{"id":152872,"date":"2026-01-28T05:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T05:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/152872\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T05:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T05:42:09","slug":"lawsuit-alleges-inhumane-conditions-at-adelanto-ice-facility-long-beach-post-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/152872\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit alleges inhumane conditions at Adelanto ICE facility \u2022 Long Beach Post News"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published by LAist<\/a> on Jan. 26, 2025.<\/p>\n

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights announced a new lawsuit Monday against federal immigration agencies for claims of inhumane conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County.<\/p>\n

The organization claims people detained in the Adelanto facility lack drinkable water, healthy food, clean clothes, places to sleep and access to medical care. Failing to provide these basic necessities, CHIRLA says in court documents, amounts to punishment \u2014 violating detainees rights to due process.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aWe are really at a moment where we are seeing a human rights crisis right before our eyes,\u201d CHIRLA policy director Jeanette Zanipatin said at a news conference Monday. \u201cAnd the detention centers, especially the one at Adelanto, is where we are seeing it unfold in real time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Public Counsel are assisting in the case against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re asking both that the judge force Adelanto, the detention facility, to ensure that basic medical care is being provided, that basic hygiene and sanitary conditions, food and water are provided, and that oversight is conducted over the facility,\u201d said Alvaro Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center.<\/p>\n

ICE and Homeland Security have not responded to LAist about the case or claims in this article.<\/p>\n

A question of constitutional rights<\/p>\n

When CHIRLA announced the lawsuit on Monday, Zanipatin said there has been \u201ca long history of unsafe and abusive conditions\u201d at the Adelanto facility. She referenced a\u00a0July 2025 report<\/a>\u00a0from the nonprofit Disability Rights California that found conditions at the facility were \u201cdangerous and inadequate for all people, especially for those with disabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Court documents filed by CHIRLA also reference previous reports that found issues at the facility, including a\u00a02018 report from the DHS Office of Inspector General<\/a>\u00a0that found \u201ca number of serious issues that violate ICE\u2019s 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards and pose significant health and safety risks at the facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those issues included findings of nooses in detainees\u2019 cells, improper use of disciplinary segregation and inadequate medical care.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on interviews with detainees and medical staff and a review of independent reports,\u201d the report states, \u201cwe concluded that detainees do not have timely access to proper medical care.\u201d<\/p>\n

CHIRLA claims in their lawsuit that Adelanto leadership rejected the findings of the inspector general report and took no corrective action.<\/p>\n

The concerns raised by CHIRLA as they announced the lawsuit closely resemble the findings of Disability Rights California, which also claimed detainees were not provided adequate medical care, food, water or clean clothing. The organization also reported that some people had limited access to communication with their loved ones.<\/p>\n

Huerta claimed that the conditions in the Adelanto facility are poor by design.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aAdelanto, like most ICE prisons, is engineered to be so punishing, so relentlessly soul crushing, that people abandon their rights and accept deportation even when they have strong asylum claims or a clear pathway to legal status,\u201d Huerta said.<\/p>\n

He said 32 people died while detained by ICE nationwide in 2025, and at least 6 more have died in January.\u00a0Two people died at Adelanto<\/a>\u00a0last fall, Huerta said.<\/p>\n

Family members speak out<\/p>\n

Mariel Garcia told LAist she would call her father, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, nearly every day. That ended when he was detained by immigration agents in Costa Mesa on Oct. 14.<\/p>\n

Garcia-Aviles had a work permit, his daughter said, but he was detained and taken to Adelanto. She said she tried many times to ask the facility staff to allow her to call her father, or even to get an update on his condition, but she was never able to talk to him again.<\/p>\n

Worried, she said she got a call from the staff at Adelanto.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aThey called me the day he was passing away,\u201d Garcia told LAist, \u201cThey\u2019re like, go tell your family and friends to come and say their last goodbyes because your father\u2019s in critical condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her brother, Gabriel Garcia, said that when they arrived at the hospital their father was intubated and \u201clifeless.\u201d Still, he said, there were law enforcement officers standing outside the hospital room.<\/p>\n

Garcia-Aviles died Oct. 23 at age 56.<\/p>\n

Jose Ayala also talked about the loss of his brother, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, while he was detained in the Adelanto facility.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aHe was there for about a month and we knew nothing of his condition,\u201d Ayala said at Monday\u2019s press conference, \u201cjust that he was sick and that he wasn\u2019t getting any help when he asked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ayala said his family learned of his brother\u2019s death when the police came and knocked at their door. He said staff at Adelanto did not tell them Ayala-Uribe had been hospitalized or that he needed a surgery, which ICE said in a\u00a0news release<\/a>\u00a0was for an abscess.<\/p>\n

Ayala told LAist that he was able to talk with his brother over the phone a couple of times when he was detained, and Ayala-Uribe was joking with him about the poor conditions of the facility causing him to lose weight.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aOne of the last things he told me,\u201d Ayala recalled, \u201cwas, \u2018We\u2019ll see who comes out skinnier.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his brother was 39 when he died on Sept. 22, 2025.<\/p>\n

CHIRLA alleges in court documents that staff at Adelanto were aware Ayala-Uribe was having a potentially life-threatening medical emergency three days before his death, but he was taken back to his cell after being seen by the facility\u2019s medical team.<\/p>\n

An ICE news release said Ayala-Uribe \u201cwas evaluated by an on-call medical provider Sept. 18, provided medication, and returned to his dormitory,\u201d but did not mention the severity of his condition.<\/p>\n

The cause of both deaths remain under investigation, CHIRLA said in an accompanying news release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was originally published by LAist on Jan. 26, 2025. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights announced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-152872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}