400+ quietly held by ICE in downtown Columbia last year. City leaders again say they had no idea.

COLUMBIA – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been secretly operating a detention room inside of a mostly vacant federal building in Columbia for the past decade. The city recently told The Post and Courier they had no idea.

Since President Donald Trump re-took office, the amount of people detained inside Room 1569 at the Strom Thurmond Federal Building has increased by nearly 150 percent.

Last year, 416 people were detained in what’s known as a “hold room” inside the building, which sits right across the street from Finlay Park.

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Hold rooms are primarily used for the short-term confinement of people who have recently been detained, or are being transferred to or from a court, detention facility, other holding facility, or other agency, according to the agency.

The City of Columbia confirmed to The Post and Courier that neither the city manager, mayor, councilmembers nor Police Chief Skip Holbrook knew about the existence of this hold room.

“This is exactly the pattern I’ve been raising concerns about,” said Councilmember Tyler Bailey. “The fact that detentions jumped from 171 to 416 in a single year, without any communication reinforces why there needs to be transparency.”

Similarly, the city said they did not know that ICE had leased office space just down the street from City Hall when questioned by The Post and Courier last month.

“Although the chosen location of this office is not preferred or ideal and is reported to be administrative in nature, federal agencies operate independently and private property transactions occur outside the City’s purview,” a Feb. 11 statement from the city read. “Even so, communication and coordination with local jurisdictions remain critically important. We would have appreciated prior notification and engagement with our Columbia Police Department and City of Columbia leadership to ensure awareness and preparedness.”

Bailey said he’s concerned about the conditions at the holding room, asking if people were being fed, had access to a bathroom, or were sleeping on the floor. He intends to include these questions in his ongoing requests for more information from the federal government on how ICE is operating within the city.

The city previously considered leasing out the Strom Thurmond Federal Courthouse, and the adjacent federal office building, from the government. However, a city spokesperson said no city officials were allowed to tour the federal office building, and had no knowledge about what offices operated inside.

A spokesperson for the Public Buildings Reform Board previously confirmed to The Post and Courier that the building is 38% vacant, but never returned a request to know what agencies were located within the building.

The room has been in use since 2014, but has been used far more extensively during both Trump administrations.

During Trump’s first term, 884 people were detained in the holding room. In contrast, during Biden’s presidency, 505 people were detained.

ICE didn’t immediately respond to The Post and Courier’s request for comment.

The maximum number of people held in the room on any one day during this 17-year period was in March 2025, when 31 people were detained in the facility.

Similar holding rooms exist in both Charleston and Greer.

Previously, the facilities were barred from holding people for more than 12 hours. That changed in June 2025, when ICE issued a memo waiving that rule. Now, people can be held for up to three days in one room.

An analysis done by The Guardian found that since Trump took office, the amount of time that people spend in hold rooms has increased in the majority of the 170 facilities across the country.

In New York City, time in detention increased nearly 600% at a hold room on the 10th floor of a federal building in downtown Manhattan, as reported by The Gothamist.

These facilities aren’t subject to the same oversight that long-term detention centers are – where conditions are reported to be “inhumane” by some detainees.

A January 2024 policy from ICE said that while annual compliance assessments are required for all facilities operated by the Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, “Detention facilities with hold rooms … shall be excluded from this exercise, as they are assessed separately via the detention standards.”