(Inside California Politics) — Adam Schiff’s tour of California’s largest ICE detention center was “heartbreaking,” the senator told Inside California Politics this week.
On Tuesday, Schiff and fellow California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla visited the California City Detention Facility, located in eastern Kern County.
Schiff said he and Padilla wanted to see what conditions were like in the center, which holds up to 2,500 people. He called the tour thorough, but he recounted the “heartbreak” of meeting detainees — the vast majority of whom Schiff said had never committed a crime besides being an undocumented immigrant.
“We have both served constituents who have been detained there — some who are still detained there,” Schiff said in an interview. “We’ve been in touch through [legal] counsel to understand what conditions they’re facing, but we wanted to go there and see with our own eyes.”
A primary concern for Schiff was whether detainees received proper medical treatment.
“We heard repeatedly from detainees about their inability to get the medical care that they needed, medical care they were receiving before they were detained,” he said. “So that’s potentially life-threatening — a deep concern.”
He said what detainees told him contradicted reassurances from leaders of the privately-run facility, who said the facility provides proper care.
“As bed space has expanded, we have maintained a higher standard of care than most prisons that hold U.S. citizens — including providing access to proper medical care,” the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told Inside California Politics in a statement. “For many illegal aliens, this is the best health care they have received in their entire lives.”
“There was not a single detainee who would concur with that statement,” Schiff replied, adding that although he’s unsure the treatment is unconstitutional, he believes it is “undoubtedly cruel.”
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