Video of Baltimore ICE facility outrages Maryland senators: 'Utter depravity'

Dan Belson, The Baltimore Sun on Jan 26, 2026

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Both of Maryland’s U.S. senators said they are “demanding answers” as a video spread online showing crowded conditions inside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement “processing facility” in Baltimore.

The man recording the video pans the camera around the holding room, where dozens of people (who appear to be all males) — many holding onto emergency blankets — are seen sitting and lying on the floor in close quarters in a room with cinderblock walls.

“They are kidnapping us,” the narrator says in Spanish. “They have us in a warehouse here in Baltimore.”

In a statement from an unnamed spokesperson, the Department of Homeland Security blamed the conditions seen in the footage on the latest bout of winter weather, which they said had snarled transportation and made it “nearly impossible for ICE to safely transfer detainees from processing facilities like this one in Baltimore, to long[-]term detention facilities as scheduled.”

U.S. Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats and vocal critics of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations, said on the social media platform X that the footage was another instance of inhumane treatment by ICE.

“My team has reached out to ICE repeatedly and have yet to get clear answers,” Van Hollen wrote.

“The content suggests yet another another [sic] instance of ICE’s utter depravity,” Alsobrooks wrote. “We cannot let another PENNY go to Donald Trump’s ICE.”

Both senators, as well as U.S. Reps. Kweisi Mfume and Johnny Olszewski Jr. of Maryland, staged a sit-in last summer at the downtown Baltimore facility after being denied entry for an oversight tour.

Their visit followed a lawsuit alleging long stays and inhumane conditions — including a lack of adequate bedding or access to food, water and medical treatment — at the same holding facility inside the George H. Fallon Federal Building at 31 Hopkins Plaza. That lawsuit was filed on behalf of two detainees by two immigration advocacy groups, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild and the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights.

“Unfortunately, this is very consistent with what we have learned and have been reporting on since last spring,” Amica Center spokesperson Erin Barnaby said Monday when asked about the video.

The “processing facility” in Baltimore is meant to temporarily hold ICE detainees until they are transferred to an immigration detention facility, the DHS spokesperson said.

“For the safety of flight staff, officers and the detainees, ICE is keeping detainees at the holding facility in Baltimore until it is safe to continue flight operations,” the statement says, adding that “the illegal aliens in our custody” are receiving “appropriate care including food, blankets, water, and medical services.”

ICE guidance says that the holding facilities should not be used for more than 12 hours, though last year the agency’s assistant director of custody management, Monica Burke, issued a waiver allowing all facilities to hold detainees up to “72 hours, absent exceptional circumstances.”

In the video, the narrator says that he and others had been held at the Baltimore facility for over 10 days, “without bathing” and “dealing with hunger.”

ICE did not respond to questions Monday about how many people are held at the Baltimore facility or how long they stay there. The Amica Center has data from ICE indicating that 20 to 50 people are held in each cell regularly, and that “over a quarter of individuals who were detained at the Baltimore Hold Room were held in excess of 72 hours,” said Senior Attorney Amelia Dagen.

“While the storm is a current and real phenomenon, ICE has regularly been exceeding their own time limits… and packing the cells in Baltimore for the last year, even without the snow,” Dagen said.

In the video, the man recording claimed that some of the detainees were legally in the United States, and that a guard had beaten a detainee — ICE and DHS did not answer questions about those claims.

“We can’t stand it anymore,” the man recording says in the video.

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