U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement refused entry to two of Congress who attempted to visit the detention area inside a Manhattan federal building on Sunday afternoon, as concerns grow about the conditions there amid an unprecedented surge of aggressive arrests of immigrants by the Trump istration.

Reps. Nydia Velazquez (D-Brooklyn/Queens) and Adriano Espalliat (Manhattan/The Bronx) were allowed to enter 26 Federal Plaza Sunday afternoon. After they waited an hour in the lobby for permission to go the 10th floor, where they had reason to believe detained people detained are being held, an ICE supervisor told the lawmakers they could not gain entry .

Dozens of people were arrested and held by ICE in recent weeks after ICE check-ins. of Congress and their staffers are supposed to be able to enter federal buildings unannounced for the purposes of federal oversight, according to first laid out in a 2020 spending bill and still in effect. 

“We were denied that right today. We will continue to come back. We will continue to ask for access to the 10th floor. We deserve to know what’s going on in the 10th floor,” Espaillat said, speaking to a crowd of reporters gathered outside following the attempted visit.

“This is not Russia. This is the United States of America where we have three branches of government. And we as of Congress have the unique constitutional responsibility to exercise oversight in a place like this,” added Rep. Velazquez. “What is it that they’re hiding?”

Marie Ferguson, a spokesperson for ICE, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Rumors have been spreading among attorneys, family and activists in touch with people transferred out of 26 Federal Plaza about vastly overcrowded, unsanitary and hot cells. Similar concerns have been reported nationwide with more  than 51,000 people in ICE detention as of June 1 — a 31% spike from Jan. 1. 

When ICE began detaining people after their court proceedings in Manhattan last month, people were swiftly transferred outside of Manhattan and were typically were able to call loved ones within 24 hours. But as the number of arrests surged, several families and lawyers described not having heard from their loved ones in days and the ICE online detainee locator system now shows a growing number of people who have yet to leave 26 Federal Plaza. 

On Saturday, a man named Nelson tried to visit his friend Mayra, who had been detained at an ICE check-in earlier in the week. ICE’s public records show he is still being held at 26 Federal Plaza, but the guards told him visits were not allowed.

Speaking to a gaggle of reporters that afternoon, Nelson held up a picture of Mayra, saying she had an active asylum case as well as a work permit, and was undergoing treatment for cancer. When Mayra was arrested, Nelson said, her 5-year-old daughter was left in school without anyone to pick her up.

“They broke her family for no reason,” Nelson said. “For what, to make Trump laugh? They’re going to put everyone in United States in jail? What’s going on here? This is not America.”

‘No Say in This at All’

The congressional visit Sunday was tame compared to the visit by lawmakers last month to a newly opened detention facility in Newark called Delaney Hall, where Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested. Rep. U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver, who was also in the group, is now facing federal assault charges in an exceedingly rare case of criminal prosecution for a member of Congress not related to corruption or fraud.

Sunday’s attempted Manhattan visit by the lawmakers followed a day-long standoff outside 26 Federal Plaza, where a small group of protesters made varying attempts to block vehicles, thought to be transporting detainees, from leaving the building.

At one point as a van tried to exit the garage at around 1:30 p.m., a row of protesters linked arms, blocking the exit. A row of federal agents in tactical gear tried to move them out of the way, but eventually they retreated, and the van returned down into the garage. 

Soon after the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group arrived, forcing protesters back onto an adjacent sidewalk with barricades and later using pepper spray on some of them. 

Over the course of the afternoon the NYPD arrested 22 people, a spokesperson said, while thinning out the crowd enough to allow federal vehicles to come and go freely throughout the afternoon.

The few dozen people in Manhattan paled in comparison to the large-scale protests that erupted in Los Angeles on Friday as camouflaged-garbed federal agents attempted a series of workplace raids. 

On Friday, after Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass expressed her objections to the raids, Stephen Miller, the key advisor to Trump’s mass deportation agenda, replied: “You have no say in this at all. Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced.”  

On Saturday, Trump said he was deploying 2,000 of the National Guard to tamp down on the protests, which he blamed on Democratic local leadership, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted Sunday that Marines were prepared to police the American city if need be.