MINNEAPOLIS — Attorneys for the federal government have until next Thursday to reach an agreement with human rights lawyers who are seeking to ensure the right to counsel for people detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Minnesota, a judge said Friday.

Advocates said people held at the facility on the edge of Minneapolis who face possible deportation are denied adequate access to lawyers, including in-person meetings. Attorney Jeffrey Dubner said detainees are allowed to make phone calls, but ICE personnel are typically nearby.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel told Justice Department attorney Christina Parascandola that there seemed to be a “very wide factual disconnect” between what the human rights lawyers allege and the government’s claims of adequate access at what ICE depicts as only a temporary holding facility.

Parascandola said people detained at the facility have access to counsel and unmonitored phone calls at any time and for as long as they need. She conceded she had never been there.

Brasel called her argument “a tough sell,” noting there was far more evidence in the case record to back up the plaintiffs’ claims than the government’s assurances.

“The gap here is so enormous I don’t know how you’re going to close it,” the judge said.

Rather than ruling on the spot, Brasel told both sides to keep meeting with a retired judge who’s mediating and who has helped narrow some of the gaps already. She noted at the start of the hearing that both sides agreed that “some degree of reasonable access” to legal counsel is constitutionally necessary but that they differed on the details of what that should look like.

If the sides don’t reach at least a partial agreement by 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12, the judge said she’ll issue her order then. She didn’t specify which way she’d rule.