Class-action suit alleges freezing holding cells, filthy toilets, and due-process violations
by JOE RIVANO BARROS September 18, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)
The American Civil Liberties Union and local groups are suing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for arresting asylum-seekers outside immigration courts across Northern California and keeping them in “punitive and inhumane” conditions in San Francisco holding cells.
The class-action suit, filed Sept. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges harsh conditions for immigrants held at 630 Sansome St., the ICE field office in downtown San Francisco that is a few floors below an immigration court.
Asylum-seekers have been held there for “sometimes up to six days” in “small, cold rooms, sometimes with hardly enough space to sit, let alone sleep,” the suit alleges.“They are kept for days without basic hygiene supplies, access to bathing facilities, a change of clothes, or prescribed medications.”
Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter below.Sign up
The holding cells were designed for short stays, usually less than 12 hours, when immigrants arrested by ICE are waiting to be transferred to long-term detention elsewhere in California or out of state.
But in June, ICE waived its 12-hour holding limit across the country, and increased it to 72 hours. In August, Mission Local documented a significant spike in people being held by ICE for extended periods, including several who were held for more than 72 hours.
At San Francisco’s ICE field office, more immigrants are being held longer
Data from the Deportation Data Project. The data includes detention bookings up until June 26, 2025. Chart by Kelly Waldron.
The ACLU’s suit, which was filed alongside the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco and CARECEN, is on behalf of three plaintiffs — Carmen Aracely Pablo Sequen, Martin Hernandez-Torres and Ligia Garcia — who are asylum-seekers and were all detained at 630 Sansome.
The ICE field office has an 80-year history of detaining immigrants, dating back to the 1940s. It has been the site of intense protests recently in which ICE agents have swung batons and tackled protesters.
The plaintiffs allege that conditions inside 630 Sansome are unconstitutional.
The holding cells on the sixth floor of the building have “no beds,” and asylum seekers are “forced to sleep on metal benches or directly on the floor … with nothing more than a thin plastic or foil blanket or a thin mat.”
The lights are on “at all hours,” the suit reads, and ICE keeps rooms at “bitterly cold temperatures.”
“Detained people are forced to sleep on filthy floors or near the dirty toilet that has been used, and will continue to be used, by the dozens of people who pass through the crowded hold room,” the suit continues.
“Immigrants have resorted to cleaning the toilet with wads of dry toilet paper when the stench becomes unbearable.”
ICE also “impedes access to counsel” for those in holding cells by preventing attorneys from entering after 3 p.m. or on weekends, and forcing asylum-seekers to pay for phone calls with “poor audio quality” while ICE agents are in the room, listening.
The suit also challenges President Donald Trump’s decision to discard decades of precedent by allowing courthouse arrests, which were previously discouraged, except in cases involving individuals who posed a risk to public safety.
Now, asylum-seekers, most of whom have no criminal record, attend court and are arrested in the hallways.
“Masked federal agents lurk outside of courtrooms, violently ambush immigrants, shackle their hands and feet, and immediately whisk them away to detention,” the suit reads.
Mission Local has documented dozens of such arrests since they started at the end of May. “These arrests have caused widespread fear among immigrant communities,” the suit said.
The practice puts asylum seekers in a Catch-22: Either attend your court hearing in person and risk arrest, or skip court and be declared deportable.
“Now,” the suit reads, “they must either risk immediately and arbitrarily losing their freedom or lose their opportunity to pursue their lawful claims to remain in the United States.”
About 71 percent of people held in ICE detention have no criminal record, according to the Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse.
Plaintiffs allege violations of the First and Fifth Amendments, particularly the Fifth Amendment’s due-process protections. The suit asks, among other things, for the court to nullify ICE’s memos allowing for courthouse arrests, and to mandate the agency improve conditions at 630 Sansome.
ICE has been under pressure nationwide to fix poor conditions in its holding cells.
In New York, a federal judge yesterday ordered the Trump administration to ameliorate conditions that could amount to “unconstitutional and inhumane treatment” at 26 Federal Plaza, the immigration courthouse that has been subject to near-constant protests.
Today, 11 elected New York Democrats were arrested by ICE for demanding access to those cells to monitor conditions.
Plaintiffs cite Mission Local’s reporting on San Francisco immigration arrests three times in the suit. Mission Local has documented near daily arrests of asylum-seekers at both 630 Sansome St. and 100 Montgomery St., the city’s other immigration courthouse.
Help us cover ICE in San Francisco
Mission Local has been covering immigration enforcement in San Francisco day in and day out — on the streets and in the courts.
As the Trump administration invests $170 billion in ICE, we want to make an investment of our own: $300,000 — $100,000 a year for Trump’s remaining three years — to hire a full-time immigration reporter.
MORE ON IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
Hundreds of Filipino activists march against ICE in San Francisco
Man with 10 by 12 inch tumor escapes ICE detention in S.F. — for now
ICE arrests another 7 at S.F. immigration court, 2 without lawyers
JOE RIVANO BARROSSENIOR EDITOR
joe.rivanobarros@missionlocal.com
Joe was born in Sweden, where half of his family received asylum after fleeing Pinochet, and then spent his early childhood in Chile; he moved to Oakland when he was eight. He attended Stanford University for political science and worked at Mission Local as a reporter after graduating. He then spent time at YIMBY Action and as a partner for the strategic communications firm The Worker Agency. He rejoined Mission Local as an editor in 2023. You can reach him on Signal @jrivanob.99.More by Joe Rivano Barros
