Media monitoring, 24 September-1 October 2026, compiled by Susan Manuel
Inhumane and unconstitutional
Judge rules against squalid conditions at NYC detention facility. Media including Axios, Gothamist, and Courthouse News have reported on the “scathing” ruling last week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan; he blasted conditions for detainees at 26 Federal Plaza, NYC, and issued a “permanent order” to make improvements. In a 127-page ruling, Kaplan described conditions as “dreadful” and “squalid,” with detainees jam-packed into holding rooms far beyond capacity and for far longer than they were supposed to be held. Detainees often had to sleep sitting up or alongside toilets.
In 2025, Kaplan issued some relief to detainees, requiring ICE to improve conditions inside the holding rooms on the 10th floor of the building which also houses immigration courtrooms. While the crowding has been reduced, “defendants have complied with its orders only when convenient for them and persistently have disregarded them in certain ways.” Kaplan ruled that the treatment of detainees was “inhumane and unconstitutional,” carried out to “inflict punishment on detainees and induce them to self-deport.”
Capacity has at times exceeded his 2025 order to maintain 50 square feet per inmate. Detainees were deprived of sleep, adequate food, water, medical care and access to attorneys. Infectious diseases including monkey pox and TB permeated the facility.
With this new “permanent” order, Kaplan ordered ICE to give detainees pillows and to dim the lights overnight. Every detainee should be given the opportunity to make a call within one hour of being detained. On site medical services and screenings are also required. Kaplan’s order grants class certification for all immigration detainees inside 26 Federal Plaza, currently and in the future.
“The ruling is a victory for immigrant rights’ advocates who for months have decried conditions at the ICE holding cells at 26 Federal Plaza, which has emerged as an epicenter of immigration enforcement in the city under (Trump),” Gothamist reported. Harold Solis of Make the Road NY said the decision is a “testament of the courage of those who endured and spoke out against conditions no human being should ever be forced to bear.”
Kaplan’s ruling follows a lawsuit brought over a year ago by immigrants rights and civil liberties groups, including Make the Road and the ACLU. DHS issued a statement downplaying Kaplan’s findings and emphasizing that the rooms were intended for short-term detention. It did not address any of the specific complaints in Kaplan’s ruling (Gothamist).
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that the treatment of detainees was “inhumane and unconstitutional,” carried out to “inflict punishment on detainees and induce them to self-deport.”
Babies left behind. The Atlantic published a harrowing piece on some 205,000 children—71 percent of them U.S. citizens—who have lost at least one parent to deportation, but remain in the U.S. The Brookings Institution estimates that more than 35,000 have no parent left at all. Previous ICE policy was to either reunite detained parents with their children before deportation or confirm the children had an official caregiver.
In July 2025, the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) revised the policy to prioritize the speed and volume of deportations: “The result is tens of thousands of children being shuffled among the houses of anxious temporary caregivers. It can take months to procure the passports, visas and other permissions necessary to transport children to their parents, many of whom have been deported to countries whose governments can’t help or won’t. …. Some children end up with foster families after caregivers burn out, and some have landed in the homes of abusive relatives or acquaintances….”
In the first Trump administration, government civil servants tried to prevent separations and reunite families under court orders that DHS tried to defy. Many of those employees were fired during the second term as insufficiently loyal. “Also different: The separations in the first Trump administration were the result of distinct policy that once brought to light could be challenged in federal court. Today, family separations appear to be incidental—the consequence of a ruthless effort to hit a quota, no matter the cost. And this time, people with firsthand knowledge of separations are keeping quiet. Many temporary caregivers are undocumented themselves or have relatives who are….” Government and nonprofit workers also are scared. The White House has attacked organizations that oppose its goals by cutting funding, launching dubious criminal investigations,and issuing retaliatory executive orders.
The article profiles some of the “countless families” sent into crisis by the Trump administration. The cases fall into a grey area between immigration law and family law: many of the families ICE is separating need two lawyers to try and get their children back. In a further sick irony, parents who had been separated from their children, deported, then allowed to return to the U.S. found their kids were now wards of the state and that their parental rights had been terminated.
The Atlantic found that many families with credible asylum cases are considering going underground to avoid being separated, although it would sabotage their chances of gaining legal status. “Immigrants who have complied with the law are being targeted, and they are choosing to hide, despite the fear and stress, because the alternatives are worse: abandoning their children or being deported with them to dangerous places.”
Read the full article in the November issue of The Atlantic.
…tens of thousands of children [are] being shuffled among…anxious temporary caregivers. It can take months to procure…permissions necessary to transport children to their parents, many of whom have been deported to countries whose governments can’t help or won’t.
…. Some children end up with foster families after caregivers burn out, and some have landed in the homes of abusive relatives or acquaintances…. The Atlantic, November 2026
Pregnant women on their own in detention. NPR’s 1A program ran a 43-minute piece, ICE and the Pregnant Women It’s Detaining. It contains a lot of information on detention in general but focuses on the plight of pregnant detainees — 86 as of last February — many without needed medical care. Nearly 400 pregnant, postpartum, or nursing women were deported from January 2025 to February 2026, according to the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS). Listen here.
ICE buys robot dogs. Project Saltbox reports that federal immigration authorities have bought $1.3 million worth of robot dogs from RADeCO Inc. of Plainfield, CT, a partner of Boston Dynamics. The order covers “Cerberus Spot quadruped robots and accessories” for the agency’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs. RADeCO sells the Cerberus as a customized version of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot and describes it as a fully integrated platform for explosive ordnance disposal and for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear detection, known as CBRN. DHS, as reported by ABC News in August, said ICE planned to spend up to $2 million on robots to detect hazardous gas, inspect unexploded ordnance, investigate suspicious packages, and explore underground or confined spaces, such as cross border smuggling tunnels and drug cases. Boston Dynamics has said its terms of use bar customers from arming the robots.
In our area
Gerson Turcios still detained. The Daily Catch reported that a federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the deportation of Rhinebeck resident Gerson Turcios, “just days before a deadline by which the government planned to reinitiate its efforts to remove him from the country.” Next a three-judge panel is set to review his deportation case. His lawyers hope that the recent ruling will strengthen a separate case they have brought for his release. Turcios has been held for more than a year, and is currently in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center. Rhinebeck residents have raised $132,000 for his defense.
Turcios, who came to the area as a teenager, graduated from Rhinebeck High, and started his own business, was detained in July 2025 with an outstanding deportation order. Lawyers asked to reopen the case, which was denied. The Board of Immigration Appeals granted a stay of removal but ultimately denied his appeal. His lawyers then took the case out of the immigration system and to federal courts, petitioning the Second Circuit to review the appeals board’s refusal to reopen and asking that he not be deported while his case proceeded.
Greene County goes with dissident sheriffs. The Overlook reported on 25 September that the Greene County Legislature voted unanimously to approve a resolution supporting the lawsuit by 15 New York sheriffs challenging the state law barring local agencies from entering into agreements with federal immigration enforcement. Two Democrats joined with the Republican majority supporting the resolution. The Greene County sheriff is not a party to the lawsuit and does not have a 287(g) agreement. He said that sheriffs should be able to decide on their participation with federal agents. In April, ICE agents detained a long time contractor who lived in Haines Falls, but was not been particularly active otherwise in Greene County. Republican Jim Thorington said, “They have people they’re looking for distinctly. They know where they are when they come to get them.”
Ulster County has restricted participation in federal civil immigration enforcement. The county bars employees and officers from asking about a person’s immigration status to determine eligibility for a program, benefit ,or service, unless federal law requires it. Federal authorities must present a judicial — not administrative — warrant to gain access to nonpublic areas of county facilities or individuals in county custody. The legislature is not considering a resolution such as Greene County’s. The Ulster County sheriff also prohibits personnel from stopping, questioning, interrogating, investigating, or arresting someone based solely on immigration or citizenship status, a civil administration warrant, or an immigration detainer.
Madhuri Shukla, Detention Watch Network, via JustSeeds.org