Ingrid left her home on Long Island for a mandated immigration check-in in Lower Manhattan on an early December morning with her 4-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son in tow.

The 37-year-old Honduran immigrant, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears speaking publicly would harm her pending immigration case, said she'd only been notified about the Dec. 20 appointment the afternoon prior through a message on a government phone app, which requested that she appear with her family. She wondered if it was good news: Maybe U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would remove her ankle monitor.

She soon learned how wrong she was. After arriving at 26 Federal Plaza at 7 a.m., Ingrid said, she and her children were detained in hold rooms for 12 hours, along with three other families. She said her family received just one meal and that her daughter — who had a fever — was denied medicine.

Under ICE’s own rules, children aren't supposed to be detained in hold rooms unless they have “demonstrated or threatened violent behavior, have a history of criminal activity, or pose an escape risk.” That means even for short periods of time, said Eunice Cho, an ACLU attorney representing detainees at 26 Federal Plaza and who has reviewed the internal regulations.

But Ingrid’s children are among the dozens who have been detained under President Donald Trump’s administration at ICE hold rooms in Lower Manhattan, according to a Gothamist analysis of ICE data. The revelations come as the number of children in ICE custody nationwide has skyrocketed, as the federal government intensifies its immigration enforcement.

The Lower Manhattan hold rooms are generally a few hundred square feet, with concrete benches and no beds or showers, according to ICE officials and detainees held there. Detainees held in the rooms have complained of “inhumane conditions,” including lack of food, soap, hygiene products, and access to attorneys — issues that a federal judge has mandated the agency rectify. They say the rooms are windowless.

“It’s inhumane for both an adult and a child,” Ingrid said. “Being locked up all day in a place without knowing anything, without knowing what’s going to happen, without anyone telling us anything.”

More than a month after the family was released, Ingrid’s 4-year-old daughter sometimes still cries in school and at night, saying that she’s scared about returning to 26 Federal Plaza, the mother said. The family was not detained following another check-in at the site earlier this month. But a federal judge in Brooklyn has not blocked ICE from re-detaining or deporting the family, a decision the family’s attorney is appealing.

It’s not new for ICE to detain children at the Lower Manhattan hold rooms, according to agency data. More than 1,300 children were detained there during former President Joe Biden’s four years in office, the data show.

But concern is growing about the facility, which the Trump administration is using more frequently. The hold rooms faced record levels of overcrowding last summer, and adult detainees have been held at the facility for longer periods, according to agency data. Detainees held there continue to claim in court papers that they’re being denied access to hygiene products and confidential calls with attorneys.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

ICE has arrested approximately 140 children in New York City from Jan. 20, 2025, when Trump returned to office, through mid-October 2025, according to a Gothamist analysis of agency data obtained by the Deportation Data Project, an academic group. The vast majority of those children — about 120 — have been detained at the hold rooms in Lower Manhattan, according to the analysis. Only one of those children had pending criminal charges, according to the data.

Hold rooms are typically used as temporary way stations for detainees before they’re transported to more permanent detention centers, immigration attorneys say. But as more local immigrants are detained, the Trump administration has relied on the NYC hold rooms more frequently and held adult detainees for longer periods, according to local immigration attorneys and agency data.

The Trump administration has held 5,409 people in the hold rooms through mid-October 2025 — already more than the 5,257 people held there during the entirety of the Biden administration.

ICE officials generally transfer children out of the hold rooms more quickly than adults, according to the data analysis. On average, under Trump, children have been held for two hours and 15 minutes at the Manhattan hold rooms before being transferred to other facilities, deported or released. Under Biden, children were held there for similar lengths of time.

Meanwhile, adults on average have been held at the facility for a little more than a day under Trump, up from just a few hours under Biden.

In August, Manhattan federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order requiring ICE to improve conditions for all detainees at the 10th-floor hold rooms at 26 Federal Plaza, and he made that order permanent the next month.

But lawyers for people detained there contend that the agency is still not following the judge’s order, denying immigrants access to certain hygiene products and confidential calls with attorneys.

In a recent court hearing, the detainees’ lawyers revealed that the ICE field office director, William Joyce, said in a deposition that detainees were being held on other floors, where he claimed the judge’s order didn’t apply.

Ingrid, who entered the United States around August 2021, has a pending application for a special visa for victims of human trafficking. Her son had been approved for Special Immigration Juvenile status, an immigration protection for children who are neglected by one or both parents — in this case, his father. Her 4-year-old daughter is a U.S. citizen.

After Ingrid and her children were transferred away from the hold rooms, she said they were confined to a series of hotel rooms for nearly 20 days. ICE then released Ingrid and her family because one of the children was a U.S. citizen, according to her lawyer.

They’ve since returned to their home on Long Island.

Joe Hong contributed reporting.