Rep. Williams presses White House on conditions in Atlanta’s ICE field office
A member of Georgia’s congressional delegation is demanding oversight and transparency from the Trump administration after a report from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed that immigrants are being held for long stretches in the basement of an ICE field office downtown.
“I write today with serious concern about the conditions in which detainees are held at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office at 180 Ted Turner Drive in Atlanta,” U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, said in a letter to the Trump administration’s top immigration official, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
Holding cells in ICE’s Atlanta field office have traditionally been used to keep immigrant detainees for only hours at a time, while they are processed ahead of their transfer to longer-term detention facilities.
But as immigration enforcement has surged in 2025, the agency began routinely holding people at the field office longer periods, even as federal guidelines state that no ICE detainee should remain in a holding room for more than 12 hours. That’s according to an AJC analysis of data obtained by the Deportation Data Project through the Freedom Of Information Act.
In the first six months of the Trump administration, 1,239 immigrants who came through the Atlanta ICE field office wound up spending 24 hours or more detained in its holding room, according to the federal data.
There were more than 300 detentions where people were kept at the Atlanta office between three and five days. More than a dozen people spent over a week there, with four spending over a month at the holding facility, according to the data.
In an interview with the AJC, Tucker-based immigration lawyer Nicole Kozycki said that one of her clients, a woman from Mexico, spent nine days detained at the field office and sleeping on the floor in August. A mother of two, she was nursing when she first entered ICE custody, Kozycki said.
In her letter, Williams described ICE’s Atlanta outpost as “overwhelmed and unprepared to house people overnight.”
She added: “Overcrowding, harsh conditions, and limited facilities jeopardize the health and safety of detainees, who may not have adequate access to medical care or counsel.”
The AJC spoke to immigration attorneys, advocates, family members of detained immigrants and a man currently in ICE custody who are all familiar with conditions inside Atlanta’s ICE office.
They describe a facility that does not have the space or amenities to hold people overnight: no beds, no showers, and no opportunity to receive visits from loved ones or from attorneys — a situation that may be exposing immigrants to worse conditions than those found in Georgia’s ICE detention centers.
In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said detainees at the Atlanta ICE field office receive three meals a day and have access to phones, showers, legal representation, blankets, and medical care.
She noted that the tax and domestic policy bill passed by Republicans earlier this year provides funding to expand the ICE detention network, “which means detainees are being processed and transferred quickly at the Atlanta Field Office.”
“When will the media stop covering sob stories of illegal alien processing and detention centers and start focusing on the victims of illegal alien crime?” McLaughlin said.
According to ICE, “bunks, cots, beds and other sleeping apparatus are not permitted” inside hold rooms like the one at the Atlanta field office.
In her letter to Noem, Williams closed by writing: “Given the frequency with which detainees are now held at the Atlanta Field Offices for longer periods, it is urgent that conditions be assessed and improved.”
She also asked Noem whether U.S. citizens have been among those held for longer than 12 hours at the field office, and what procedures are in place to evaluate detainees’ medical needs, among other questions.
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