A Long Island federal judge blasted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for ignoring court orders to release a Jamaican immigrant married to a U.S. citizen whom ICE detained for days inside a “putrid and cramped” holding cell in Long Island.
Following his arrest by ICE agents on Dec. 5, Erron Anthony Clarke was subjected to “inhumane and unlawful treatment,” stuffed into a small Central Islip holding cell packed with eight other men, Judge Gary Brown wrote in a scathing memo released Thursday.
Inside the cell, which lacked bedding and was intended to hold only one person briefly, Clarke fought for sleep, crammed on the cell’s filthy floor as lights blared 24 hours a day overhead, according to Judge Brown.
Conditions became rancid inside the cell, which lacked access to showers or hygienic supplies and contained an open toilet, Judge Brown wrote.
The cell was poorly heated, and the detainees suffered as temperatures at night plummeted to 21 degrees Fahrenheit, the judge wrote.
Clarke, who is applying for citizenship and had submitted fingerprinting earlier in the day when ICE agents snatched him, was briefly brought to a Nassau County prison on Dec. 6, where he enjoyed “relatively humane treatment” before he was suddenly thrust back into the fetid Central Islip holding cell on Dec. 9, according to Brown.
In Thursday’s memo, Brown shared the testimony of another detainee, who described a cell like the one in which Clarke was held as being only six feet by six feet in diameter, and where detainees slept huddled around a toilet that reeked of urine.
At a hearing Dec. 11 — during which Clarke was forced to participate by phone — a judge ordered his immediate release on bail, but ICE held him overnight before releasing him the following day, Brown wrote.
Clarke entered the country legally with a Jamaican passport, but continued to work in the country after his visa expired in 2018, court documents show.
He married a U.S. citizen in 2023 and began the application to become a permanent resident earlier this year, during which he admitted to staying in the country after his visa expired — a violation that is not a criminal offense, Brown noted in Thursday’s memo.
Also in Thursday’s memo, Judge Brown ordered ICE to appear at a Jan. 12 hearing to show why the agency should not be held in contempt and defend accusations that the agency not only defied the court order to release Clarke, but withheld evidence of the abysmal conditions in which he was detained.
Messages seeking comment from the Department of Homeland Security were not immediately returned.
