald Trump\u2019s administration at ICE hold rooms in Lower Manhattan, according to a Gothamist analysis of ICE data. The revelations come as the number of children in ICE custody nationwide has skyrocketed<\/a>, as the federal government intensifies its immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n The Lower Manhattan hold rooms are generally a few hundred square feet, with concrete benches and no beds or showers, according to ICE officials and detainees held there. Detainees held in the rooms have complained of \u201cinhumane conditions<\/a>,\u201d including lack of food, soap, hygiene products, and access to attorneys \u2014 issues that a federal judge has mandated the agency rectify. They say the rooms are windowless.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s inhumane for both an adult and a child,\u201d Ingrid said. \u201cBeing locked up all day in a place without knowing anything, without knowing what\u2019s going to happen, without anyone telling us anything.\u201d<\/p>\n More than a month after the family was released, Ingrid\u2019s 4-year-old daughter sometimes still cries in school and at night, saying that she\u2019s scared about returning to 26 Federal Plaza, the mother said. The family was not detained following another check-in<\/a> at the site earlier this month. But a federal judge in Brooklyn has not blocked ICE from re-detaining or deporting the family, a decision the family\u2019s attorney is appealing.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not new for ICE to detain children at the Lower Manhattan hold rooms, according to agency data. More than 1,300 children were detained there during former President Joe Biden\u2019s four years in office, the data show.<\/p>\n But concern is growing about the facility, which the Trump administration is using more frequently. The hold rooms faced record levels of overcrowding last summer, and adult detainees have been held at the facility for longer periods, according to agency data. Detainees held there continue to claim in court papers that they\u2019re being denied access to hygiene products and confidential calls with attorneys.<\/p>\n The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n ICE has arrested approximately 140 children in New York City from Jan. 20, 2025, when Trump returned to office, through mid-October 2025, according to a Gothamist analysis of agency data obtained by the Deportation Data Project, an academic group. The vast majority of those children \u2014 about 120 \u2014 have been detained at the hold rooms in Lower Manhattan, according to the analysis. Only one of those children had pending criminal charges, according to the data.<\/p>\n Hold rooms are typically used as temporary way stations for detainees before they\u2019re transported to more permanent detention centers, immigration attorneys say. But as more local immigrants are detained, the Trump administration has relied on the NYC hold rooms more frequently and held adult detainees for longer periods, according to local immigration attorneys and agency data.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has held 5,409 people in the hold rooms through mid-October 2025 \u2014 already more than the 5,257 people held there during the entirety of the Biden administration.<\/p>\n ICE officials generally transfer children out of the hold rooms more quickly than adults, according to the data analysis. On average, under Trump, children have been held for two hours and 15 minutes at the Manhattan hold rooms before being transferred to other facilities, deported or released. Under Biden, children were held there for similar lengths of time.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, adults on average have been held at the facility for a little more than a day under Trump, up from just a few hours under Biden.<\/p>\n In August, Manhattan federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order<\/a> requiring ICE to improve conditions for all detainees at the 10th-floor hold rooms at 26 Federal Plaza, and he made that order permanent<\/a> the next month.<\/p>\n But lawyers for people detained there contend that the agency is still not following the judge\u2019s order<\/a>, denying immigrants access to certain hygiene products and confidential calls with attorneys.<\/p>\n