Latest news with #FederalPlaza
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mayor Adams seeks inspection of ICE holding facility in Manhattan amid Trump immigration crackdown
NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams has asked the federal General Services Administration to immediately inspect the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza amid outrage over accounts of inhumane treatment in ICE's detention of asylum-seekers. Adams cited news reports and recent footage of the site, showing people in squalid conditions sleeping on emergency aluminum blankets near toilets, which has cast doubt on claims by the Department of Homeland Security that the facility is being used as a short-term processing center and not a de facto jail. The issue has become more acute as ICE escalates its campaign to detain and deport migrants amid a Trump administration crackdown. DHS has made the distinction between processing and detention in explaining why it has barred members of Congress from inspecting the facility. The mayor referenced publicly available data showing people have been detained at 26 Federal Plaza on average for more than four days at a time as of mid-June. 'The lack of clarity and transparency surrounding the facility's current use raises serious concerns,' reads the mayor's letter to Michael Rigas, the acting administrator of GSA, which manages federally owned and leased properties. 'New York City has a strong interest in ensuring that basic human rights are being respected anywhere in its jurisdiction, and therefore are seeking your cooperation in conducting an inspection of the 10th Floor of 26 Federal Plaza to ensure it is compliant with the Constitution and federal law.' DHS refused elected officials, including New York Democratic Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez, access to the 10th floor last month, claiming it wasn't a detention center. Footage captured inside the facility released by advocates this week shows more than two dozen people in a cramped, windowless room, sleeping on makeshift beds and appearing to wear the clothes they were detained in. The New York Immigration Coalition, the civic group that obtained the videos taken by a constituent of Assembly member Catalina Cruz, says the footage backs up accounts of people being detained in unbearable heat without access to medication, showers, proper meals and other necessities. In a statement to the Daily News, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin doubled down on claims that there is no detention facility but a 'processing center where illegal aliens are briefly processed to be transferred to an ICE detention facility,' while also acknowledging a need for help from state and local governments in securing beds and detention space capacity. 'Any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions at ICE facilities are categorically false. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,' McLaughlin said. 'As we arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens and public safety threats from the U.S., ICE has worked diligently to obtain greater necessary detention space while avoiding overcrowding. Secretary (Kristi) Noem has called on states and local government to help with bed and detention space capacity.' The majority of those detained at 26 Federal Plaza since May have not been accused of a crime, according to an analysis by The City. Agents for Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been detaining migrants turning up to their court dates to formally apply for asylum, in many cases, moments after immigration judges had indicated they were safe in the country for the foreseeable future, the Daily News has reported. The nature of the arrests has prompted criticism that immigration authorities are luring migrants to the building as a trap and targeting the lowest hanging fruit to fulfill Trump's mass deportation agenda. _____
CBS News
23-07-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Video shows conditions inside NYC's ICE processing center at 26 Federal Plaza
New video offers a first glimpse inside a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center at New York City's 26 Federal Plaza. It's an area members of Congress have been trying to access for weeks as they have been hearing complaints that immigrants are allegedly being held there for days under deplorable conditions. Newly released video provided by New York Immigration Coalition and verified by CBS News New York shows conditions on the 10th floor of the building. It's not clear when the video was taken. The person taking the video is heard saying, "Look how they have us here like dogs." The video shows a group of men in a room with no furniture. Many appear to be laying or sitting on towels or foil blankets on the floor. There are two toilets behind half walls in the back of the room, but one toilet appears to be covered with a foil blanket. "In the video, you see over two dozen men, some sleeping on the floor, all having to share one bathroom," New York Immigration Coaliation President and CEO Murad Awawdeh said. Benjamin Remy, senior staff attorney with New York Legal Assistance Group, said that video was the first time he's seen what the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza looks like. "What was your initial reaction when you saw that?" CBS News New York's Alice Gainer asked. "I would like to say it was shock, but it wasn't," Remy said. One woman told CBS News her husband was detained and spent five or six days on the 10th floor before being transferred. "He said it was very bad. They treated them like animals, technically," she said. "They don't give him enough food. Um, his liver is, you know, failing because he's supposed to be on a specific diet and he's supposed to be taking a specific medication. But no matter how much times he requested from the officers, they never gave it to him." Remy said for more than a month, he's been hearing about the conditions from people who have spent anywhere from two to 20 days there. "Not having an actual safe place to sleep, not receiving adequate medical care and in medical emergencies, being refused that medical care," Remy said. "The food is, first of all, insufficient, and then of incredibly poor quality." Attorneys and advocates say people showing up for routine immigration hearings are being detained. "Why are you detaining them when they're following the process?" Awawdeh said. "They're being penalized for it by being summarily detained with no transparency," Remy said. ICE has not responded to CBS News New York's request for comment. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin sent CBS News New York a statement reading, in part: "Any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions at ICE facilities are categorically false. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. As we arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens and public safety threats from the U.S., ICE has worked diligently to obtain greater necessary detention space while avoiding overcrowding. Secretary Noem has called on states and local government to help with bed and detention space capacity. "Despite a historic number of injunctions, DHS is working rapidly overtime to remove these aliens from detentions centers to their final destination—home."
The Independent
22-07-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Brutal video reveals makeshift ICE detention facility in Manhattan where immigrants sleep on floors next to toilets
Videos from inside a small immigrant detention facility at a federal building in New York City show roughly two dozen people crammed in, lying on a cement floor with nothing but emergency blankets, steps away from a toilet separated only by a waist-high partition. 'Look how they have us like dogs in here,' the person filming the videos can be heard saying in Spanish. Immigrants' rights groups, lawyers and lawmakers have warned for weeks about deteriorating conditions inside the building, which also houses immigration courts. Federal law enforcement officers have been stationed in the building's hallways since at least May 20 to make arrests moments after immigrants appear in court. People have been detained on the 10th floor for 'days and weeks at a time without showers, medication or a change of clothes,' with only minimal food and outside contact, according to the New York Immigration Coalition. 'The American Dream,' the man recording the videos says in Spanish. 'Immigration, 26 Federal Plaza.' Footage, obtained by The Independent, provides outsiders with a first glimpse of the room, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have prevented members of Congress from seeing. In a statement to The Independent, Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the building does not house a 'detention center' but a 'processing center where illegal aliens are briefly processed to be transferred to an ICE detention facility.' 'Any claim that there is overcrowding or subprime conditions is categorically false,' she said. The brief clips, which were first reported by The City, show the inside of one of several brightly lit holding rooms. The men inside are seated on benches that line the walls or are lying on aluminum emergency blankets on the bare floor. Two toilets in the room, one of which appears to be covered by tinfoil, are blocked off by a small partition. There are no doors separating the toilets from the rest of the room. 'ICE is kidnapping so many people from New York's immigration courts that they had to create a new detention facility,' New York Immigration Coalition president Murad Awawdeh said in a statement. 'But instead of sharing the truth with the public, ICE has skirted accountability by consistently lying about what's happening on the 10th floor, and breaking the law by not allowing Congressmembers to view the conditions,' Awawdeh added. The group is demanding the facility be immediately inspected and shut down. 'As we arrest and remove criminal illegal aliens and public safety threats from the U.S., ICE has worked diligently to obtain greater necessary detention space while avoiding overcrowding,' McLaughin said in a statement. 'Despite a historic number of injunctions, DHS is working rapidly overtime to remove these aliens from detentions centers to their final destination — home.' Democratic members of Congress and other New York officials have repeatedly been denied entry to the facility, despite congressional authority granted to lawmakers to 'conduct unannounced inspections of detention facilities holding individuals in federal immigration custody.' 'Since May, ICE has been snatching New Yorkers off the streets and out of immigration court and taking them to this floor,' said Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who is among House lawmakers who were denied entry to the facility. 'They've claimed it's not a detention facility, just a 'processing center,' to block members of Congress from exercising our legal right to conduct oversight,' she said. 'This video confirms what we've feared all along: ICE has been lying and locking us out to hide what's happening inside. There is no more excuse. ICE must grant members of Congress immediate access to the 10th floor and shut this facility down.' Rep. Adriano Espaillat said the facility is emblematic of the Trump administration's anti-immigration agenda, which he says views immigrants as 'disposable.' 'This video demonstrates a moral and legal failure that demands immediate action,' he said. While ICE has repeatedly denied that the room on the building's 10th floor is being used as a detention facility, detention data analyzed by The City shows that the floor is being used for much more than just processing immigrants' cases. In May and June, when arrests at immigration check-ins and courthouses began to skyrocket, immigrants were being held inside the room for 29 hours on average, according to The City 's review. Within those two months, 81 people were detained there for four days or more at a time. Detentions peaked on June 5, when 186 people were held there overnight. On June 17, masked federal officers arrested New York City comptroller Brad Lander after observing immigration court hearings in the building. The city's elected watchdog, among the city's top officials second only to the mayor, was accused of assaulting and impeding an officer. He was released from federal custody hours later, and said that the charges against him were dropped. Thousands of people have faced arrest after showing up for court-ordered ICE check-ins, and immigration court hearings, as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda. The administration has effectively 'de-legalized' tens of thousands of immigrants, including people who show up to immigration courts each week only to have their cases dismissed, with federal agents waiting to arrest them on the other side of the courtroom doors. Those actions have radically expanded a pool of 'undocumented' people to add to the president's demands for mass deportations. Unlike federal district court judges, immigration judges operate under the direction of the attorney general's office. The Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review has issued guidance to judges to grant motions from government lawyers to immediately dismiss immigrants' cases, making them easy targets for arrest and removal.
WIRED
17-07-2025
- Politics
- WIRED
ICE Is Getting Unprecedented Access to Medicaid Data
An agent of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) waits in a hallway outside of a courtroom at New York Federal Plaza Immigration Court inside the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York on July 17, 2025. Photograph:Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are getting access to the personal data of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid in order to acquire "information concerning the identification and location of aliens in the United States,' according to an information exchange agreement viewed by WIRED. The agreement, which is titled 'Information Exchange Agreement Between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for Disclosure of Identity and Location Information of Aliens,' was signed by CMS officials on Tuesday and first reported by AP News. Per the agreement, ICE officials will get login credentials for a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) database containing sensitive medical information, including detailed records about diagnoses and procedures. Language in the agreement says it will allow ICE to access personal information such as home addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, banking data, and social security numbers. (Later on in the agreement, what ICE is allowed to access is defined differently, specifying just 'Medicaid recipients' and their sex, ethnicity, and race, but forgoing any mention of IP or banking data.) The agreement is set to last two months. While the document is dated July 9, it is only effective starting when both parties sign it, which would indicate a 60 day span from July 15 to September 15. The move comes as president Donald Trump's administration has continued to expand its crackdown on immigration. The administration aims to deport 3,000 people per day—four times as many as were deported in the fiscal year of 2024, according to ICE. Its plans to do so seemingly involves vacuuming up data from across the government. WIRED previously reported that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and DHS were working on a master database, pulling in data from across DHS and other agencies, in order to surveil and deport immigrants. Medicaid, state and federally government-funded healthcare coverage for the country's poorest, is largely only available to some non-citizens, including refugees and asylum seekers, survivors of human trafficking, and permanent residents. Some states, like New York, provide Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant people, regardless of their immigration status. States report their Medicaid expenditures and data to the federal government, which reimburses them for some of the costs. 'This was never even considered during my five years at DHS working on immigration enforcement,' says John Sandweg, the acting director of ICE during President Barack Obama's administration. "You want to be careful of a possible chilling effect where people who might apply for benefits and be eligible for benefits—or who seek emergency medical care—won't do so because they're worried the information they provide at the hospital could make them a target for immigration action." This isn't the concern of the administration now, spokespeople tell WIRED. 'Under the leadership of Dr. Oz, CMS is aggressively cracking down on states that may be misusing federal Medicaid funds to subsidize care for illegal immigrants,' Andrew Nixon, the director of communications at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), tells WIRED. 'This oversight effort—supported by lawful interagency data sharing with DHS—is focused on identifying waste, fraud, and systemic abuse. We are not only protecting taxpayer dollars—we are restoring credibility to one of America's most vital programs. The American people deserve accountability. HHS is delivering it.' 'President Trump consistently promised to protect Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. To keep that promise after Joe Biden flooded our country with tens of millions of illegal aliens, CMS and DHS are exploring an initiative to ensure that illegal aliens are not receiving Medicaid benefits that are meant for law-abiding Americans,' says assistant secretary of DHS Tricia McLaughlin. (Biden did not allow 'tens of millions' of immigrants into the US: even the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, claimed that 6.7 million people entered the country illegally under Biden as of January 2024.) The agreement states that its purpose is not to identify waste, fraud, and abuse or examine whether immigrants are receiving impermissible benefits, but to allow ICE to "retrieve information concerning the identity and location of aliens in the United States." 'It highlights to me that the targeting has moved well beyond criminal aliens, you don't look at data like this unless you're looking well beyond people convicted of crimes," says Sandweg. In a section outlining the responsibilities of each party the agreement states that it is CMS's responsibility to provide a number of ICE employees access to T-MSIS, which stands for Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System, through CMS login credentials. T-MSIS is a CMS database that collects Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) data from every state and nearly every US territory, as well as Washington, DC. The system contains granular data on medical conditions, symptoms, treatments, inpatient admissions, and claims, among other sensitive information. The database's data quality varies state to state. The document specifies that ICE will have 'direct access' to the T-MSIS database through the Integrated Data Repository, which an exhibit filed in a recent court case called 'the cornerstone to [CMS's] data environment … providing users the ability to analyze data in place rather than relying on voluminous extracts of raw data.' In turn, ICE's responsibilities include applying for CMS login credentials, completing the 'Information System Security and Privacy Awareness training,' and signing a document about CMS and the Department of Health and Human Service's 'Rules of Behavior for Use of Information and IT Resources.' The agreement further stipulates ICE will then use these credentials to identify and locate "aliens in the United States.' The agreement also notes that its terms will be 'carried out by authorized officers, employees, and contractors of CMS and ICE.' ICE currently contracts with several companies, including Palantir, the defense contractor cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel, to which the agency recently paid $30 million to build a system called ImmigrationOS to track immigrants self-deporting from the US. The company is also involved in helping to build a 'mega API' at the IRS. In April, DHS and the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) announced an agreement to share IRS data for immigration enforcement. 'The agreement gives ICE full, direct access to our Medicaid data—one of the most important health programs is now being entirely repurposed as a law enforcement database, handing our data directly over to ICE,' says Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel of the National Political Advocacy Division at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 'The agreement claims that under the Privacy Act, CMS is permitted to share our data to 'assist another Federal or state agency,' but that's at best a half truth. That sharing is only allowed if [it] is to contribute to the accuracy of Medicare or Medicaid, to administer a federal health benefits program, or as necessary to implement a health benefits program funded with federal funds. Completely surrendering our privacy to enable ICE does none of those things.' The agreement allows ICE to retain any Medicaid data for as long as the agency deems it necessary. The document clarifies that this agreement can be renewed for 'consecutive periods,' and that ICE also can share the data so long as the agency specifies who the recipients are in writing. Venzke calls this 'an incredibly thin protection.' Agencies can share data via what's known as a computer matching agreement, which is a written agreement between agencies that specifies the parameters of how they will compare data from their respective systems. According to its website, the CMS currently has half a dozen computer matching agreements with other federal agencies, including the IRS, the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA), and the Social Security Administration (SSA). The agreement between ICE and CMS, however, explicitly states that it is not a computer matching agreement. Jonathan Kamens, former information security lead at the Department of Veterans' Affairs, told WIRED that as long as ICE agents abide by the rules and vetting processes required by CMS to access its systems, they might not require a computer matching agreement. However, any use of data collected by an agency outside what is outlined in its System of Records Notice (SORN) could constitute a violation. 'The System of Records Notice for the CMS systems would have to permit the use that ICE is putting the data to in order for it to be legal,' he says. 'It is unlikely that the Trump administration has gone through the effort necessary to update the System of Record Notice to permit that use of the data.' The agreement asserts that it is compliant with a 2019 SORN, which allows T-MSIS data to be used 'to assist another federal or state agency." The SORN does not appear to have been updated to include the new agreement between ICE and CMS. CMS is not the only agency where ICE agents have direct access to sensitive data. Earlier this year, it was revealed that ICE agents were being given logins to access the database that tracks unaccompanied minors at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is also housed under HHS. A former HHS employee told WIRED that more than 50 ICE employees had access to the ORR database. 'By turning over some of our most sensitive healthcare data to ICE, Health and Human Services has fundamentally betrayed the trust of almost 80 million people,' says Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic tech at the Center for Democracy and Technology. 'Over 90 percent of entitlement fraud is committed by U.S. citizens, underscoring the false pretense of sharing this information with ICE. The results of this decision will be devastating. It will sink trust in government even lower, force individuals to choose between life-saving care and turning over data to immigration authorities, and erode the quality and effectiveness of government services.' Zoë Schiffer contributed reporting.
CBS News
23-06-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Protesters gather in downtown Chicago, voice opposition to U.S. strikes on Iran
A group of antiwar activists gathered at Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago Sunday afternoon to voice their opposition to the U.S. strikes in Iran. The U.S. launched strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday night Chicago time. President Trump announced Saturday night that the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites at Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan were a "spectacular military success," and warned of "far greater" attacks if Iran does not "make peace." "The vast majority of people in the world oppose this bombing," said activist and Gay Liberation Network cofounder Andy Thayer. "Donald Trump and all his Democratic Party enablers have just succeeded in making the United States and Israel the two most hated countries in the world — and for good damn reason." "Let me be clear — bombs do not bring peace. Bombs do not bring peace," said Ali Farouk of the Iranian American Council. "Diplomacy is the only solution." The protest and news conference was sponsored by the No War on Iran Coalition.
