U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued the final ruling Thursday after a May bench trial examining overcrowding, sanitation, medical care and access to attorneys at the Lower Manhattan facility. He also granted final class certification covering every person currently held or later detained there, expanding a provisional class that had been limited to people held for at least 12 hours.

“ICE knew, or should have known, that how it was treating detainees was wrong, yet it continued to do it anyway,” Kaplan wrote.

The judge found that ICE confined people in overcrowded holding rooms for far longer than the spaces were designed to accommodate, depriving detainees of sleep, sanitary conditions, basic hygiene, sufficient food and water and adequate medical care. He concluded that the treatment served a punitive purpose and was intended in part to induce detainees to leave the United States voluntarily.

During periods of severe crowding in the summer of 2025, detainees sometimes tried to sleep sitting upright because there was not enough floor space to lie down, according to evidence examined by the court. Others slept beside toilets separated from the rest of the room by partial walls. The holding area had no beds or showers, and detainees described bright fluorescent lighting remaining on overnight.