They are politely called “holding rooms,” but in reality, they are cells. They sit on a higher floor of a non-descript, downtown Baltimore office building in a facility run by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

These barely furnished cells are intended, by ICE’s own guidelines, to hold men and women arrested on immigration charges for no more than 12 hours, as the detainees are processed and then sent to detention facilities as far-flung as Washington state and Louisiana.

But under President Donald Trump’s administration, ICE has detained immigrants in Baltimore holding rooms for an average of 51 hours, four times longer than the maximum time limit under its longstanding policy, according to a Baltimore Banner analysis of federal data. One man was confined for more than 191 hours, or about eight days.

Nearly 2,000 people have been held at the facility so far this year, triple the number in all of 2024, the data analysis showed. As many as 100 people were detained at the same time in May and June in cells without permanent beds and showers, ICE reported in court documents. An earlier report from Maryland’s U.S. senators found that unbathed detainees have outfitted only with foil blankets and sandwiches or McDonald’s meals while providing them limited access to health care providers and medicine.

The average length of stay revealed in The Banner’s analysis also stands in stark contrast to what federal officials told Maryland’s two U.S. senators this spring. They investigated the facility after The Banner first reported about conditions described by advocates as inhumane.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who along with his colleague, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, had previously been told the average detention time was about a day and a half, vowed to hold the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, accountable.

“While it’s clear our immigration process is broken, upholding our immigration laws can be done safely, smartly, and above all humanely,” he wrote in a recent email to The Banner.

ICE and DHS officials did not respond to several requests for comment.

The Banner analyzed data first obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Deportation Data Project, a group of lawyers and academics working with the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy to make information about immigration enforcement public.

According to the analysis, about 93% of detentions in Baltimore under Trump this year exceeded the 12-hour standard. Last year, under President Joe Biden, fewer than 4% of detentions did.

In addition to the longer stays, the number of people held in Baltimore has also grown dramatically. Some of the latest months show the biggest increase. In June, ICE brought 501 immigrants into detention in Baltimore, almost 10 times the number for the same month last year.

Immigration attorneys and others who work in immigration enforcement said the overcrowding and extended detentions in Baltimore are a result of a massive wave of arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants by ICE agents.

There is also a lack of bed space in detention facilities across the country, which has been exacerbated in Maryland by a 2021 state law that effectively ended longer-term detentions in the state. That phenomenon has made it more difficult to house detained immigrants locally, leading to the bottleneck in Baltimore, they said.

ICE officials in Baltimore said they received a waiver in early February to hold people for up to 60 hours. But nearly 700 detentions in Baltimore exceeded that extended threshold for much of Trump’s second term, the ICE data shows. On June 24, the agency issued a nationwide memo that all holding rooms now have up to 72 hours, according to court filings.

Trump administration officials said the extended time limits are necessary because of the large number of people held in custody after the president’s executive order in January to detain and deport undocumented immigrants on a vast scale.

They also cited ICE’s new policy prohibiting officials in local ICE offices from releasing detainees on their own accord, court records show. Previously, field offices had discretion to let some detainees back into their communities while their cases were pending if they completed in-person check-ins with ICE officials and were not deemed to be a public safety or flight risk.

Attorney Himedes V. Chicas, head of the immigration department at Wheaton-based Jezic & Moyse, is not surprised by the impact.

“They know that individuals that are being detained are less likely to fight their case. They are more likely to throw in the towel and say, ‘Deport me,’” said Chicas, the immediate past chair of the immigration law section of the Maryland State Bar Association and a current liaison from the local legal community to the Baltimore ICE office.

Before the Trump administration, agents and supervisors at the local level “had a lot of flexibility and discretions for anyone they encountered,” he said.

The cells in Baltimore were never meant to accommodate the number of people and the duration happening under this administration, said Chicas, who has visited clients in a separate meeting area from the holding rooms 10 times since January. He and other lawyers and families of detainees interviewed said they have never seen the actual rooms.

“They know it’s not meant to hold people. But they are told by headquarters not to release people. It’s a problem of their own creation,” Chicas said.

As of June, three people had been detained in Baltimore for more than a week. The longest detention was for a man from Honduras in his early 40s who had never before been charged with a crime, ICE data shows. He was held for nearly eight days.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in a June 5 letter to Maryland’s two senators, both Democrats, that the detainees in the Baltimore facility are treated with “respect and dignity” and housed to meet required federal standards. The senators had written to the Trump administration months before about the “appalling” conditions.

Located on the sixth floor of the Fallon Federal Building in Hopkins Plaza — a stone’s throw from CFG Arena — the facility consists of at least two large and two small cells, court documents show.

Each cell contains a toilet and sink and is separated from the open area with a mid-height privacy wall. The large cells may hold up to 35 people, while the small cells may each hold up to 15, according to ICE in court documents. Each cell also has a phone for free public use by all individuals at any time, documents show.

But according to attorneys and their clients who have spent time in a holding room, the spaces lack permanent beds and showers. The rooms also do not have windows or clocks, according to a lawsuit filed by detainees, “making it impossible for detained people to know how much time has passed or what time of day it is.”

Detainees also complained about stays with limited access to food, medicine and outside visitors. According to ICE officials and recent court filings, the rooms now have mattresses and blankets, improved food service and a medical staff on site.

The ICE data analyzed by the Banner shows that since Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, the cells held nine children ages 14 or younger. The oldest detainees were in their 70s. The vast majority hailed from Latin American countries.

Despite the Trump administration’s policy to target undocumented immigrants with criminal records, more than 60% of those ICE detained in Baltimore since the beginning of the year do not have a criminal conviction.

Last month, the senators and four of their congressional colleagues attempted to tour the holding rooms, but were rebuffed by ICE officials. The field office’s acting director, Nikita Baker, came out into the hallway and denied them a tour based on a directive from “headquarters,” she said.

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Baltimore is weighing a case involving the planned deportation of two immigrants after their lawyers filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the women were confined “unlawfully and in inhumane conditions” in the Baltimore holding rooms for several days. The women alleged in court papers that they were not provided with toiletries or consistent access to drinking water. ICE employees provide immigrants there with one small bottle of water three times a day, according to one of the women.

City Councilwoman Odette Ramos was particularly disappointed that a man spent eight days in the facility. She called it “unlawful and against due process.”

“Moreover, ICE is racial profiling, going after anyone who looks Hispanic or Latine, or has a Spanish language surname. Racial profiling is unconstitutional. We demand an immediate end to this atrocity,” she said.

Baltimore-based attorney Rachel Girod said about 50 of her new and current clients have spent time at the Baltimore facility since January. One client, April Amaya-Luis, was there nearly a week , ICE data shows.

In an interview with The Banner, Amaya-Luis said during her time there, she received little access to medicine, showers or adequate food. There were also no beds at the time.

The conditions of the facility took their toll on another one of Girod’s clients. The “windowless concrete block of a downtown office suite” resulted in her pulling out her hair, banging her head against the wall and screaming out to officers for updates on the date or time of day, according to the attorney.

“One day ICE can declare 12 hours is the maximum amount of time reasonable to keep someone in a locked room of an office building; the next day that number could be 72 hours; the next it could be 30 days,” she said.

Amelia Dagen, senior attorney at the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, said ICE’s actions have created overcrowding in detention of all types nationwide.

“Being held in these dehumanizing conditions is unacceptable and unlawful,” Dagen said.