As ICE agents continue to stalk immigration courthouses in New York City and kidnap people appearing for routine court appearances, immigration attorneys whose clients are now being held at the nightmarish Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park have not been able to make legal visits for almost two weeks, in what advocates say is another tactic in the Trump administration's deportation agenda that is illegally tearing families apart.
The federal jail in Brooklyn is currently holding more than 100 immigrants detained by ICE since at least June 20, attorneys said. The recent move to house immigrants in the facility—known for its horrific conditions and its high-profile prisoners like Sean "Diddy" Combs and Luigi Mangione—comes after the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) inked an agreement with ICE to hold detained immigrants in some of its facilities around the country in order to, as a BOP spokesperson put it to Hell Gate, help "fulfill the administration's policy objectives."
The Trump administration has turned to the federal prison system, immigration attorneys told Hell Gate, because ICE is snatching more people than they can house in immigrant detention facilities.