Raskin tours Baltimore ICE holding rooms amid controversy

Mathew Schumer, Baltimore Sun on Feb 12, 2026

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BALTIMORE — Rep. Jamie Raskin visited the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore a day after holding a hearing in which survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein said they felt “dehumanized” by Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Raskin is the second Maryland congressperson to visit the office after videos of the facility depicting a cramped holding room caused a stir online, prompting calls from advocates and officials for oversight.

“I wish what we had was a Congress that was committed to doing some basic oversight so we could have humanitarian conditions for people who are being held … here,” said Raskin on Thursday afternoon, standing on the steps leading up to the Fallon Federal Building where the ICE facility is located.

He told a group of reporters that there were 134 people currently in detention at the facility — less than its capacity of 226 detainees, which he said the facility had reached multiple times in recent weeks.

“At least to my senses, they looked staggeringly overcrowded,” Raskin added.

Echoing a statement made by an ICE spokesperson in January, Raskin said the agency is facing a backlog in deportation flights because of the recent winter storm. He added that the backlog has forced ICE to hold people for up to a week at the facility, which is only designed to hold detainees for 12 hours.

He said there were 55 detainees in one of the rooms he toured, adding that he would put no more than “a dozen or 15 people in.”

When Rep. April McClain Delaney toured the facility in January, she said she saw people calling out for help and food, and Raskin similarly said that he encountered multiple detainees who were motioning to him that they needed a shower, which is not provided to those held at the Baltimore location.

Pointing to the ICE funding passed as part of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” Raskin said he was disappointed in the conditions in the facility, given the $75 billion Congress directed to the agency in the bill — much of which was dedicated to detention operations.

He said that he would work with fellow members of Congress in both parties to conduct oversight of conditions in ICE holding facilities, and to improve those conditions across the board.

Republican Rep. Andy Harris, who voted in favor of ICE’s funding and has consistently defended federal immigration operations under the Trump administration, told The Baltimore Sun that the funding was to better equip ICE to operate.

“The need for detainment facilities is directly related to the over 10 million illegal aliens who were allowed entry into this country under the Biden administration. The purpose of the enhanced funding in last year’s bill was to increase the ability of ICE to deport those millions of people who were in the country illegally, many of them criminals.”

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