A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility outside Boston that U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-1st District, visited this week has been described by lawyers as having “abysmal” conditions that feature not enough food or water and detainees packed into cells.

But when Pingree and a few of her staffers toured the Burlington, Mass., facility Thursday afternoon, they saw almost no detainees apart from two women. The space that includes four main cells was “relatively clean” and stocked with snacks, the 1st District congresswoman said.

Still, Pingree said she was under no illusion that what she was seeing was how things always look inside the space.

The lawmaker had heard the center at least briefly held many of the roughly 200 people from Maine whom ICE agents detained in January during their “Operation Catch of the Day.” She observed four “very dark” cells that she said could not comfortably hold 25 or more people each.

“I think they attempted to give us the best picture of the facility possible,” Pingree told reporters Friday morning while inside her Portland district office. “There’s no way to walk into a facility like that and not find it dismal, bleak and heartbreaking, because you know what happens here.”

The oversight visit came after Pingree gave federal officials the required seven days’ notice of her trip. Pingree said had she toured the cells during the height of last month’s operation, she would have seen a very different scene.

Democratic officials have struggled for weeks to get details out of President Donald Trump’s administration on its sweeping immigration crackdown that saw a surge in ICE agents descend on the Portland and Lewiston areas last month. A similar Minnesota operation turned deadly after federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens. Last week, the Trump administration announced it was also ending its ramped-up activity in the Twin Cities.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claimed it was targeting about 1,400 people in Maine who are among “the worst of the worst” criminals in the U.S. illegally, but people with legal status and no criminal records were among the 206 individuals caught in the sweep. Bystanders said they saw agents break car windows and grab people out of their running vehicles.

Pingree told a Press Herald reporter after Friday’s news conference that the ICE administrators she spoke with at the Burlington facility were professional but worked more on the “paperwork” side of things. When she asked for more details on detainees from Maine, they told her it was above their pay grade. Similar answers came when she inquired about the aggressive tactics of ICE agents.

The Burlington facility is actually an ICE field office in a two-story building near a mall, and was not designed to hold people for more than a few hours. But since last year, lawyers have said it has held ICE detainees for days in “unsanitary” conditions amid the Trump administration’s push to deport more immigrants.

ICE has pushed back on those characterizations of its Burlington facility, previously saying in a statement “detainees pending processing are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”

In Maine, Pingree also visited the ICE facility in Scarborough last year and said attorneys were not being allowed to accompany their clients.

Pingree and her staff members who assist constituents with immigration-related matters still do not know precisely how many people detained in Maine during the recent ICE operation are still in custody. Some were later released or ordered by judges to be brought back to Maine.

But Pingree said a significant number of people from Maine have been moved to Louisiana. She said Friday she is hoping to visit ICE detention facilities there and in Texas in the next month or so.

A federal judge blocked the Homeland Security policy requiring lawmakers to give a week’s notice ahead of planned visits to immigration detention facilities, but that order only applies to a limited number of Democratic members who sued over the rule. Pingree said a broader ruling that would cover all members of Congress may come in the next few days.

In the meantime, Pingree said, she and Democratic colleagues hope to pass legislation to ensure people released from ICE detention are given back any legal documents they might have lost amid their detention. But she has acknowledged the realities of working in a Republican-controlled Congress.

ICE remains active in Maine after January’s surge, and Pingree said Friday she’s not optimistic about the future — even for immigrants with legal status.

“I think it’s going to continue getting dramatically worse,” Pingree said