In an emergency meeting between lawyers, DHS, and federal judge: few answers and many questions
by Sage Ríos Mace December 22, 2025 (MissionLocal.org)
Nearly a month after a federal court issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Department of Justice to immediately provide mattresses, blankets, medical care and other basic necessities to immigrants detained at its at 630 Sansome St. in San Francisco, there is little sign that ICE is complying with the order, according to the legal group that won the injunction.
Instead, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have blocked repeated attempts to assess the well-being of those detained at the ICE facility, which takes in immigrants arrested across the Bay Area and further afield, according to lead attorney Marissa Hatton.
Last week, for example, Department of Homeland Security attorney Doug Johns invited Hatton and her co-counsel to visit 630 Sansome and “see what is going on for ourselves,” said co-counsel Lo Darian.
Want the latest on the Mission and San Francisco? Sign up for our free daily newsletter below.Sign up
They did, and Mission Local witnessed ICE agents denying Hatton and Darien entry to the building on Dec. 18 even after they presented identification and showed them email correspondence with Johns inviting them up to the fifth floor.
Hatton and other attorneys with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in the San Francisco Bay Area described this encounter and other attempts in an emergency Zoom meeting held Monday morning with federal lawyers and Judge Casey Pitts of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Judge Pitts’ Nov. 25 order found an “established likelihood” that the “conditions at 630 Sansome are unconstitutionally punitive in nature.”
He ordered ICE to give detained immigrants beds, bedding, medical care, hygiene products and clean clothes, among other things. He told the agency it must make temperatures inside the holding cells tolerable — those inside said they were “freezing” — and to provide medicine and dim the lights at night.
But, since the injunction, Hatton said, she and her colleagues “have been stonewalled on getting any information on whether ICE has made strides toward compliance.” They said the same at an earlier, Dec. 10 court hearing with Pitts.
Hatton has heard reports that ICE simply shifted its temporary holding operations from the sixth floor to the fifth floor of 630 Sansome in an apparent bid to get around the order. She said she has also heard immigrants held there are being moved to an undisclosed location in Stockton that is not providing them with basic necessities either.
Immigration attorneys were previously able to speak to their clients over phones in a visitation room on the sixth floor, though the lawsuit alleged those phones were often broken.
But now, attorneys cannot even rely on faulty phones. The fifth floor does not have phones, Hatton said, so lawyers must depend on “the goodness of ICE agent’s hearts” to communicate with their clients, should the agents choose to lend out their personal phones.
During Monday’s meeting, Judge Pitts reminded the government that the preliminary injunction applies to any place where people are being held by ICE, not just the sixth floor. Changing locations was the same as “avoiding compliance,” and therefore a violation of the court order, Pitts said.
Detainees are being held on the fifth floor, Johns acknowledged, though he referred to the area as “non-detained office space,” instead of a holding cell. That, Hatton said, “is a semantic game that ICE is playing” to get around the order.
When Pitts asked who is conducting medical screenings for detainees, Johns replied that he did not know.
At this, Pitts raised an eyebrow. “The preliminary injunction is in place, correct?” he asked Johns.
Johns did not reply.
“So, no one is providing medical screenings, then?” Pitts continued.
Again, Johns did not respond.
Pitts did not make a ruling on Monday, but did ask both groups to stay in communication to fulfill the injunction. He pledged to meet on any day as needed, including Christmas, if ICE does not make progress.
The attorneys may yet take him up on that.
“We can continue to confer, but, to the extent that we are hearing about violation, there will be a follow-up,” Hatton’s co-counsel Jordan Wells added.
If need be, he said that they would call for a meeting on Dec. 25.
Keep Mission Local free by making a tax-deductible donation today!
We have a big year-end goal: $300,000 by Dec. 31.
It’s more important than ever that everyone has access to news that reports, explains and keeps them informed. Paywalls don’t serve anyone.
Your support makes it possible for Mission Local’s content to be forever free — for everyone.
about:blank
Latest on Immigration enforcement
Judge orders end to ICE courthouse arrests across Northern California, for now
S.F. fire dept. investigating lieutenant who said ICE should ‘catch ‘em all!’
Hundreds of asylum-seekers may be sent to Honduras, Ecuador, Uganda following S.F. immigration ruling
Sage Ríos Mace
I’m covering immigration for Mission Local and got my start in journalism with El Tecolote. Most recently, I completed a long-term investigation for El Centro de Periodismo Investigativo in San Juan, PR and I am excited to see where journalism takes me next. Off the clock, I can be found rollerblading through Golden Gate Park or reading under the trees with my cat, Mano.More by Sage Ríos Mace
