New video obtained by ABC News intends to show the conditions within a so -called “retention installation” for migrants arrested in a federal building in New York City.
The videos were shared by a detainee with a local civic group, which then provided them with the member of the New York State Assembly, Catalina Cruz. The New York immigration coalition shared that video widely in a press release on Tuesday.
Assemblyman Cruz told ABC News that the man who shared the video, a constituent of his, was recently arrested at an immigration audience in New York City and was detained at the facilities on the tenth floor of 26 Plaza Federal in the Plaza Foley de Manhattan. The videos have been blurred, and the civic group has edited the voice of the voice of man to protect the identity of man.
New video obtained by ABC News intends to show the conditions within a so -called “retention installation” for migrants arrested inside a federal building in New York City.
New York Immigration Coalition
The video seems to show more than a dozen people inside a room, with several of them accustomed on the floor on thermal blankets and sitting in the banks. The person who filmed the video also showed two bathrooms separated from the rest of the men for only one wall to the waist.
“Look how they have us, the situation in which we are … like dogs here”, the man who films the video says in Spanish in a moment.
“The American dream. Immigration, 26 Federal Square,” adds the man who filmed the video.
In a press release, the New York Immigration Coalition said the videos seem to show that the installation is being used as a detention center instead of simply a retention center, and that, as such, they should be subject to the supervision of the Congress.
Last month, congressmen Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman said they tried to obtain access to the area within the federal building where migrants were supposedly arrested, but the Department of National Security (DHS) denied access.
“The question is, why can’t we enter? What are hiding?” Goldman asked the journalists at that time. “This is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to denote our access, and we will continue to press for access to the executives of the Department of National Security, because they are violating the law.”
But the DHS has continued to affirm that migrants are only being “briefly processed” there before being transferred elsewhere.
Photo of: Andrea Renault/Star Max/IPX 2025 07/21/25 The judges of the Immigration Court listen to multiple cases every day and continue to press to deport and stop immigrants in 26 Federal Square. The federal agents persist in the halls waiting for the detainees who leave the hearings and, sometimes, they are collected in the area of the courts of the courts and are directly arrested.
Andrea Renault/Star Max/IPX/Andrea Renault/Star Max/IPX
“Federal Plaza 26 is not a detention center. It is a processing center where illegal foreigners are briefly processed to be transferred to an ice detention center,” said the assistant secretary of the DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, in a statement in response to the videos published on Tuesday.
“Any statement that there is overcrowding or the sub -appliance conditions in the ICE facilities are categorically false. All detainees have adequate meals, medical treatment and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. As we arrest and eliminate illegal criminal foreigners and public security threats of the US We avoid the secretary.
Immigrant defenders have warned that people in the installation are provided with minimal foods and placed in unhealthy conditions.
Assemblyman Cruz said he discovered that the videos were “extremely angry” and said he is not surprised that the DHS has prevented legislators from touring the area.
“I mean, it is by design, it is on the way, they do not want people to see exactly what they are doing, what they are violating the human rights of people, making sure that people feel desperate, isolated, alone, scared. This is exactly what they want to do, and they are achieving it,” he told ABC News.
“We need to fight to make sure that people are treated with dignity, that people have their day in court, that people have access to the minimum, which is food, medications, a bed, a bath,” Cruz said.
