What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White
Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.
This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.
Trial Begins for Man Accused of Lobbing a Sandwich at a Federal Agent
"Jury selection started on Monday for Sean C. Dunn, who was charged with misdemeanor assault after hitting a federal agent with a “sub-style sandwich.”
A man, later identified as Sean C. Dunn, seen approaching federal agents while holding a sandwich in Washington in August. He was later arrested, accused of throwing the item at an officer.Andrew Leyden/Getty Images
The trial of a man charged with assaulting a Customs and Border Protection agent by throwing a sandwich at his chest in protest began on Monday, several months after federal prosecutors failed to persuade a grand jury to approve a felony indictment against him over the incident.
Sean C. Dunn, a former paralegal for the Justice Department, will instead go to court to fight a misdemeanor assault charge in the August episode. A video of it circulated widely on social media, making him a symbol of local opposition to President Trump’s deployment of troops and federal agents in Washington.
The case stands out for its unusual facts and the Trump administration’s determination to prosecute the man, even on a lesser charge. But it is one of a number of unusually minor cases the government is bringing to federal court at Mr. Trump’s direction.
Since August, Mr. Trump has maintained a constant presence of armed National Guard troops and federal agents on Washington’s streets, arguing they are necessary to fight crime even ascrime rates were already plunging. Along the way, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney in Washington and former Fox News host, has directed her office to aggressively prosecute any crimes that come up, despiteembarrassing setbackswith local grand juries refusing to return indictments, as they did in Mr. Dunn’s case.
According to the government’s court filings, Mr. Dunn yelled obscenities at the officers and called them “fascists” before “winding his arm back and forcefully throwing a sub-style sandwich” at the agent.
“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city,” he yelled, according tocharging documents.
Leading up to the trial, federal prosecutors and Mr. Dunn’s lawyers sparred over how to properly instruct the jury, given the unusual nature of the charges. That includeddiscussionover the definition of federal misdemeanor assault, which typically requires physical contact, and whether the incident could be considered interfering with the agent’s duties.
Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Trump appointee, is presiding over the case.
Mr. Dunn’s lawyers have described the case as a “blatant abuse of power” and said that the prosecution is a response to Mr. Dunn’s political speech directed at the Trump administration and the monthslong deployment of troops around the city. They have argued that the prosecution is vindictive and that throwing a sandwich at a “fully armed, heavily protected” agent would not have led to charges at any other protest or demonstration.
“That act alone would never have drawn a federal charge,” they wrote. “What did was the political speech that accompanied it.”
Zach Montagueis a Times reporter covering the federal courts, including the legal disputes over the Trump administration’s agenda."
Anger Over ICE Raids Is Driving Some Latino Voters to the Polls
"For months, immigration crackdowns in Southern California have transformed life in Bell Gardens, the majority-Latino suburb where Alo Hurtado lives. Neighbors have been hauled off by masked federal agents. Families have curtailed trips to supermarkets and churches. Many people have stopped going out without their passports, including Mr. Hurtado’s mother, a naturalized citizen.
So when it came time to vote in California’s special election, Mr. Hurtado, 42, decided not to vote by mail, as many in the state do. Instead, he went to a polling place in a landmark park with his Mexican-born parents this week to vote early and in person.
Given all his community had gone through, he was worried about mail tampering — and he was angry.
“Especially here in California,” he said, “we need to speak up.”
Elections on Tuesday in California, New Jersey and other states are unfolding as the Trump administration’s immigration raids have spread fear in Latino communities across the country. That fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity has become an X factor in next week’s elections.
Democratic officials and Latino voting-rights activists worry that the ICE crackdown will dampen Latino turnout and that the presence of Justice Department election monitors at polling sites in California and New Jersey will intimidate voters. Voter data of the turnout so far in California, New Jersey and Virginia shows that Latino participation is roughly on pace with past elections.
Anger Over Immigration Raids Motivates Some Latino Voters
In Bell Gardens, a city in southeast Los Angeles County, early voters said that anger and frustration over months of aggressive immigration enforcement in their neighborhoods had prompted them to participate in this year’s election.Mimi Dwyer/The New York Times
And for some Latino voters, the Trump administration’s escalation of force appears to be not a deterrent to casting a ballot but a motivation.
In Virginia, where the Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, is running against Abigail Spanberger, a Democratic former congresswoman, one Hispanic business owner said the most important issue in the election was the ICE raids.
“It is something we are feeling morning and night, and it stirs a lot of sadness,” said the business owner, Carlos Castro, a naturalized U.S. citizen from El Salvador and an independent voter who runs Todos Supermarket in Woodbridge, Va. He cast his ballot during the early-vote period.
Elvis Cordova, 49, a government relations consultant in Alexandria, Va., who plans to cast an early vote for Ms. Spanberger, said the federal crackdown had raised the election’s stakes. “A lot of Latin American folks have come here because they have seen their countries go authoritarian — their rights were slowly eroded,” Mr. Cordova said. Now, he added, many are “seeing shades of that happening here.”
In New Jersey, the mayor of the city of Passaic, Hector Lora, said he doubted that the Trump administration’s decision to dispatch federal election monitors to Passaic County would scare off Latino voters. The countyis considered crucial in the neck-and-neck governor’s racebetween Jack Ciattarelli, a Republican, and Mikie Sherrill, a Democratic member of Congress.
“We’re Jersey,” Mr. Lora said. “We will make it to the polls. We will cast our votes. And we will have our voice.”
Mayor André Sayegh of Paterson said he saw no fear or reluctance to vote among residents in his city, Passaic County’s biggest, which is more than 60 percent Latino. If anything, he said, he saw determination.
“I feel like this is the way that people feel about their ballot — like they could fight back,’‘ Mr. Sayegh said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said in a statement that the agency was not planning immigration enforcement actions targeting polling locations and that its operations are “intelligence-driven.” The statement said, however, that “if a dangerous criminal alien is near a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”
Democratic officials and Latino voting-rights activists worry that the ICE crackdown will dampen Latino turnout and that the presence of Justice Department election monitors at polling sites in parts of California including Los Angeles County.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times
Last week, the Justice Departmentannounced it would monitor electionsin six counties with large Latino populations in California and New Jersey, at the request of Republican Party officials in those states.
In New Jersey, Republicans had complained that Democratic members of the Board of Elections in Passaic County had blocked the use of security cameras in ballot storage areas and refused to require a sign-in log for workers with access to mail-in ballots. California Republican officials cited “reports of irregularities” and general concerns that local officials were failing to catch flawed and duplicate ballots or cull ineligible names from voter lists.
The Justice Department said personnel from its Civil Rights Division would be stationed at polling places and offices of registrars of voters “to ensure transparency, ballot security, and compliance with federal law.” The California attorney general, Rob Bonta, said that the federal government had no legal basis to interfere in a state election, that the Republican complaintswere baseless and that California would deploy its own observers, to monitor the monitors.
Latino Republicans dismissed any concerns raised by Democrats that the ICE raids or Justice Department election monitoring might hurt Hispanic turnout.
Rudy Melendez, 57, a lighting technician in the North Hollywood section of Los Angeles and a conservative, scoffed at the notion that a U.S. citizen would hesitate to vote because of a crackdown on unauthorized immigrants. If turnout ends up being low, he said, it could be because voters tend to be less tuned in to off-year special elections. “People are going to vote if they want to vote,” he said.
State Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Republican from Santa Clarita, said that if Latino voter turnout was low in the California election, it would be because of “frustrations on all sides,” not because of federal agents or monitors.
State Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Republican from Santa Clarita, Calif., said that the economy, not immigration, is the main driver of Latino turnout.Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press
“Latino voters gave a very clear mandate here in California that they wanted the Legislature and Governor Newsom to focus on issues of affordability, of safe communities — and that hasn’t happened,” Ms. Valladares said.
Latino voters have become pivotal in this century in American elections. They are among the fastest-growing demographics in the United States, disproportionately young and less entrenched with political parties.
In 2024, Latino swing voters moved by economic dissatisfaction were instrumental in President Trump’s return to office. That support has been tested as the president has sought to arrest and deport unauthorized immigrants on a large scale, separating mixed-status families and sweeping upLatinos who are U.S. citizens in some cases.
Throughout his first term and his re-election campaigns, the president has asserted falsely that large numbers of undocumented immigrants were illegally casting ballots.
Héctor Sánchez Barba, the president of Mi Familia Vota, which oversees some of the largest Latino voter mobilization groups in the country, said the false claims over illegal voting had caused members of his group to endure harassment from conservative activists filming and photographing their activities. His group has since had to increase its spending on security guards, digital forensics to prevent hacking and safety and de-escalation training for canvassers.
“We have had people following our canvassers, harassing our canvassers, and now adding ICE trucks on top of that, it’s all extremely worrisome,” Mr. Sánchez Barba said.
Héctor Sánchez Barba, the president of Mi Familia Vota, which oversees some of the largest Latino voter mobilization groups in the country.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images
In California, voting experts said Latino voters typically made up about a quarter of the turnout in statewide elections.
As of early Sunday, about 18 percent of the vote, including in-person early voting and mail-in ballots counted so far, had been cast by Latinos, according to Political Data Inc., a data firm based in California. That level of participation is normal for a demographic that tends to vote in person and close to Election Day, voting experts said.
Gov. Gavin Newsom persuaded the Democrats who control the State Legislature to approve a ballot measure that would let state lawmakers redraw California’s congressional districts. Ordinarily, the state’s political maps are determined by a nonpartisan commission. The proposed shift was a response to Mr. Trump’s push to get Republicans in Texas and other states to use redistricting to help his party keep control of the House of Representatives.
The California measure, called Proposition 50, requires voter approval and is widely expected to pass. The proposed new map could net as many as five congressional seats for Democrats.
Mr. Newsom has said that the Justice Department monitors heading to election sites in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Kern and Fresno counties are “a setup.” If Democrats object to election monitors, hetold KQED, a Bay Area public radio station,“you’re also going to see ICE deployed — you’re going to see these masked men from Border Patrol also near voting booths and polling places.”
California has stringent prohibitions on voter intimidation, stemming from past periods of anti-immigrant backlash. In 1992, the California Republican Partysettled a civil rights casewith five Orange County plaintiffs after a Republican legislator’s campaign put uniformed guards at polling places in 1988 to deter Latinos from voting.
The case cost the party nearly $500,000 in payouts and led in 1990 to the legislator’s defeat.
The Democrat who defeated that legislator and took his seat, State Senator Tom Umberg, said he worried that the Trump administration “could do a reprise of 1988,” adding that federal agents or their supporters “could go up to somebody in line to vote: ‘Are you a citizen? Do you have proof? Where do you live?’”
In Bell Gardens, Mr. Hurtado’s mother, Josefa Rivera, 65, said in Spanish that she had become a citizen after Californians passed Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative championed by the Republican governor at the time, Pete Wilson, that would have barred undocumented immigrants from public services including schools and nonemergency health care. Federal courts ruled it unconstitutional.
That era did not compare to the injustices she said she had seen this year. She said she was voting for Proposition 50, and was doing so not only for herself but on behalf of her neighbors who are undocumented immigrants and cannot vote.
“One has to speak up for those who can’t,” she said."
"Trump says he has ‘never even thought about’ ending the Affordable Care Act. Is that true?
ByLouis Jacobson | Politifact
5 Nov 2024
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump dances at a campaign rally at Van Andel Arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, November 5, 2024 [Paul Sancya/AP Photo]
Former President Donald Trump raged against Vice President Kamala Harris on his social media platform Truth Social for saying he wanted to end the Affordable Care Act, the federal law signed by then-President Barack Obama that expanded access to health insurance.
“Lyin’ Kamala is giving a News Conference now, saying that I want to end the Affordable Care Act,” Trump posted on October 31, which was also shared on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I never mentioned doing that, never even thought about such a thing.”
Lyin’ Kamala is giving a News Conference now, saying that I want to end the Affordable Care Act. I never mentioned doing that, never even thought about such a thing. She also said I want to end Social Security. Likewise, never mentioned it, or thought of it. She is the one that…
Trump has given mixed and incomplete information about his plan for the 2010 law during the current campaign; and Democrats, including Harris, have exaggerated how certain it is that Trump will do away with the law if he wins back the Oval Office. His campaign says he does not want to repeal it any more.
But it is ridiculously wrong for Trump to say he has never even mentioned getting rid of it. In his first campaign and as president, Trump supported the idea of getting rid of the Affordable Care Act.
Trump’s new claim fits into another moment of the campaign’s revisionist health history; his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, falsely said in September that Trump “chose to build upon” the Affordable Care Act.
Trump’s history with the Affordable Care Act
During his 2016 presidential campaign, the Republican promised to repeal the law, sometimes called Obamacare. Shortly after taking office, Trumpdiscussedhis “ambitious legislative agenda”, which included eliminating the Affordable Care Act. He called it “a disaster” and said he wanted to save families from what he described as a “catastrophic rise in premiums and debilitating loss of choice and just about everything else”.
Trump supported congressional Republicans’ failed repeal-and-replace efforts. One example is theAmerican Health Care Act, a bill to repeal the law’s subsidies and regulations, that the House passed in May 2017; it failed in the Senate. In June 2020, Trump’s administration asked the US Supreme Court to block the law, but the court dismissed the case.
Trump also cut funding for the law’s marketing, outreach and enrolment assistance. He expanded access to short-term, limited-coverageplansthat Democrats call “junk insurance”, arguing they limit care and can lead to surprise medical bills.
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During Trump’s presidency, Affordable Care Act enrolmentdeclinedby more than two million and the number of uninsured Americans rose by 2.3 million.
What is Trump’s plan now?
During the 2024 campaign, Trump has said inconsistent things about whether he wants to overturn the law. In late 2023, he expressed interest in repealing and replacing the law.
“The cost of Obamacare is out of control, plus, it’s not good Healthcare. I’m seriously looking at alternatives,” Trump wrote on November 25, 2023, on Truth Social. “We had a couple of Republican Senators who campaigned for 6 years against it, and then raised their hands not to terminate it. It was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”
On November 29, 2023, he wrote, “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”
Since then, he has backtracked.
In March this year, hewroteon Truth Social that he is “not running to terminate” the healthcare law, but wants to make it “better” and “less expensive”.
Hesaidduring the September 10 debate with Harris that he has “concepts of a plan” to replace it.
But he has not given more details, the Republican Partyplatformdoes not address the Affordable Care Act, and he has not mentioned the law in his campaign promises.
In a statement for this article, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Repealing Obamacare is not President Trump’s policy position. As President Trump has said, he will make our health care system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable healthcare and insurance options.”
Our ruling
Trump said, “I never mentioned” wanting to end the Affordable Care Act and have “never even thought about such a thing.”
We cannot read his mind, but we heard his words. And Trump as a candidate in 2016 and as president not only entertained and discussed that idea but sought to end the law through congressional action and at the Supreme Court.
He has said inconsistent things about his plan for the law if he wins the presidency — and his latest position is that a repeal is off the table. But it is inaccurate and ridiculous to say he has never “mentioned” wanting to scuttle the law. We rate the claim Pants on Fire!"
Detained migrants are led to a holding room on the 10th floor of the Jacob K Javits federal building for holding in New York on 10 July 2025.Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters
US immigrationofficials have been increasingly detaining people in small, secretive holding facilities for days or even weeks at a time in violation of federal policy, a Guardian investigation has found.
These holding facilities – located at ICE offices, in federal buildings and other locations around the country – are typically used to detain people after they have been arrested but before they are transferred or released. In many cases, they consist of small concrete rooms with no beds and are designed to only be used for a few hours.
Previously, ICE was prohibited by its own internal policies from detaining people for longer than 12 hours in these holding facilities. Butin a June memo, the agency waived the 12-hour rule, saying people recently arrested by ICE can be detained in the holding rooms for up to three days.
There is extremely limited oversight of ICE holding facilities nationwide, leading to concern among advocates about unknown troubling conditions inside.
The Guardian analyzed data on ICE holding facility book-ins, first published by theDeportation Data Project, that cover a period from September 2023 until late July of this year, the most recent month for which it is available.
The Guardian’s analysis found that:
ICE has used at least 170 ICE holding facilities nationwide, including at 25 ICE field offices.
The Trump administration and its campaign of mass deportation has led to a near across the board increase in the time people are forced to spend in detention in holding rooms. After Donald Trump’s inauguration, the average time that people spend in detention increased at 127 hold rooms across the country.
Despite ICE’s rule change in June, the agency is continuing to violate its own policy by detaining people at these sites for multiple days at a time.
In some cases, such as a New York City holding facility located on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, time in detention increased by nearly 600% on average after the June rule change.
In one case the Guardian discovered by looking through agency data, ICE documented that a 62-year-old man was held inside that same New York City holding facility for two and a half months.
The Guardian also found an additional 63 people at the site who were held there for longer than one week, between Trump’s inauguration and late July.
Across the country, ICE has been criticized for its use of holding facilities, which are not subjected to traditional audits, inspections and general oversight that larger ICE detention centers are required to face.
Now, advocates and former ICE officials are sounding the alarm that their extended use puts people in unsafe conditions, raises the risk of abuse and medical neglect, and violates due process rights. The facilities are secretive and face minimal oversight, and detainees have very little contact with family members or attorneys.
The Guardian sent a detailed request for comment to the DHS and ICE. ICE responded by requesting an extension to the deadline in order to provide the Guardian “the information needed to ensure a factual story”. Despite that communication, neither the DHS nor ICE provided a comment in time for publication.
In various instances, including in court records and when members of Congress have attempted to visit holding facilities, homeland security officials have said holding rooms are not detention centers, so they are not subjected to the same kind of scrutiny as other ICE facilities. In August, the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem, said ICE does not detain immigrants in field offices, some of which contain holding facilities, and instead say they are offices where people are processed.
However, former agency officials with extensive knowledge of conditions inside holding facilities have expressed concern at their prolonged use.
“People were not supposed to spend more than 12 hours in there,” said a former ICE official, who worked on oversight and detention issues and who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump administration. “I actually think it’s wildly, wildly fucked up.”
The former official said that the risk of people experiencing sexual abuse or assault while in a holding room – either from ICE staff or fellow detainees – increases the longer they are held. “You’re just putting them all in there with minimal oversight,” the former official added.
An overcrowded system
People are typically taken to holding facilities after being arrested by ICE or its partner agencies, or while they are awaiting transfer to courts, detention centers or other detention spaces.
As arrests surge amid the Trump administration’s widespread immigration crackdown, officials are continuing to skirt the law by detaining people for longer than legally allowed in holding facilities. Officials are arresting more people, leading to a backlog of people to process, while they increasingly rely on the network of holding facilities. A backlogged court system and overfilled detention centers mean people are being held here longer and longer.
Federal immigration officers detain a family after departing from their hearing at immigration court in New York on 22 October 2025.Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters
A data analysis from the Guardian shows that in major holding facilities throughout the country, immigration officials were already detaining people for multiple days at a time even before the memo was signed.
Advocates say ICE’s June policy change was made in an effort to move the legal goalposts and lessen any potential ramifications from the agency’s nationwide crisis of overcapacity at holding facilities, as officials have rounded up hundreds of thousands of people in its dragnet.
Language in the ICEmemosupports that claim, reading that the rule was changed in order to “avoid violation of holding facility standards and requirements”, among other reasons.
Despite the rule change, however, court records, interviews and arrest data show ICE has been detaining people for longer than the three-day limit, in violation of its new policy. In the New York City holding facility, for example, located on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, the average time of people detained in the hold rooms increased by nearly 600% after the June memo was signed.
The ICE official who signed the memo, which was first included as an attachment in a federal court filing in a New York-based lawsuit against ICE, justified the policy change by pointing to the major increase in immigration-related arrests by the Trump administration.
“This is ICE trying to give themselves a buffer to keep holding people in conditions they know are unsafe,” said Amelia Dagen, a senior attorney with the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights. “They are giving themselves an ‘out’, legally, through the waiver.”
A lack of oversight and troubling conditions
ICE’s holding facilities have come under increased scrutiny this year, as the Trump administration aggressively escalates immigration enforcement operations.
While larger immigration detention facilities are subject to oversight mechanisms, holding facilities are not because they are supposed to only be used for limited time. Attorneys are not allowed into the holding facilities; ICE’s detention standards do not apply to them; it is unknown whether homeland security watchdog agencies, like the inspector general’s office, conduct site audits at the holding facilities; and some members of Congress, who have attempted to enter the facilities to conduct congressionally mandated inspections, have been prevented from doing so because ICE says they are not traditional detention centers.ICE has conducted sexual assault audits in holding facilities in the past, but has not published a single audit since late 2024.
The DHS inspector general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“There is a total lack of oversight,” said Paige Austin, supervising litigation attorney at Make the Road New York, a non-profit organization that sued ICE for its use of the New York City holding facility. “The lack of communication and lack of access to counsel for people in these sites is a way of preventing oversight, transparency and accountability.”
Austin added that when Make the Road New York and other organizations sued ICE, the agency did not acknowledge any oversight taking place in holding facilities.
Representative Dan Goldman walks past federal immigration officers waiting for respondents to depart from their hearings to conduct targeted detainments at immigration court in New York on 23 October 2025.Photograph: David Dee Delgado/Reuters
Holding facilities throughout the country, used to detain men, women and children, are designed only to temporarily detain people while they process their arrest.The rooms are in many cases small,concrete-only spaces with benches, sinks and toilets lacking privacy, where multiple people are detained at once.
People detained have complained of lights being constantly on, depriving them of sleep. They also have extremely limited contact with the outside world, including with attorneys and family members.
There is a shocking lack of oversight and ICE has put forward its own inconsistent statements about conditions, but news reports, court records and leaked videos have offered some troubling glimpses into these facilities.
In June, the Guardianreportedon a Los Angeles ICE holding facility in a building’s basement, where people, including families with children, were held for dayswith little food or water. A recentreportfrom the Times of San Diego said people had been held inside an ICE holding facility in the basement of a courthouse. And astoryfrom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution alleged people have been held for long periods of time inside an ICE holding facility in the basement of the agency’s own offices.
Few external observers have seen conditions inside holding facilities, but in July, the New York Immigrant Coalition published avideofrom insidethe New York City holding facilitythat had been surreptitiously recorded by a detained man. The video showed more than 20 people in a brightly lit room, standing around, lying on the concrete floor or sitting on concrete benches with foil blankets. Two toilets are seen in the video, partitioned from the rest of the room by a short wall.
Footage reveals harsh conditions inside Ice’s New York City confinement centre – video
According to court declarations reviewed by the Guardian in a New York-based federal lawsuit against ICE, people have been held at the New York City holding facility for multiple days at a time. One person was held there for five days, another for eight, another for 10 and one person for more than two weeks.
“We spoke with multiple people who had been in there for more than a week, more than 10 days – in the same clothes, not having bathed and no access to toothbrushes,” said Austin.
In mid-September, a federal judgeorderedthe Trump administration to improve conditions for detained migrants at the holding facility. ICE began providing sleeping mats, three meals and toothbrushes in response to the court’s order, according to Austin. The judge also required that people detained by ICE be given the opportunity to consult with their attorneys.
‘A problem of ICE’s own making’
In Baltimore, a similar case is playing out in the Maryland federal court.
Located on the sixth floor of the George H Fallon federal building,the Baltimore holding facilityhas five cells, total, with the three largest cells having the capacity to detain up to 35 people each. It has faced accusations of medical neglect and overcrowding, according to a lawsuit filed in a Maryland federal court. The Trump administration attempted to dismiss that lawsuit by saying that the detained immigrants who sued had already been transferred out, so the Maryland federal court had no legal jurisdiction.
According to Dagen, who is on the legal team litigating the Baltimore holding facility lawsuit against ICE, attorneys are particularly concerned about medical care in the facility.
“We have found out – through the course of this litigation – that there is no one who is a licensed medical practitioner, in any way shape or form,” Dagen said. “No nurse, no doctor on-site to assess people for the need to go to the hospital if they are having some sort of medical issue.”
In response to public criticism, ICE in mid-March began providing air mattresses to detained immigrants in Baltimore. However, court records hint at inconsistent statements from ICE: during litigation, ICE officials told the court that they were providing pre-made and ready-to-eat meals to detained immigrants inside the holding rooms. But when attorneys received a first batch of discovery documents from ICE as part of their lawsuit, they discovered supermarket receipts instead. ICE, attorneys speculate, had been making sandwiches for detained people, not the full, ready-to-eat meals like they had originally claimed.
Demonstrators gather outside of the George H Fallon federal building on 18 March 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland.Photograph: Michael A McCoy for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Due to heightened pressure on ICE, members of Congress throughout the country have attempted to enter ICE field offices with holding facilities. After much prodding, some members of Congress have been able to visit select holding facilities including the one inBaltimore.
But according to a separatelawsuitfiled against ICE in Washington DC, lawmakers have been denied entry into the New York City, Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Washington ICE field offices for oversight inspections. Those facilities all detain people recently arrested by ICE.
The government shutdown is further preventing congressional oversight into holding facilities. Recentcourtfilingsby the Trump administration say that due to the lapse in federal funding, a certain oversight rule has been overridden, preventing members of Congress from inspecting holding and ICE detention centers overall.
This is a problem of “ICE’s own making”, Dagen added. “They are imposing their own arrest quotas on themselves that are unrealistic and absolutely arbitrary, and then trying to meet those quotas, while fully knowing they don’t have the ability to hold people in conditions that are safe and constitutional.”
