In a scathing denunciation of the Department of Homeland Security last Thursday, a United States District court judge excoriated Immigration and Customs Enforcement for what he called the inhumane and unlawful treatment of people held at the Alfonse M. D’Amato United States Courthouse in Central Islip. Not only is the D’Amato Courthouse the nearest to the East End, the conditions there in which fellow Long Islanders were kept provides insight into the way ICE routinely ignores legal requirements.
In a 24-page ruling, Judge Gary R. Brown, who was nominated to the bench by the first Trump administration, spared little in his criticism of conditions that, he said, “shocked the conscience” and were “chillingly brutal.”
The case involved Anthony Clarke, a Jamaican man who had entered the country legally on an H2-B work visa. On Dec. 5, ICE agents arrested Mr. Clarke and held him with eight other men “locked in a putrid and cramped ‘hold room’ — a small cell containing an open toilet — designed to briefly detain a single individual,” Judge Brown wrote. The men were kept for days in a space designed for temporary holding of defendants, without access to bunks, bedding, soap, showers, toothbrushes, or clean clothes in the poorly heated space while the outside temperature dropped to 21 degrees. “To the extent that they could sleep, they did so, crammed on the filthy floor, while the lights blared 24 hours a day,” the judge observed. Cold air poured into the space through vents.
How ICE responded to the court in this case was reprehensible. Judge Brown framed his decision by quoting Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, 1928: “In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. . . . If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
According to the judge, ICE refused to comply with court orders and lied repeatedly about Mr. Clarke’s arrest and subsequent treatment. Agents flatly refused to provide photographs that the judge requested, citing the detained men’s privacy. Judge Brown was dubious: “If ICE is incapable of clearing a cell for the split second it takes to snap a photograph, it raises — or perhaps answers — other questions, such as ICE’s ability to clean, inspect and maintain the Central Islip hold rooms,” he wrote. The conditions at the Central Islip hold room violated ICE’s own minimal standards for holding people. “These revelations of abysmal, unlawful treatment come at the end of a year in which ICE reported the death of 25 detainees held in its custody,” he wrote.
Judge Brown made an additional point, that “a party who believes that a court order is unlawful — or in this case, unduly burdensome — does not have the right to resort to self-help. That party has legal alternatives. . . .” With no fear of their higher-ups, it is likely that ICE agents in the field will ignore proper procedure and continue to act with a sense of impunity.
Mr. Clarke was ordered freed on bond. Representatives of Immigration and Customs Enforcement are due back before the judge on Tuesday to defend the agency against possible contempt of court. Whatever he decides, the contempt ICE continues to show for the rule of law is a stain on all Americans.