The detention facility Delaney Hall was put on lockdown late Thursday night after four immigrant detainees escaped from the detention facility.
The Department of Homeland Security told reporters that they would deploy more law enforcement "to find these escapees," CBS News reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez on X.
The New York Times said that there was a disturbance at the privately run detention center on Thursday, allowing the men to escape. There have been several days of unrest over the facility's conditions, law enforcement told the Times.
Lawyers with clients in the facility told the Times that a group of migrants "seemed to mount a revolt ... over the quality and timeliness of meals."
“People were hungry and got very angry and started to react and started to rebel against what was going on in the detention center,” said Ellen Whitt, who volunteers with an emergency immigration hotline known as DIRE. They received a call at approximately 6 p.m. on Thursday, and “when we were on the phone with him, we could hear screaming and yelling in the background.”
The person on the phone said that detainees were trying to break windows and that guards appeared to have abandoned their posts.
One law enforcement official aware of the details told the Times that the men were able to escape through an "unhinged piece of exterior siding."
Masked police then entered the building at approximately 7 p.m. EST on Thursday with pepper spray and plastic zip-tie handcuffs.
All phone calls and visits to the facility have been suspended, said managing director for the immigration practice Bronx Defenders, Karla Ostolaza.
She noted, "we have no idea what is happening with our clients right now."