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The Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the federal prison notorious for its barbaric conditions, is currently holding over one hundred people arrested as part of the Trump administration's immigrant dragnet, in which ICE and other federal agents have been trapping and arresting people outside of courtrooms while they're attending their immigration proceedings.
According to Congressman Dan Goldman and other elected officials and advocates who were present outside of the prison on Monday morning, most of the people detained at MDC have no criminal record.
"The Trump administration is now sending noncriminal, noncharged, nonviolent immigrants, many of whom have ongoing asylum cases, to be detained in this place where federal judges will not send convicted criminals," said Goldman. He added that the federal agents who are being sent to arrest immigrants outside of their court hearings should be focusing on larger criminal investigations. "They're being pulled away from those investigations so they can help arrest asylum applicants trying to immigrate here through a lawful process," Goldman said.
Goldman recently penned an oversight letter to the Bureau of Prisons, demanding that all transfers to MDC be halted until the agency details how they planned to address staffing shortages and unsafe conditions in light of increased occupancy.