Judge Tears Into ICE Over Its Inhumane Facilities, Insane Amount Of Lying

This ruling was released in the middle of last month and I really wish I had gotten to it sooner.

Let's not pretend this will change anything about how this administration full of white Christian nationalists will treat detained migrants. And it definitely won't change anything about how the American government in general treats anyone who is incarcerated, even if they're just stuck there awaiting trial.

But it still needs to be seen to be believed. The baseline disregard for detainees health and well-being is nothing new. Neither are the attempts of law enforcement officials to lie their way out of a lawsuit. But the absolute stupidity of the lies and the complete lack of effort of those attempting to shield themselves from accountability goes past the normal ghoulishness we associate with the people doing the imprisoning.

There's a new level of contempt on display here - one that indicates these people have nothing to fear from the courts because this administration will never consider these acts and the lies used to cover them up as something in need of punishment.

The background of the case is this: Erron Anthony Clarke arrived in the United States in 2018 on a work visa at the request of a US employer. He remained in the country after his visa expired but married a US citizen which put him on track to obtain permanent residency. He picked the wrong time to pursue his legal options, as the New York Times reports:

On Nov. 6, Mr. Clarke applied to become a permanent resident, noting in his application that he had worked in the United States without authorization. As part of his application process, he arrived on Dec. 5 for a fingerprinting appointment at an ICE office in Hauppauge, N.Y. He was pulled over and arrested by immigration enforcement agents shortly after leaving the facility. ICE immediately began proceedings to deport him.

These are the conditions he dealt with while being detained by ICE: he was placed in a 6' x 6' cell with eight other people. The cell's temperature dipped below 30 degrees and occupants were forced to sleep on the floor next to an open toilet. The lights stayed on 24 hours a day. The only reprieve from these conditions came when ICE moved him to other detention centers in order to prevent him from appearing in court.

For 12 hours that night, Mr. Clarke was detained in the tiny room in the federal courthouse. On Dec. 6, he was moved to an ICE detention facility in East Meadow, N.Y., only to be brought back to the squalid conditions three days later.

After petitioning for his release, Mr. Clarke was again transferred on Dec. 10 to an ICE detention facility, this time in Newark. After the agency initially ignored his order to present him for a hearing, he appeared on Dec. 11 before Judge Brown, who ordered him immediately released. Yet Mr. Clarke was held for another night in Newark.

New York federal court judge Gary Brown isn't happy to have found this sort of thing going on almost literally under his nose in the Islip (New York) courthouse detention facilities. He's even less happy to have been repeatedly lied to by federal law enforcement officers, whose contempt for the rule of law meant they couldn't even be bothered to lie semi-competently.

From the decision [PDF] (that I'll be quoting extensively):

The ICE agent swears that [b]ased on that investigation, Acting Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer John T. Keane executed a Form I-200, Warrant for Arrest of Alien." Yet the documents submitted do not fully support this. The arrest warrant is unsigned and dated December 5, 2025 - the date of Clarke's biometrics appointment and ensuing arrest - and bears no time notation. That warrant offers check boxes to indicate the basis of probable cause; the only box marked states the warrant emanated from biometric confirmation of the subject's identity and a records check of federal databases." Thus, the warrant was issued after the biometric appointment.

Crucially, in issuing the warrant, the officer did not indicate that removal proceedings had been commenced, even though there are two boxes to so indicate. At the Court's direction, ICE also supplied a Notice to Appear (NTA) - the charging document that commenced removal proceedings. The NTA is also dated December 5, 2025, again without a timestamp. There remains a serious question as to whether the NTA preceded Clarke's arrest; if not, then ICE improperly arrested him. ICE's declaration offers no insight into this question.

Also, the alleged investigation" apparently occurred on the same day that Clarke's spouse filed the paperwork to convert him to a full-time resident due to his marriage to her. That means ICE was doing nothing more than running searches on anyone expected to appear at the court in hopes of finding people it could detain and remove. This action had nothing to do with Clarke or his pending legal residence status and everything to do with expelling him from the country before his application for permanent residence was processed.

Then there's the matter of the holding facilities, which were their own violation of Clarke's rights. The court demanded answers from ICE. It did get ICE to talk. But all ICE had to offer was another set of lies.

First, it defied the judge's oral and written order demanding Clarke be released immediately on December 11. The government received both before 3 pm on December 11, but ICE held Clarke for another night before finally releasing him on December 12.

Then it produced a endless string of lies when the court demanded the full records of Clarke's detention (and movements to and from the Islip holding cell), along with photos of the cell Clarke had been held in.

Not only did the government ignore most of the court order, the stuff it sort of complied was a blend of lies and preposterous assertions:

In response, the Government filed a declaration from Supervisory Detention Officer John C. Diaz, based entirely on ICE records and conversations with other officers.

In addition to being rank hearsay, the information presented in the Diaz Declaration proves evasive and demonstrably false. For example, Diaz swears that Clarke was booked out of NCCC at 3:45 p.m., and into CIHR on the same day at 3:53 p.m." Given that the two facilities are more than twenty miles apart, requiring a drive of 35 minutes or more, it is physically impossible that ICE officers moved Clarke from one facility to another in eight minutes. Even more preposterous is Diaz's sworn statement that Clarke was booked out [of the Central Islip hold room] on December 10, 2025, at 8:30 p.m." and then transported to Delaney Hall Detention Facility (DHDF") [in Newark. N.J.] where he was booked in at 9 p.m." Since that journey of about 60 miles consumes, depending on traffic, more than 90 minutes to as much as three and a half hours, it is again objectively impossible that the transport was completed in 30 minutes.

Time-keeping at ICE detention facilities appears to be deliberately sloppy:

These misstatements of fact serve to undermine the information presented and the reliability of the records maintained by ICE. Moreover, the declaration contains material misstatements. Clarke's stay at the NCCC provides a powerful example. Diaz presents a series of booking times and concludes under oath that Clarke spent a total of under 65 hours at the NCCC. (stating that Clarke spent two days, sixteen hours and forty-five minutes at NCCC."). This is important, Diaz emphasizes, because NCCC does not house DHS detainees for more than seventy-two-hour periods." However, examination of the NCCC booking times presented by Diaz in his declaration - from December 6 at 11 a.m. to December 9 at 3:45 p.m. - reveals that Clarke spent about 77 hours at NCCC.

It also lied about the rooms people were being held in - or, at the very least, refused to answer any questions about them truthfully.

While there are other misstatements in the Diaz Declaration, of greater concern isICE's failure or refusal to provide information ordered by the Court. First, though ICE provided its approximate measurements of the Central Islip hold rooms (four rooms measuring, according to Diaz, about 10' x 7' or 8'), nowhere in his declaration does he provide the capacity of those cells, a critical question here. Id.

While even that could be seen as a convenient omission, ICE has flatly refused to provide the requested photographs of the facilities. (DHS is not prepared at this time to provide photographs of CIHR."). Though legally immaterial - DHS was ordered to provide such photographs - part of the expressed rationale proves revelatory. Diaz avers that:

CIHR is populated 24/7 by detainees, and taking photographs while detainees were present would create privacy concerns for those detainees. [ ] Moving detainees out of CIHR for the purpose of taking photographs is also challenging, because those detainees would have to all be transported to a different facility.

If ICE is incapable of clearing a cell for the split second it takes to snap a photograph, it raises - or perhaps answers - other questions, such as ICE's ability to clean, inspect and maintain the Central Islip hold rooms.

ICE is sliding headfirst towards a contempt holding. And even if that will just become another thing ICE (and the administration overseeing it) chooses to blow off, at least all of this will be on the public record:

ICE's failure and, in at least one instance, flat out refusal, to comply with the Court's directives along with its provision of demonstrably false evidence, requires some comment. While this matter was necessarily conducted in haste, and the Court believes that the assigned AUSA struggled to handle these matters in a reasonable fashion, ICE's transgressions which include (1) failure to produce the Petitioner for the hearing, (2) failure to provide the holding capacity of the Central Islip hold rooms, (3) refusing to provide photographs of the Central Islip hold rooms and (4) ignoring this Court's order providing for Clarke's immediate release, cannot be overlooked.

Of these failings, perhaps the most indefensible is the agency's refusal to provide photographs consistent with this Court's order. A party who believes that a court order is unlawful - or in this case, unduly burdensome - does not have the right to resort to self-help. That party has legal alternatives - like a motion for reconsideration (which certainly would have been entertained here) or an interlocutory appeal - but cannot just simply refuse to comply.

Remember this the next time some government official is complaining about ICE being treated like a pariah or anonymous officers are bending reporters' ears to tell them they're just trying to do the right thing by enforcing immigration laws. They're not. And they are the villains people think they are. This is what came to light as the result of a single detainee filing a complaint about the conditions of his incarceration. Imagine what could be exposed if people with actual power got involved.