By Whitney Curry Wimbish

Copyright prospect

Workers from more than three dozen labor unions and advocacy groups are mobilizing with elected officials in Lower Manhattan this evening to protest the ongoing abuse of immigrants in custody at 26 Federal Plaza.

The coalition includes hundreds of members of 1199 SEIU, AFGE Local 3911, Communications Workers of America, Laborers’ Local 1010, and UAW Region 9A. Protesters will encircle the building to demand “an immediate end to ICE’s violent and unlawful actions in New York,” according to a media advisory.

The action comes days after immigration officials told federal lawmakers that more detainees have died in their care, including two on Tuesday. The total number of dead is now at least 16, according to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), though the number ICE lists on its congressionally required body count website is 13. Last year, 11 people died in ICE detention.

“I was just notified of ANOTHER death in ICE custody—the 16th since Trump took office,” Rep. Jayapal wrote Tuesday on social media. “The second death TODAY. This is absolutely unacceptable.”

In an earlier post, she wrote that ICE deaths are “the direct result of this administration expanding the use of private, for-profit prisons that put their bottom line over people’s health and safety.” Jayapal was unavailable for further comment, a staff person said. The two largest prison corporations in the country, GEO Group and CoreCivic, ended their most recent quarter on a high note, with sunny expectations for the quarters ahead thanks to “unprecedented opportunities.” Yet conditions are so dungeon-like that they’re helping tuberculosis make a comeback.

It’s unclear who Jayapal was referring to or the reasons for their death. One person who died recently in ICE custody and is not listed in the agency’s database is 42-year-old Santos Banegas Reyes. He had been held in New York’s Nassau County Jail and died last Thursday. The county would not give details about his death.

“This tragedy is part of ICE’s long, troubling record of holding individuals in inhumane and unsafe conditions. We extend our condolences to the family and shame Nassau County Jail for the irreparable harm they have caused,” Luba Cortés, civil rights and immigration lead organizer at Make the Road NY, one of the organizers for today’s action, said in a statement.

Cortés demanded to know what led to Reyes’s death and urged the county to end its contract with ICE immediately. “No one should die in detention,” Cortés said.

Advocacy groups around the country are making similar demands, decrying the multiple deaths in custody, the deadly immigration raids, the inhumane gulags, and the reported disappearances from them, like the hundreds of people from so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida.

In a letter signed by 134 organizations this week, immigrant and worker rights groups condemned Trump’s immigration terror campaign and called out 11 detention sites that they said were emblematic of the administration’s inhumanity. They also castigated Congress for passing “an unconscionable and obscene funding package,” allocating more than $150 billion for mass detention and deportation, including a “staggering” $45 billion to extend the gulag archipelago.

Signatories are demanding ICE halt all detention expansions, close the sites they listed, and stop funding ICE detention in the ongoing appropriations process.

Today’s march in Manhattan also comes a week after Department of Homeland Security agents and local police officers arrested New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, two city councilmembers, and 11 state lawmakers on September 18, after they sought access to the tenth floor of 26 Federal Plaza to verify that federal officials were complying with a court ruling issued the day before.

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed with plaintiffs that immigrants are held in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions, deprived of food, water, medicine, toilet paper, period supplies, and an adequate place to sleep. He extended indefinitely the requirements he first imposed in a temporary restraining order last month, including that people detained must have at least 50 square feet of personal space, three meals a day, hygiene products, a clean bed mat to sleep on, and confidential calls with legal counsel. But legal experts and immigration advocates said there is no way to know if officials have provided those basic necessities, because they have prevented federal lawmakers from exercising their right to conduct oversight visits to the facility.

Today’s march starts at 6 p.m. in Foley Square.