New York, New York - A federal judge on Wednesday ordered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve conditions at its detention facilities in New York City.

US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan granted a preliminary injunction after laying out the horrific treatment detained people have experienced in ICE hold rooms at Manhattan's 26 Federal Plaza.

The judge cited declarations from 28 people testifying that they were held for days or even weeks in the rooms on the building's 10th floor – facilities where detentions were previously limited to 12 hours.

The declarations state that up to 90 people were packed into a 200 square-foot room. People were forced to try to sleep in cramped and illuminated quarters with no bedding, while they were denied access to basic hygiene and only provided two small rations of food a day.

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"ICE has forced these detainees into facilities that are too small to accommodate the numbers, that never were intended to hold people overnight, that are unequipped to feed them properly, and that, more broadly, are not capable of housing the detainees in a humane manner," Kaplan wrote.

The court last month issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) stating that no detained person be kept in less than 50 square feet of space, without clean bedding and hygiene products, or be deprived of private attorney-client calls.

The defendants "rely on claimed improvements that were largely forced upon them by the August 12 TRO. But there is no assurance that any of those improvements would persist in the absence of a preliminary and permanent injunction, especially given the pressure to continue increasing arrests and the concomitant influx of detainees," Kaplan writes in his latest order.

Immigrants' rights advocates in New York celebrated Kaplan's decision as a win in their ongoing court battle.

"Today’s ruling is an important win for immigrants' rights and affirms what we've out the known all along: ICE's conduct at 26 Federal Plaza is inhumane, illegal and a direct violation of the Constitution," Eunice Cho, senior counsel with the ACLU's National Prison Project, said in a statement."

"No person should be denied medical care, access to a lawyer, or basic dignity when they are held in government custody – and we'll continue to fight to hold ICE accountable."