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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Lawyers for two of President Trump’s foes who have been charged by the Justice Department asked a judge on Thursday to dismiss the cases against them, saying the prosecutor who secured the indictments was illegally installed in the role.

U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie didn’t immediately rule from the bench but said she expects to decide by Thanksgiving on challenges to Lindsey Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The requests are part of multiprong efforts by former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James to get their cases dismissed before trial.

At issue during Thursday’s arguments are the complex constitutional and statutory rules governing the appointment of the nation’s U.S. attorneys, who function as top federal prosecutors in Justice Department offices across the country.

The role is typically filled by lawyers who have been nominated by a president and confirmed by the Senate. Attorneys general do have the authority to get around that process by naming an interim U.S. attorney who can serve for 120 days, but lawyers for Comey and James note that once that period expires, the law gives federal judges of that district exclusive say over who can fill the vacancy.

But that’s not what happened in this instance.

After then-interim U.S. attorney Erik Siebert resigned in September while facing Trump administration pressure to bring charges against Comey and James, Attorney General Pam Bondi, at Trump’s public urging, installed Halligan to the role.

Siebert had been appointed by Bondi in January to serve as interim U.S. attorney. Trump in May announced his intention to nominate him and judges in the Eastern District unanimously agreed after his 120-day period expired that he should be retained in the role. But after the Trump administration effectively pushed him out in September, the Justice Department again opted to make an interim appointment in place of the courts, something defense lawyers say it was not empowered under the law to do.

Prosecutors in the cases say that the law does not explicitly prevent successive appointments of interim U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department and that, even if Halligan’s appointment is deemed invalid, the proper fix is not the dismissal of the indictment.

Comey has pleaded not guilty to charges of making a false statement and obstructing Congress, and James has pleaded not guilty to mortgage fraud allegations. Their lawyers have separately argued that the prosecutions are improperly vindictive and motivated by the president’s personal animus toward their clients, and should therefore be dismissed.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

CHICAGO — A judge heard testimony Tuesday about overflowing toilets, crowded cells, no beds and water that “tasted like sewer” at a Chicago-area building that serves as a key detention spot for people rounded up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Three people who were held at the building in Broadview, just outside Chicago, offered rare public accounts about the conditions there as U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman considers ordering changes at a site that has become a flashpoint for protests and confrontations with federal agents.

“I don’t want anyone else to live what I lived through,” said Felipe Agustin Zamacona, 47, an Amazon driver and Mexican immigrant who has lived in the U.S. for decades.

Zamacona said there were 150 people in a holding cell. Desperate to lie down to sleep, he said he once took the spot of another man who got up to use the toilet.

And the water? Zamacona said he tried to drink from a sink but it “tasted like sewer.”

A lawsuit filed last week accuses the government of denying proper access to food, water and medical care, and coercing people to sign documents they don’t understand. Without that knowledge, and without private communication with lawyers, they have unknowingly relinquished their rights and faced deportation, the lawsuit alleges.

“This is not an issue of not getting a toilet or a Fiji water bottle,” attorney Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center told the judge. “These are a set of dire conditions that when taken together paint a harrowing picture.”

Before testimony began, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said the allegations were “disgusting.”

“To have to sleep on a floor next to an overflowing toilet — that’s obviously unconstitutional,” he said.

Attorney Jana Brady of the Justice Department acknowledged there are no beds at the Broadview building, just outside Chicago, because it was not intended to be a long-term detention site.

Authorities have “improved the operations” over the past few months, she said, adding there has been a “learning curve.”

“The conditions are not sufficiently serious,” Brady told the judge.

The building has been managed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for decades. But amid the Chicago-area crackdown, it has been used to process people for detention or deportation.

Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol commander who has led the Chicago immigration operation, said criticism was unfounded.

“I think they’re doing a great job out there,” he told the Associated Press during an interview this week.

Testifying with the help of a translator, Pablo Moreno Gonzalez, 56, said he was arrested last week while waiting to start work. Like Zamacona, he said he was placed in a cell with 150 other people, with no beds, blankets, toothbrush or toothpaste.

“It was just really bad. … It was just too much,” Moreno Gonzalez, crying, told the judge.

A third person, Claudia Carolina Pereira Guevara, testified from Honduras, separated from two children who remain in the U.S. She said she was held at Broadview for five days in October and recalled using a garbage bag to clear a clogged toilet.

“They gave us nothing that had to do with cleaning. Absolutely nothing,” Guevara said.

For months advocates have raised concerns about conditions at Broadview, which has drawn scrutiny from members of Congress, political candidates and activist groups. Lawyers and relatives of people held there have called it a de facto detention center, saying up to 200 people have been held at a time without access to legal counsel.

The Broadview center has also drawn demonstrations, leading to the arrests of numerous protesters. The demonstrations are at the center of a separate lawsuit from a coalition of news outlets and protesters who claim federal agents violated their First Amendment rights by repeatedly using tear gas and other weapons on them.

Fernando writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Sophia Tareen in Chicago and Ed White in Detroit contributed to this report.