The US Justice Department has opposed the provision of toothbrushes to detained migrants at a Manhattan ICE facility, asserting that the teeth-cleaning tools could be used as dangerous “weapons”. Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton claimed a judge’s order on Wednesday to improve conditions at a makeshift jail located at 26 Federal Plaza, responding to complaints that asylum seekers had been held in dirty and overcrowded cells, New York Post reported. “Toothbrushes can readily be improvised as weapons,” Clayton’s office stated, adding that ICE agents would prefer to continue supplying migrants with “teeth-cleaning wipes” instead. No examples were provided by the feds of migrants using toothbrushes as weapons. However, jail inmates have previously fashioned toothbrushes into sharp tools by shaving down the handle. The threat level remains uncertain, considering that toothbrushes can be purchased at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Centre jail for 85 cents. Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled on Thursday to prohibit toothbrushes at the facility for the time being, pending further discussion. In response, the migrants’ lawyers submitted court papers asserting that “there is no basis to deny individuals detained at 26 Federal Plaza basic hygiene products” accessible at other ICE locations in the US. The toothbrush issue arises as ICE agents have been photographed arresting migrants almost daily outside their required immigration court hearings in the same federal building. These move attracted criticism on Thursday from a different federal judge, who accused the govt of engaging in an unconstitutional “game of detention roulette” with human beings. “Treating attendance in immigration court as a game of detention roulette is not consistent with the constitutional guarantee of due process,” Judge Dale Ho wrote. He based his ruling on the case of Carlos Javier Lopez Benitez, a Paraguay native working in construction with no criminal record, who was released from ICE custody after his July arrest outside immigration court.
