The city’s Correction Department is set to renew a multimillion-dollar contract with a prison telecom giant that’s bragged of using recordings of detainees’ private phone calls to train its artificial intelligence model.  

The Mamdani administration plans to pay Securus Technologies up to $23 million over five years for phone service used by roughly 7,000 people detained on Rikers Island, according to a notice in the City Record. The contract is set to begin July 1.

The Brooklyn Defenders legal aid group and technology experts are urging the Mamdani administration to scrap the agreement, arguing it could hand over vast amounts of personal data including recordings, voiceprints and social connections to a private company with limited oversight and a checkered history.

The conversations people in jail have with their loved ones include intimate moments and private, vulnerable, interactions. It was unclear if, in addition to being recorded, the private calls of New York City detainees are being used to train Securus’ AI model. 

In a memo opposing the contract, Brooklyn Defenders warned of “a community surveillance apparatus that reaches far beyond jail walls, sweeping up the families, friends, and communities of incarcerated New Yorkers without their knowledge.”

Securus began developing AI systems in 2023 using its archive of recorded jail calls to train models designed to flag potential criminal activity, company president Kevin Elder told MIT Technology Review.

One model, he said, was built using seven years of calls from the Texas prison system, with additional efforts underway to create similar tools tailored to other states and localities.

Over the past year, the company has been testing these tools to analyze inmate conversations in real time, according to Elder. 

He described the system as capable of scanning what he called a “treasure trove” of data, using large language models to identify signs that a crime may be planned, with the goal of detecting potential criminal activity earlier in its development.

Correction officials pushed back on several of the concerns raised by advocates — particularly related to immigration enforcement — saying the agency has not enrolled in Securus’ broader data-sharing network.

“The Department has not opted-in to any data or information sharing application with external users,” spokesperson Latima Johnson said in a statement. 

The contract’s confidentiality provisions bar Securus from sharing reports or data without prior written approval from the department, she added.

Department officials declined to answer detailed questions about whether federal immigration authorities have ever sought access to the data, or whether the new contract contains additional safeguards related to AI or third-party integrations.

The proposed contract has not been made available to the public.

Advocates point out Securus was found to have improperly recorded hundreds of attorney-client calls from Rikers, which was later disclosed to prosecutors in 2020 and 2021. 

The issue came to light after public defenders discovered the recordings in evidence shared by prosecutors. The company ultimately deleted the affected calls and worked with the city to overhaul safeguards.

Representatives for Securus, headquartered in Dallas, did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

‘Swept Into These Systems’

Zina Maka, a law professor who studies prison surveillance and emerging technologies, said prison systems historically operate with broad secrecy and legal deference.

“A lot of things that happen in the prison space are subject to a significant amount of opacity,” she told THE CITY.

The introduction of technology has improved communication in jails and prisons — detainees now have access to tablets for video calls — and educational offerings for incarcerated people. 

But it also expands surveillance beyond jail walls, Maka said. 

“Families who have done nothing wrong are increasingly swept into these systems simply because they’re communicating with someone in custody,” she said.

Critics noted Securus’ THREADS platform, which aggregates call recordings, transcripts, voiceprints and financial data to map social connections and flag behavioral patterns that investigators deem suspicious.

Securus previously said the database included information from more than 1.5 million people — including many who were never incarcerated but had received calls from someone who was.

The Correction Department says recorded calls to and from Rikers are not part of the THREADS community. 

Current jail officials did not detail what, if any, privacy protections would be part of the new contract. 

Brooklyn Defenders also raised concerns about a feature that allows participating agencies to share data across jurisdictions. If enabled, that tool could pool New York City jail data with information from facilities in other states — including some that routinely detain immigrants for federal authorities. 

That could potentially allow outside investigators to search data on New Yorkers locked up on Rikers, critics of the new contract say. 

DOC officials maintained that none of the calls would be shared with ICE. 

‘Control every word’

Bianca Tylek, executive director of advocacy group Worth Rises, said the Correction Department should stop recording detainee calls altogether..

“People’s detention is the punishment,” she told THE CITY. “But there are tons of private moments — conversations about family finances, mental health, things that have nothing to do with crime — that really shouldn’t be the purview of the government.”

Tylek also pointed to the impact on people outside the jail system. 

“It’s not just the person who’s incarcerated,” she said. “Families who have done nothing wrong are caught up in this surveillance — their voices are recorded, databased and stored for years, if not forever.”

One mother, whose son has been held on Rikers Island for more than two years, said the constant monitoring has fundamentally changed how they speak to each other.

“We have to control every word,” the woman, who asked not to be named, told THE CITY. “It’s impossible to really talk with my son about his children.”

She said her son sometimes breaks down crying on the phone but avoids discussing why because he assumes the conversations are being recorded.

Tylek noted that recording calls made from jail only started in 2008 under former Commissioner Martin Horn. Initially, the calls would be kept for 18 months before being erased. DOC did not say if that is still the case. Horn has long argued the recordings are a key tool to keeping people safe in jail and for prosecutors to bolster their criminal cases. 

Tylek noted that city officials have never publicly disclosed data on how often the recorded calls have led to those outcomes. 

“We’ve asked DOC to share how many hours they are recording and what percentage of those calls are being flagged for any security purposes,” she said. 

Commissioner Defends Contract

The contract renewal with Securus was spearheaded by James Conroy, the department’s deputy commissioner for legal matters. Conroy, who spent 25 years with the NYPD’s legal department, joined Corrections in 2024. 

The proposed deal must still be formally registered by City Comptroller Mark Levine. His office is reviewing the contract, which will likely take several weeks, spokesperson Terrence Cullen said. 

The contract extension comes as the Mamdani administration has hired a senior advisor for technology and innovation to oversee the city’s expanded use of AI. Rashida Richardson, a civil rights attorney, previously served as senior counsel at Mastercard. 

Asked about the Securus deal, she responded, “I have to decline.”

The contract comes as new Corrections Commissioner Stanley Richards has publicly talked about his difficult experience as a detainee on Rikers during the 1980s as he struggled with addiction. 

Richards defended the contract at an unrelated event last week, saying the calls would not be shared with ICE.

Asked if he’d have been concerned about his calls from Rikers Island to his father being recorded back in the day, Richards responded, “No.”

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A coalition of groups sued the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, alleging that ICE and other federal agencies are unlawfully arresting immigrants in New York solely over their race or ethnicity. 

The coalition, which includes the New York American Civil Liberties Union, Make the Road New York and the Legal Aid Society, filed the class action suit in the Eastern District of New York on behalf of eight immigrants around the state who were allegedly arrested and detained without probable cause. 

“ICE is profiling and arresting Black and Brown New Yorkers based solely on their appearance. This is an egregious violation of their civil rights that has caused fear and panic to ripple throughout New York’s immigrant communities,” Meghna Philip, Director of the Special Litigation Unit at The Legal Aid Society, said in a statement.

The plaintiffs include Juan Carlos Quintero, who was arrested while watching a game of dominos in Staten Island. The 41-year old was surrounded by federal agents in three unmarked cars and handcuffed after he said he did not have an ID on him.

In another incident, a 36-year-old Hispanic man was arrested entering his apartment building in Bushwick, Brooklyn, while coming home from work. In a third incident described in the lawsuit, a 24-year-old Hispanic man and a graduate of the City University of New York was arrested on his way to the Long Island Rail Road in Hempstead. 

All three have been released from federal custody after lawyers filed emergency lawsuits challenging their arrests. 

“DHS agents routinely stop Latinos for no other reason than their appearance and the language they are speaking,” the suit said.

Homeland Security said it arrests people on the basis of reasonable suspicion, consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. “Any allegations ICE law enforcement engages in racial profiling are FALSE,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. 

The new lawsuit cites THE CITY’s reporting last fall describing an uptick in street arrests as well as THE CITY’s story this month which found that 800 New Yorkers who were not an intended target of immigration officers were arrested here between October and March. In 85% of these cases, the people detained had no prior criminal record.

Last September, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 2025 concurring opinion to an emergency order that federal immigration officials may use factors such as language, ethnicity or work as one factor in determining whether someone is in the country without authorization — though not as the only factor. 

The order was in response to a suit the ACLU filed against immigration officials for improperly using race while targeting Home Depots in immigration raids in Los Angeles last summer. 

The ruling has led some to dub the street arrests by federal agents as “Kavanaugh stops,” and is credited with empowering immigration officials to continue using race as a factor in arrests.

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A Trump-appointed federal judge in New York’s Southern District denied a City Council staffer’s request for release from immigration detention Monday, ruling his pending Temporary Protected Status didn’t shield him from arrest and deportation.

Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, a personnel services data analyst for the City Council, has been in ICE detention since mid-January, when ICE agents arrested him at an interview for his asylum case in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Bethpage, Long Island. 

His arrest triggered uproar from New York elected officials, who’ve called for his release. Bohorquez, a Venezuelan native, had been a TPS holder with work authorization but the Trump administration argued they revoked his TPS status when they attempted to end the program last year. 

Many judges in the Southern District of New York have ruled favorably on behalf of immigrants snatched up in the Trump Administration’s deportation dragnet, often ordering their releases within days. 

But Bohorquez’s case was assigned to Judge John Cronan, who ruled in the administration’s favor on Monday, agreeing that Bohorquez no longer had TPS and thus denying his habeas corpus petition for release.

“The Court… concludes that, as a factual matter, Rubio’s TPS has been withdrawn,” Cronan wrote. 

Bohorquez’s attorney, Roger Asmar, had submitted filings in federal court showing he had submitted the required paperwork to extend his TPS in mid-October, with his application still pending. The federal government, however, stopped reviewing those applications shortly after Trump took office. 

Asmar couldn’t be immediately reached for comment on Judge Cronan’s decision. 

“Everyone’s application is still pending, more or less,” said Jessica Bansal, an attorney with the National TPS Alliance, which is suing over the Trump Administration’s attempt to end the designation. The matter is slowly making its way to the Supreme Court, and lower courts have ruled the move was illegal.

“Many Venezuelans never received a final decision on their pending TPS application,” Bansal said. She explained that for years the standard practice had been TPS shielded you from arrest and deportation while the extension was pending, because USCIS often took a year to process applications, while the status itself only lasted for 18 months. 

“TPS would be useless if it didn’t work like that,” she said. 

‘A Deeply Unjust Outcome’

At a hearing last month, Asmar had pointed to the case of a different, another Venezuelan TPS holder who was arrested by ICE and freed a week after he sudesude. Before his release, the man, Hugo Alejandro Caldera Ferrer, became friends with Bohorquez when the two were being held at MDC, where ICE began detaining immigrants last year. He joined Asmar in court in support of Bohorquez’s release. 

“The guy is a really beautiful person,” Hugo told a small crowd of reporters after the Feb. 26 hearing, saying that the two came from the same city in Venezuela and that his friend was having a difficult time behind bars. “It’s hard when you’re a good person, imagine tomorrow being in a federal maximum security prison, how would you feel if you were in his position?”

The denial of Bohorquez’s habeas corpus petition is the latest blow in his fight for freedom from ICE detention. Immigration Judge Charles Conroy first denied his release on bond last month, finding he couldn’t prove he wasn’t a danger to society because of a now-sealed arrest for a scuffle with a roommate in 2023. Last week, Conroy ordered him deported, a decision his attorneys have said they plan to appeal. 

Asked about Judge Cronan’s ruling Monday, Council Speaker Julie Menin said she was disappointed, calling it a “deeply unjust outcome.”

“Rafael has had legal authorization to live and work in the United States and did everything he was asked to maintain good standing. He should be home while his immigration case proceeds, rather than suffering a prolonged detention,” she said in an emailed statement. “We will continue to pursue every legal and advocacy pathway available to secure his release.”

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Dylan Lopez Contreras, the first New York City public school student detained by federal immigration officials during President Donald Trump’s second term, was released Tuesday night after spending 10 months in federal custody, according to his mother and his legal team.

Dylan, now 21, was a student at ELLIS Preparatory Academy, a Bronx school geared toward older, newly arrived immigrant students, and his arrest was one of the highest-profile early examples of an unprecedented tactical shift in immigration enforcement last year in which officers arrested immigrants in the hallways of federal court following their legal hearings. Chalkbeat first reported Dylan’s arrest. 

Kristin Kepplinger, a spokesperson from the New York Legal Assistance Group, which had been representing Dylan in his immigration court case and federal habeas corpus lawsuit, said the reason for his release wasn’t yet clear, as they had yet to review his release documents. 

His legal team was thankful to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration and to the office of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer who’d been advocating for his release, Kepplinger added.

Dylan’s federal habeas corpus petition was denied. An immigration judge also denied his asylum claim, but his lawyers appealed. 

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment on Dylan’s release. 

A native of Venezuela, Dylan first entered the country in 2024 through a program under former President Joe Biden that allowed migrants to make appointments to cross the border and seek asylum. 

Dylan’s arrest quickly earned local and national attention, prompting former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to file an amicus brief seeking his release, along with rallies and calls from national elected officials. Last month, Dylan’s mother, Raiza Contreras, attended the State of the Union with Sen. Chuck Schumer.  

““[I’m] emotional,” Raiza told Chalkbeat in a brief interview Wednesday in Spanish. “I’m grateful to God first and foremost and to all the people who were present in this case.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul said on X Wednesday that she had mentioned Dylan’s name in a recent meeting with Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan.

Mamdani said the city was “overjoyed” by Dylan’s release.

“Throughout this injustice, Dylan has shown remarkable strength, resilience, and courage,” the mayor said in a statement.

Even as federal immigration enforcement swept up other city students — some of whom subsequently won quick releases — Dylan remained in custody in Western Pennsylvania for nearly a year. In a September interview with Chalkbeat from detention, he described the frustration and depression of having his life put on hold. 

Norma Vega, the principal of ELLIS, where staffers rallied behind Dylan and helped coordinate legal and other forms of support for the family, said she believes the sustained public campaign for Dylan’s release paid off.

“It confirmed for me we did the right thing,” she said. “Keeping him in the public eye, he became the face of every immigrant youth across the country.”

She added: “It was about this kid who they [the federal government] inaccurately thought was alone … and how important it was for us to let them know he’s not alone.”

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Federal agents with the Department of Homeland Security apparently lied their way into a Columbia University dormitory and arrested a student there, the university’s acting president Claire Shipman said in a statement Thursday morning.

The agents entered her campus housing in Morningside Heights at around 6:30 a.m., Shipman said. “Our understanding at this time is that the federal agents made misrepresentations to gain entry to the building to search for a ‘missing person.’ We are working to gather more details.”

While Shipman did not name the arrested student, Columbia student Ellie Aghayeva filed a habeas corpus petition asking a federal judge to order her release later on Thursday morning.

Aghayeva, who is from Azerbaijan, is an undergraduate studying neuroscience and political science who came to the United States on a visa 2016, according to her petition. Her lawyers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

DHS officials “represented that they did not have a warrant for Petitioner,” the filing reads. The agents instead “represented they were searching for a missing person to gain entry.”

In the early hours of Thursday morning, Aghayeva had pushed out an urgent Instagram story. 

“Dhs illegally arrested me. Please help,” the post read.

In a statement from an unnamed DHS official, the department confirmed ICE had arrested Aghayeva, calling her, “an illegal alien from Azerbaijan, whose student visa was terminated in 2016 under the Obama administration for failing to attend classes.”

“The building manager and her roommate let officers into the apartment. She has no pending appeals or applications with DHS,” the statement read. It did not address Shipman’s contention that the officers had misidentified themselves to gain access. 

Aghayeva’s name, and her Instagram post, were first reported on by the Columbia Spectator. Unlike the students targeted in Trump’s earlier crackdown on Columbia last year for their activism against Israel, Aghayeva’s account, which has more than 100,000 followers, is mostly about her life as a student at Columbia. 

Shipman noted in her statement that “all law enforcement agents must have a judicial warrant or judicial subpoena to access non-public areas of the University, including housing, classrooms, and areas requiring CUID swipe access. An administrative warrant is not sufficient.”  

But as news spread of Aghayeva’s arrest Thursday, a crowd of angry faculty, students and other demonstrators gathered outside Columbia’s gates to decry the arrest and the university’s response to it. 

“I’m pretty appalled that they were even able to get on our campus because they’re always insisting that our safety is their number one priority and we have pretty crazy security on campus, so I just don’t understand how they were able to get on campus,” said an undergraduate student named Hope, who declined to provide her last name. 

“This should not have happened,” she said. 

Melanie Wall, a professor of biostatistics who joined the demonstrators, said faculty had been pressing administration for more safeguards for international students since the ICE arrests last year targeting student activist to no avail. 

“Everybody who’s done any ICE watch training knows that they’re going to lie. Our security can’t ask the right questions and actually check for ID?”

“We don’t let people on campus without a warrant, blah, blah, blah,” Wall said, referring to Shipman’s statement about the arrest. “That’s literally what happened. So it’s just classic gaslighting.”

The latest arrest came after a string of them last year in which DHS and ICE agents targeted students and others who’d participated in campus encampments protesting in 2024 against the war in Gaza. 

ICE agents entered Mahmoud Khalil’s campus housing and arrested him last march. He then spent 104 days in ICE detention before a federal judge ordered his release while his immigration case continues.

Khalil became a prominent figure in the 2024 campus protests where he acted as a lead negotiator between student activists camped out on a campus lawn  calling for the university to divest from Israeli interests amid the ongoing war in Gaza and campus administrators.

One targeted student, Ranjani Srinivasan, fled to Canada, while another, Yunseo Chung, went into hiding until her arrest was blocked by a federal judge. 

Another person who participated in the protests, Leqaa Kordia, is still in ICE detention in Texas.  Kordia, who never attended Columbia, was arrested for remaining in the country with an expired visa after her sealed protest arrest record was shared with the Department of Homeland Security by the NYPD.  

New York elected officials swiftly slammed the arrest. 

“ICE has no place in our schools and universities,” Council Speaker Julie Menin and Majority Leader Shaun Abreu wrote in a joint statement.  “These activities do not make our city or country safer, but rather drive mistrust and danger. As Columbia College alumni, our hearts are with the community there, and we have been in contact with the University to offer our assistance.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who traveled to Washington on Tuesday to meet with President Trump, didn’t immediately comment on the arrest.

Katie Honan contributed to this report.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now holding immigrants in two different cell blocks inside of the Metropolitan Detention Center, a hulking federal jail in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.  

That news came from Rep. Dan Goldman, whose district encompasses the prison and who toured the facility for the first time on Wednesday, speaking to several detainees who had been held there for months. 

ICE officials told Goldman, the first member of Congress to visit since the agency started housing immigrants there last summer, that 191 people were being held as of Wednesday afternoon in two cell blocks with a combined capacity of 248 detainees. That’s nearly a fifth of the prison’s overall capacity of 1,300 people. 

While Goldman told THE CITY following his hour-long visit that he didn’t encounter any major problems, federal habeas corpus lawsuits and interviews with immigrants locked up there in recent months described frequent lock downs, inedible food, and difficulty accessing medical care.

Those are issues that prisoners charged with federal crimes or serving short sentences inside the prison have long described, and are well-documented in news reports and federal court filings over many years. But ICE detainees, unlike people in the criminal justice system, aren’t guaranteed attorneys to advocate on their behalf. 

“Even sleeping wasn’t easy,” a 30-year-old from Guinea recalled in French. The man, who asked to remain anonymous, spent seven months inside MDC after his arrest following an immigration court appearance last summer. 

He eventually learned about pro bono attorneys at Make the Road New York through another immigrant being held there. The nonprofit filed a habeas corpus writ on his behalf in early January, and a judge ordered his release the same day.

“It’s suffering. That’s what I went through there,” he said. “People are suffering there.”

Goldman said he didn’t know when ICE had opened the second block for its detainees. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, didn’t return a request for comment.

Lawsuits paint grim picture

MDC, the only federal lock-up in New York City, houses notorious inmates like Nicolás Maduro and Luigi Mangione. Last June, it also started holding ICE detainees. 

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who are supposed to be able to conduct unannounced inspections of any place ICE detainees are being held, had been repeatedly denied entry. 

Wednesday was the first time Goldman attempted to visit since a court order last December reaffirmed the law requiring ICE to let members of Congress inspect its detention facilities. 

But while congress members are allowed to enter other ICE facilities unannounced, Goldman’s MDC visit had to be pre-planned because the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees the jail, requires advance notice. 

“It didn’t jump out that there were any serious issues in terms of the actual conditions other than being in jail,” Goldman told THE CITY after the visit. “They were getting fed. They had access to the basketball court, rec area. There were a couple of TVs. They had access to computers.”

But several lawsuits filed by ICE detainees held there since last summer paint a grim broader picture, with several describing difficulty accessing medical care. 

A Colombian man with HIV, referred to in legal filings as O.F.B., went more than a week without access to his preventative HIV medication despite asking staff at the prison for them multiple times each day, according to a federal habeas corpus case filed last November. 

“His health deteriorated quickly, and Mr. B worried no one would ever help him and he would die,” read his lawsuit, filed by Brooklyn Defender Services. 

“He felt feverish, sore and weak. His lips got extremely chapped and they began to break and bleed, and his leg broke out in an infected pustule; that is when the medical staff at MDC took notice. Mr. B told them that HIV can spread through blood, and that his pustule oozing and his lips cracking and bleeding was a health hazard. Mr B was finally given HIV medication that day.”

His attorneys declined to comment further on the case.

Another HIV-positive detainee who spoke with THE CITY on the condition of anonymity described going more than two weeks without access to his antiviral medications. 

“I was so stressed out,” the man, a Venezuelan asylum seeker who was held at MDC for two months last summer, told THE CITY in Spanish. “That’s the thing that keeps me healthy,” he said. Without it, “whatever illness, even a fever, can be fatal for me.”

In another legal filing, Jonathan, a 34-year-old Mexican man, described months of severe dental pain that prevented him from eating and sleeping. While he needed a tooth pulled, he was offered only ibuprofen. “The pain affects his ability to eat and sleep, he has been told to simply wait,” his attorney wrote in a December filing. 

Several detainees described prolonged lockdowns where they would be trapped in their small cell with a roommate for days at a time, sometimes for the entire weekend, or for several days if a high profile inmate was entering or leaving the building. 

“They’d lock us in for any little thing,” the Venezuelan man told THE CITY. “Sometimes for three days at a time.”

A Queens high school student, one of the few Bangladeshi immigrants held at MDC, spent a month there last fall, barely able to communicate with anyone. The twelfth grader told THE CITY he instead tried to focus on improving his English. He suffered frequent stomach aches from food he said was “cold, hard, or spoiled.” Sometimes he opted not to eat at all. 

When he was released, his teachers and principal welcomed him back, offering extra support so he could keep up with his classes. “You’re not alone, we’re here with you,” they told him, he recalled. “They love me so much.”

The teen said he’s trying to focus on his future, but the dark weeks he spent inside a small cell still come to mind. 

“That’s my worst memory, I’ll never forget about that,” he said. “I don’t want anyone else to go through that.”

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The night before her check-in this week with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Ingrid, a 37-year-old mother from Honduras, tossed and turned, waking up every hour or so to check the time.

Her eight-year-old son and-four-year-old daughter were anxious too. 

The last time they’d had a check in at 26 Federal Plaza, five days before Christmas, what started as a routine visit quickly became a nearly three-week-long nightmare. 

THE CITY previously reported how the family was arrested, shipped across the country and confined to a hotel room for nearly 20 days, through Christmas and New Year’s, without being able to call their family or a lawyer, before being abruptly returned to New York and released thanks to a federal judge’s temporary restraining order.

But that order has expired, and the judge decided not to block their deportation. While their attorney is appealing that decision, returning to the scene of their arrest hung heavily over the family as they prepared to return just weeks after their release in early January, following a holiday season.  

THE CITY is withholding Ingrid’s full name and the names of her children as her immigration case is ongoing.

The night before their new appointment, Ingrid’s eight-year-old son packed a backpack full of toys the night before recalling how bored he’d been, trapped inside a hotel room for weeks without anything to play with. 

Ingrid’s daughter, a U.S. citizen, stuffed a miniature white purse with pens and paper for doodling.

Ingrid prepared a bag full of milk, juice, water and snacks. When the family was arrested in December, they’d spent all day in a waiting room with nothing to eat. They’d been offered one meal but it was too spicy for the kids and they were starving by the time they got food late that evening while confined in a hotel room near LaGuardia airport. 

As their new appointment approached, Ingrid could feel her children’s anxiety build. 

“‘I hope they don’t arrest us because the 13th is Valentine’s Day, and I want to be there,’” Ingrid recalled her son telling her. 

“As a mother I get so sad,” she told THE CITY in Spanish. “What do I say to the child.”

Where Families Are Arrested

Inside 26 Federal Plaza, ICE agents stalk the halls on the floors with immigration court rooms, arresting immigrants appearing for mandatory court hearings. More recently, legal filings indicate, agents have also started arresting people attending appointments and interviews inside the USCIS offices on another floor of the building. 

But the ICE check-ins —  required for many immigrants in deportation proceedings or who already have orders of removal — are the primary way the agency is arresting children in New York City. 

The agency’s records show 151 children in New York City were arrested between January and Oct. 15 of 2025, the most recent data available through the Deportation Data Project, which obtained it through Freedom of Information Requests. 

Families under ICE orders of supervision show up in the pre-dawn hours and line up outside 26 Federal Plaza, they’re directed to floor offices where they cram into a waiting room. 

Some never get to leave of their own accord, but are arrested and often speedily deported, as was the case of a Chinese father and 6-year-old son and the Ecuadoran 6-year-old and mother THE CITY reported on last year. 

Lining Up in the Cold

The morning of their check-in, Ingrid had to rouse her young children before dawn, leaving their home in Suffolk County at 4:30 a.m. to get a ride with a neighbor. The family arrived 20 minutes ahead of their 7 a.m. appointment on one of the coldest days in years, with the temperature hovering at just 6 degrees.

Around four dozen people were lined up outside waiting for their check-ins, many with young children in strollers, bundled up and draped in blankets. 

Building security started letting in attorneys and people with other types of appointments into the building by around 7 a.m. In a separate line, the families waiting for ICE check-ins remained outside in the cold for another 40 minutes. 

Ingrid’s son sobbed, unable to feel his feet. She watched a father cradling his young child, trembling with cold as tears ran down his cheeks.

ICE employees manning a podium outside the ground-floor check-in office told THE CITY they weren’t in charge of the door and deferred to the security guards outside. 

Uncertainty hung over everyone in line about, wondering, as Ingrid put it, “If this is the last time we’ll be here, or if they’re going to send us to our countries, or if we’ll be allowed to return to our houses.”

Asked about children waiting outside in Arctic temperatures this week, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency that runs security in government buildings replied: “So your claim is that other people could go inside before 7 AM but kids were barred from going inside or what are you trying to claim here?” 

As families were finally allowed to enter the lobby and make their way through security, a girl who looked to be around nine sobbed silently and rattled with cold, stamping her frozen feet while following her mother to the elevator. 

Two ICE officials in plain clothes directed adults to a ground floor office, while sending families with kids to an office on the 5th floor, down a long hallway into a waiting room. The few lawyers accompanying families and this reporter were told to wait outside. A sign translated into six languages posted on a bulletin board by the door urged people to self-deport, saying they could be eligible for a $2,600 stipend if they did so.

After about an hour, families started leaving one by one. Ingrid was let go by around 9:30 a.m. and given a date to return in August. Her relief was palpable as she embraced her lawyer, Andrea Soto, who’d been waiting in the corridor. 

“I’m going to breathe a little easier,” she said. “Thank God we can return to normal life.”

Over a hot chocolate a few blocks from 26 Federal Plaza, Ingrid said she’d felt overwhelmed at times: “I feel like I can’t do this anymore, sometimes I wonder, is it better if I just leave?”

But then, Ingrid said, she thinks about her difficult journey here in 2021, the years of struggle and hard work and money spent trying to fight for a right to stay in the United States, the brighter future she dreamed of for her family. Her attorney, Soto, believes Ingrid is eligible for a special kind of visa for victims of human trafficking and is asking a federal appeals judge to block Ingrid’s deportation until that can be processed. 

One Bible verse plays on repeat in her mind, Ingrid said: Psalm 27:13: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” 

She recalled weeks earlier when she and her children had boarded a plane in Louisiana headed for Honduras, only to be pulled off 20 minutes later when word of a federal judge’s restraining order made its way to ICE officials on the tarmac. 

“All of this is a miracle. They took us off the plane,” she said. Still, she went on, “I would not wish this on anyone, what we’re going through, my kids and I in this moment.”

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Congressmember Dan Goldman on Thursday morning toured the previously secretive holding cells used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrants in lower Manhattan.

His visit, the first by a lawmaker, came after the revelation earlier this week that, in addition to holding cells on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, ICE also was detaining people on the ninth floor — while claiming those lock-ups were not covered under a judge’s order to maintain decent conditions for people held inside of the building.

Goldman arrived unannounced and was escorted by ICE’s New York Assistant Field Officer Alberto Morales through the cells of the ninth floor, then to those on the 10th floor, and finally to the fifth floor offices where families with children are taken for check-ins and sometimes detained. 

Goldman said the ninth floor cells were empty at the time of his visit. 

“There was no one in there at all,” he said, speaking to reporters in the elevator, while seven recently arrested men and one woman were in cells on the 10th floor — well below the effective maximum capacity of 22 prisoners there based on the judge’s order dictating how much space each person must have. 

The Democrat’s unannounced visit came three days after a Trump administration attorney conceded at a hearing related to ongoing litigation over conditions inside 10th floor holding cells that people were being detained on the floor below as well.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security didn’t return a request for comment on the proceeding. 

Last summer, after a suit from immigrant advocates describing rampant overcrowding and squalid conditions, a judge ordered ICE to dramatically restrict capacity and provide meals, clean bed mats, sanitary products and access to confidential legal calls for prolonged stays inside the building. 

At the time, ICE officials had described in affidavits only four holding cells on the building’s 10th floor, which has capacity for 22 people due to the judge’s order requiring that each person have at least 50 square feet of space, which must be at least eight feet from a toilet.

But William Joyce, the deputy director of ICE’s New York Field Office, told plaintiffs’ attorneys at a deposition earlier this month that his agency was using other floors of the building, and that they didn’t believe the judge’s order applied there. 

The account of his deposition — which has not been made public — came from Heather Gregorio, one of the attorneys representing the immigrants being held there, at a court hearing on Monday. 

Goldman has conducted several unannounced inspections of the 10th floor holding cells since December, when he and other members of Congress gained access through a court order after months of litigation. 

While federal spending bills state that members of Congress and their staffers are supposed to be able to enter any facility used by the Department of Homeland Security to “detain or otherwise house aliens” unannounced for oversight purposes, they were repeatedly barred from entering ICE facilities in New York City and across the country, before a federal court in D.C. ordered their entry.

Goldman said on prior inspections of the 10th floor that he’d asked ICE officials if immigrants were detained in other parts of the building and been told they were not. 

Goldman said ICE did appear to be in compliance with capacity restrictions on the ninth and 10th floors — at least at the time of his visit.

“These court orders are not optional,” Goldman said afterward. “And unfortunately as we’ve seen it in Minneapolis and elsewhere around the country where there’s documentation of violations of court orders right, left, and center, ICE is not following the law and that is unacceptable. There must be accountability for that.”

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials under a judge’s order to clean up overcrowded and squalid conditions on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza detained migrants on a separate, secret floor where they decided that ruling didn’t apply, attorneys for the Trump administration admitted in federal court Monday.

A judge’s order last summer mandated capacity restrictions and improved conditions at the federal building, which has been a focus of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts in New York City. The order applied to any “person detained by ICE at 26 Federal Plaza,.” 

But ICE has interpreted the order as applying to just one floor of the building, while conceding it has been detaining some immigrants on a separate floor.

The revelations emerged during a hearing over an ongoing lawsuit about conditions inside ICE’s holding areas inside 26 Federal Plaza, where immigrants arrested around New York City are often taken before being shipped off to detention sites across the country.

Last summer, as ICE arrests surged, THE CITY and other outlets reported on the squalid and overcrowded conditions inside holding cells on the 10th floor of 26 Federal Plaza.

Immigrant rights group Make the Road New York sued on behalf of people held there, and Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered ICE to make immediate improvements by providing meals, sanitary products, clean bed mats and access to confidential calls with attorneys for prolonged stays.

The ruling also dramatically limited capacity inside 26 Federal Plaza holding rooms, requiring at least 50 square feet of space per person, at least 8 feet away from a toilet.

At the time, Nancy Zanello, ICE’s assistant field office director provided an affidavit describing just four holding areas on the 10th floor and saying that the agency could hold no more than 22 people on that floor at a time given the judge’s rules.

But on Monday, Heather Gregorio, an attorney for Wang Hecker LLP, which is working with  Make the Road New York, described a recent deposition of William Joyce, the Deputy Field Office Director of ICE’s New York office. In it, Joyce admitted that immigrants are being held on another floor — where ICE is not abiding by the judge’s rules.

During the deposition Joyce “acknowledged that immigrants are being held on other floors of the building, and that the judge’s [preliminary injunction order] didn’t apply to the other floors” in the agency’s interpretation, Gregorio told Judge Kaplan.

Joyce – who briefly seized the attention of theinternet last June for wearing a button-down shirt with a toucan drinking a Guinness during a confrontation with members of Congress – was deposed last week, though his full testimony has not been publicly released. 

“Our very big concern” about his testimony, Gregorio explained in court in Monday, is that, “there are immigrants being held on other floors, and Joyce didn’t appear to know how people on those floors were being treated.”

Judge Kaplan quickly turned to Jeffrey Oestericher, the chief of the civil division for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, who was representing the Trump Administration.  

“Are they being held on other floors?” Kaplan asked him. 

“The short answer is yes…” Oestericher replied. 

Oestericher went on to describe four additional holding rooms on the 9th floor of 26 Federal Plaza, which has never before been publicly acknowledged by ICE officials. He said people are generally held there for less than 12 hours and are often shifted back to the 10th floor as space becomes available.

“It is not my sense that it is overcrowded,” Oestericher said, adding that — even though ICE didn’t believe Kaplan’s order applied there — “many of the provisions” of it were in place on that floor, like providing adequate food.

‘Shocking but not Surprising’

ICE’s admission Monday drew ire from Rep. Dan Goldman, whose district includes 26 Federal Plaza, and who has inspected cells on the 10th Floor inside 26 Federal Plaza several times after he sued along with other Congress members to gain entry. 

“ICE is not only lying to the Court, but they are lying to me,” Goldman said in a statement. On a recent visit, Goldman continued, he asked ICE officials point blank if they were detaining people on other floors besides the 10th, and was told that they were not. 

“It is shocking but not surprising that Trump’s DHS cannot confirm that it is following the requirements of a court order,” Goldman said, who promised to attempt a visit to the 9th floor when he returned from D.C.

Make the Road raised alarm bells to Judge Kaplan in December, requesting he hold ICE in contempt of court because his order was not being followed. 

On Monday, Gregorio raised new concerns, saying that during several recent depositions, ICE officials had admitted they were still not providing confidential legal calls or clear written instructions of people’s rights.

A habeas corpus lawsuit filed earlier this month and reviewed by THE CITY raised additional concerns. 

One detainee arrested in mid-November, three months after Judge Kaplan’s order went into effect, described spending five days sleeping on the floor of a room with around 20 other men, not able to contact a lawyer. The man said he was not given any food until the second day of his detention.

As part of ongoing the lawsuit’s ongoing discovery process, ICE has provided documents on conditions inside 26 Federal Plaza since Kaplan’s restraining order took effect in August, but has not offered Make the Road’s lawyers any documentation of conditions before the order went into effect. 

Kaplan questioned why the process was taking so long, given ICE’s unprecedented budget.

“You’re effectively representing an agency that has billions and billions and billions,” Kaplan asserted. 

“The law department is not as well-staffed,” Oestericher replied.

ICE has also opposed Make the Road’s request to inspect conditions inside 26 Federal Plaza holding rooms with an expert. Oestericher said an inspector couldn’t be let in because, “there are law enforcement concerns about having people walking in and out.”

Judge Kaplan rebuffed those qualms Monday, ordering the Trump Administration to produce all records related to the 26 Federal Plaza holding cells, and to allow an inspection by mid-March.

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An immigration judge on Monday denied bond to a Venezuelan City Council staffer being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention upstate. 

Immigration Judge Charles Conroy, who has one of the lowest asylum grant rates in New York City held a 20-minute hearing Monday morning at the Varick Street immigration court. He then denied Rafael Andres Rubio Bohorquez, a personnel services data analyst for the city’s legislative body, the opportunity to post bond.

Bohorquez, whose arrest last month provoked widespread uproar among New York elected officials, appeared virtually in a yellow jumpsuit, from a white cinderblock room in the Orange County Jail upstate. 

ICE has detained him since he was arrested last month at an asylum interview at an immigration services office in Bethpage, Long Island.

“I agree with the government,” Judge Conroy said. “He didn’t prove to me he’s not a danger to society going forward.”

The basis for DHS’s assertion was a 2023 arrest for an altercation between Bohorquez and a roommate, who alleged Bohorquez punched him in the face and broke his nose. The harassment and assault charges were later dismissed and sealed, but “police came to his apartment,” the DHS attorney said at the hearing, adding it was “likely they did observe a broken nose.”

Bohorquez later checked boxes saying he’d never been arrested when filing paperwork for asylum and Temporary Protected Status, the DHS attorney added. 

“He lied to immigration about his criminal history,” the government attorney told Judge Conroy. 

Roger Asmar, an attorney representing Bohorquez, argued that because the charges were sealed, Bohorquez didn’t believe he had to disclose the arrest. He also said a video of the altercation showed Bohorquez had not punched his roommate, and the roommate was also arrested in the incident along with Bohorquez.

“My client has no criminal record. My client is still protected under TPS,” he said, pointing out his employment by the city council, and the many coworkers who submitted letters in his defense. “I don’t see any reason my client shouldn’t be released.”

Judge Conroy disagreed. 

“He’s failed to demonstrate he’s not a danger,” the judge said.

Henry Robins, a spokesperson for the city council, said they are working “around the clock” to secure Bohorquez’ release. 

“We believe his detention is wrongful as not only did he have all of his legal paperwork including TPS, which the Trump Administration’s own website says he can legally work until October 2026,” Robins said. “Moreover, Mr. Bohorquez was never convicted of a crime and should be promptly released and able to return to work.”

The immigration judge’s ruling provoked further ire among City Council staffers after THE CITY’s initial report.“I am beyond infuriated that my colleague is being painted as a danger to society,” wrote Simon Kostelanetz, a Council employee who works in communications. “He’s a humble civil servant.”

The Council had previously said that Bohorquez, who has worked for the Council for about a year, passed a routine background check required in order to work for city government. 

Bohorquez’ detainment at an asylum interview on Long Island on Jan. 12 was thrust into the spotlight when City Council Speaker Julie Menin hosted an impromptu press conference about it at City Hall that same day. 

Though those officials didn’t mention Bohorquez’s name, the Department of Homeland Security swiftly identified him by name in statements sent out to media outlets, also referring to him as a “Criminal Illegal Alien.”

“There’s pressure in this case to not release my client because he works for the City Council,” Asmar told THE CITY after the hearing Monday. “My guy is clean, it’s all political.” 

While Judge Conroy’s decision Monday meant Bohorquez will remain in detention for now, a habeas corpus lawsuit is still pending before a federal judge, who could still grant him release. 

A Precariously Uncertain Status

Bohorquez entered the country back in 2017 on a tourist visa and later applied for and was then granted Temporary Protected Status, according to documents submitted to the federal court in his habeas application. 

When the Biden Administration extended Venezuelan TPS in the last president’s final days in office, Bohorquez quickly applied for an extension that should have shielded him from arrest and deportation through at least this October.

But the Trump administration has sought to end TPS for people from many countries including Venezuela, though that decision is still making its way through the federal court system.

The Trump administration is appealing a federal appeals court ruling that it had unlawfully ended TPS for Venezuelans. But the federal government has repeatedly taken the position that the program has already ended, as the DHS attorney argued before Controy, the immigration judge, on Monday. 

“We believe that he does not have TPS,” the DHS attorney said. 

A Miami Herald investigation last fall identified 30 Venezuelan TPS holders who had been arrested by ICE since the Trump administration announced it was ending the program. 

As the future of TPS became uncertain, Bohorquez began the process of applying for asylum, which is what he was working towards when he was at the USCIS office in Bethpage at the time of his ICE arrest. 

Jessica Bansal, a lawyer with the National TPS Alliance, which has sued over the Trump administration’s efforts to end the protection, told THE CITY that ICE arrests of TPS holders are now commonplace. 

“Every day I get a call from someone saying that they are a TPS holder from that country or their family member, and they’ve been detained,” she said.

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