A federal judge Wednesday temporarily halted the federal government’s planned deportation of two immigrants after their lawyers filed a federal class action alleging the women were confined “unlawfully and in inhumane conditions” in a downtown Baltimore holding room for several days.

U.S. District Judge Julie R. Rubin said at a court hearing that her ruling was not a national injunction and only applied to the two women listed in the lawsuit.

After the hearing, Ian Austin Rose, the attorney representing the two women pro bono, said he has been in contact with both women who are “okay.”

The lawsuit, filed by The Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and the National Immigration Project earlier this month, is on behalf of the two women —one Guatemalan and one from El Salvador — who attorneys say were residing in Maryland lawfully.

Lawyers representing both women, each of whom according to the lawsuit had been granted “withholding of removal” by an immigration judge years ago, are requesting that they be released from the custody of the federal Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Both women, who were sent by ICE to detention facilities in New Jersey and Colorado over the weekend, were slated to be deported to Mexico, according to their attorney.

If those plans were carried out, advocates argued, the deportations would have ended the women’s legal fight over the conditions they endured. One of the women was held for more than 60 hours, according to Rose, while the other confined for more than two days.

The unnamed women, listed in the lawsuit as N.N. and R.G., were detained on May 7 and 8, respectively, during routine ICE check-ins. N.N. is the mother of a U.S. citizen and a lawful permanent resident, or “green card” holder, and R.G. is the mother of two U.S. citizen children, according to the lawsuit.

Councilman Mark Parker, who attended the emergency hearing, said afterward that this was an important step because it ensured that the holding room conditions will be addressed.

“If they aren’t here, there is no case. There is no ability to weigh the merits,” Parker said, adding ICE is acting like there is “no rule of law or recourse.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, the federal Department of Homeland Security said ICE was committed to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in custody.

“It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody,” the statement said. “This includes medical, dental, and mental health intake screening within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility, a full health assessment within 14 days of entering ICE custody or arrival at a facility, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”

The lawsuit points to a January 2024 policy memorandum that outlines various standards in such holding room facilities.

It states that agency personnel should conduct “sufficient supervision” of detainees, provide a meal at least every six hours as well as access to drinking water and a restroom at all times. It also includes special accommodations for children or those who are pregnant. Confinement within hold rooms should not exceed 12 hours “absent exceptional circumstances,” it states.

Detainees are receiving “small rations of food” like sandwiches, military pouches or instant noodle cups as meals, the lawsuit alleges, and are subjected to sleeping in cold temperatures with the lights on.

The Guatemalan woman, referred to in the suit as N.N., was denied access to her diabetes medication for at least a day, according to the lawsuit. She was provided drinking water only at mealtimes and when she requested more, “the ICE officers often ignored her,” it states. The Salvadoran woman, listed as R.G., received only a used jacket to stay warm after another person with whom she was detained left the facility.

Problems at the holding room came to light in March when The Baltimore Banner reported people detained by ICE had been spending multiple days at the facility in a room that attorneys said is not equipped for overnight detention.

According to the lawsuit, one of the women suffered a panic attack while in the holding room. Her attorney requested that ICE allow an exam by a medical professional. But ICE “refused to do so, citing a lack of capacity for this at the Baltimore Holding Rooms,” the lawsuit states.

The other woman had been held for 36 hours at the time of the court filing, the immigration groups’ lawyers said. That woman has a thyroid condition, and had not been seen by a medical professional or given her daily prescription.

ICE’s “arbitrary and punitive treatment” of these women in relation to their medical needs “is just one of the ways that ICE fails to meet the basic human needs of people detained at the Baltimore Holding Rooms, for days on end,” the lawsuit alleges.

Withholding of removal, the same protection from deportation that had been granted to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, would bar the federal government from legally deporting them to Guatemala and El Salvador, their respective home countries, but does not preclude them from seeking a third country to agree to accept them as deportees.

This practice is seldom used, according to the American Immigration Council, in part because there is often little incentive for countries to agree. But under Trump’s second term, some countries like El Salvador, Costa Rica and even Libya have agreed to accept deportees.

Maryland’s U.S. senators have been seeking answers about holding room conditions.

The average detention time is now 1.4 days, according to the most recent reports received by the office of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat. That’s “a notable decrease, but still … longer than the 12-hour maximum under ICE standards,” his office said this month in a statement .

Others who keep close tabs on immigrants who have been arrested say the length of stays may now be increasing.

“We have continued hearing reports of ICE continuing to hold people at BHR for more than 12 hours. It appears the time period is beginning to increase again,” said Adina Appelbaum, program director for Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, a regional nonprofit organization that provides legal services to ICE detainees.

Usually, ICE brings those they arrest in Maryland to its Hopkins Plaza field office downtown — a block away from CFG Arena — for processing before transferring them to a detention facility with an available bed. But increasingly, there has not been enough available bed space in long-term detention facilities.

According to the agency’s own rules, people typically should not have to spend more than 12 hours in a holding room.

But ICE officials have told local immigration attorneys that they have been granted an exemption to this, according to an email reviewed by The Banner. Agency officials in March said the time restriction rule doesn’t even apply in Baltimore.

The bottleneck is the “fundamental logistical restriction” holding the Trump administration back from fulfilling its promise of mass deportations, said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations specializing in trade and immigration policy.

The administration has tried workarounds like expanding the use of expedited removal — deporting someone without a hearing before an immigration judge permitted in certain instances — Alden said, and is seeking more money from Congress to expand detention capacity with more beds and agents.

“That will still take time even if there’s the money,” said Alden. “They can’t begin to get close to their targets for removals if they don’t do something about the constraints in the detention system.”

In March, staffers for Van Hollen and Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks toured the Baltimore holding room at issue and described “appalling” conditions. Attorneys said they received reports that back up conditions described in the ongoing lawsuit.

After their visit, the Maryland senators’ staff said they found no infirmary or medical staff on-site; no food service contract, leading to makeshift meals; and no traditional beds, leaving detainees to use emergency foil blankets and inflatable beds.

But follow-up questions submitted by the senators to ICE were not answered by the senators’ deadline of the end of April. Van Hollen now plans to submit written questions for the record to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“The Trump Administration has a legal responsibility to ensure those it holds in custody are afforded safe and humane treatment. Subjecting detainees to poor conditions as they have in the Baltimore ICE field office is simply wrong and does nothing to make our country safer,” Van Hollen wrote in an email to The Banner.

The senators requested a review of the 12-hour waiver and also asked if ICE has additional plans in place to alleviate overcrowding .

Reports have found that ICE detention centers are at capacity amid the Trump administration’s campaign to deport the country’s largest number of undocumented immigrants in history.