CHICAGO — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered authorities to improve a Chicago-area immigration facility after a group of detainees sued, alleging they were being kept in “inhumane” conditions.

The order will be in effect for 14 days. It requires officials to provide detainees at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in the west Chicago suburb of Broadview with a clean bedding mat and sufficient space to sleep, soap, towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, toothpaste, menstrual products and prescribed medications.

“People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets,” U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said. “They should not be sleeping on top of each other.”

A message left Wednesday for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wasn’t immediately returned.

Attorneys representing the federal government had argued that the conditions in the building were not bad enough to warrant the changes the plaintiffs requested. They said the proposed improvements would shut down the facility.

Advocates have raised concerns about Broadview’s conditions for months, and the facility has drawn scrutiny from members of Congress. Lawyers and relatives of people held there have called it a de facto detention center, and tense demonstrations have been held there for several weeks.

The temporary restraining order says the holding rooms at the facility must be cleaned twice a day. Detainees must be allowed to shower at least every other day and should have three full meals and bottled water upon request.

Gettleman required authorities to allow detainees to call lawyers in private with no cost and provide them with a list of pro bono attorneys in English and Spanish. Agents are barred from misrepresenting documents provided to detainees to sign.

The judge had called the alleged conditions “unnecessarily cruel” after a hearing Tuesday about overflowing toilets, crowded cells, no beds and water that “tasted like sewer.”

He said he found the witnesses “highly credible,” adding he was moved by the seriousness of the conditions.

Gettleman requested a status report by noon Friday on how authorities are fulfilling the requirements. He said he knew complying with his order would be hard.

“I don’t expect to snap my fingers and have this done,” he said

An attorney for plaintiffs celebrated the order for improving the conditions of the facility and preventing detainees from unknowingly signing away their rights.

“They cannot slip in a form written in a language somebody doesn’t understand and then all of a sudden the person gets whisked out of the country,” Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center said. “That coercion has got to stop.”

Kevin Fee, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said he hopes the document-gathering phase of the case will offer a rare glimpse inside the facility.

The order “sheds some sunlight on the inside of a facility that has been shrouded in secrecy for far too long,” Fee said.

Plaintiffs are requesting documents on Broadview detention policies, information on how ICE’s online detainee locator is maintained, emails from attorneys requesting information about their clients, a detention log, a facility inspection log, and details on what food, water and medications federal authorities are purchasing for detainees.