A Trump-appointed federal judge has accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of brazenly lying in court filings and defying court orders in a lawsuit over conditions in a federal detention facility.
U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown, who was commissioned to the Eastern District of New York in December 2019 during Donald Trump’s first term, is threatening the federal agency with contempt after ICE refused to provide photographs of a holding cell used for unlawful, days-long detention—and made claims to the court he said were “evasive and demonstrably false.”
Brown issued a 24-page order on Dec. 18 describing the hold-room at the federal courthouse in Central Islip as “putrid and cramped.”
Brown wrote that nine men were confined in a small space with an open toilet, without bunks, bedding, soap, showers, toothbrushes, or clean clothes, as outside temperatures dropped as low as 21 degrees and “the lights blared 24 hours a day.”
The habeas case was brought by Erron Anthony Clarke, a Jamaican national who entered the U.S. legally on an H-2B visa in 2018 and later married a U.S. citizen. Brown noted Clarke has “no record of violence, drug use or criminal history,” and stressed that overstaying a visa is not a criminal offense.
Brown said Clarke was arrested by ICE on Dec. 5 and moved between the courthouse holding room and the Nassau County Correctional Center. On Dec. 11, after a hearing where Clarke had to participate by telephone, Brown ordered his immediate release on...
A Trump-appointed federal judge has accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of brazenly lying in court filings and defying court orders in a lawsuit over conditions in a federal detention faci...