In a major victory for immigrant communities across Maryland, a federal court has issued a preliminary injunction requiring ICE to end unconstitutional and inhumane conditions in Baltimore holding cells.

The judge’s order is the latest in the federal class action lawsuit, D.N.N. et al. v. Liggins et al., filed on May 14, 2025, by the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and the National Immigration Project on behalf of two women who were unlawfully detained in inhumane conditions in the Baltimore Holding Rooms. Due to extreme overcrowding in detention facilities nationwide and arbitrary arrest quotas, ICE has begun keeping people in cage-like holding cells for multiple days, despite its own binding policies.

The injunction also certified a class of “all persons who are now, or will be, detained at the Baltimore Hold Rooms” and ensured that the preliminary injunction would protect all members of that class, finding that ICE has violated their Fifth Amendment rights. 

This decision allows the case to move forward on behalf of everyone who is detained in the Baltimore Holding Rooms now or in the future, while putting in place immediate, enforceable protections to ensure that conditions meet constitutional minimums during the ongoing litigation.

What are the enforceable actions?

ICE can no longer pack more than 50 people into a single room, deny individuals life-saving medication, or hold them in filthy cells under the guise of immigration enforcement in the Baltimore Holding Rooms while the class action litigation is pending.

“ICE chose to cage people in conditions it knew were dangerous—its own officials warned of the risk of fatalities. They built a system of deliberate cruelty and called it enforcement. This ruling sets a critical floor of decency that ICE must now meet, and we will hold them to it.”

—Julie Landan, Staff Attorney, National Immigration Project

Although not a final decision on Amica Center’s and the National Immigration Project’s lawsuit, this is a step in the right direction to put an end to these systemic and unconstitutional abuses.

Please help the National Immigration Project continue to fight back.