Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit over conditions at the largest immigration detention center in California, as migrant advocates and Democratic members of Congress have pressed for more oversight of the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement expansion.<\/p>\n
The complaint<\/a> in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, filed Wednesday, focuses on detainees at the California City Detention Facility, a previously shuttered state prison in the Mojave Desert that the U.S. has repurposed as an ICE detention facility.<\/p>\n The ACLU and other groups describe a range of inhospitable conditions at the facility that they call unconstitutional, including a lack of access to medical care, insufficient accommodations for people with disabilities and infringement upon religious exercise of detainees.<\/p>\n \u201cConditions at California City Detention Facility are dire,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cThe facility is decrepit. Sewage bubbles up from the shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of the cells. People are locked in concrete cells the size of a parking space for hours on end, and officers threaten them with violence and solitary confinement. Food is paltry and people go hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n Other federal courts have ordered the Trump administration to remedy issues at other immigration detention centers. A federal judge in New York ruled<\/a> in August the Trump administration must immediately improve the conditions at 26 Federal Plaza, including new limits capacity, greater cleanliness and sleeping mats for detainees.<\/p>\n And a federal judge in Illinois issued a temporary restraining order<\/a> this month putting the Broadview detention center under court-ordered supervision, citing allegations detainees were forced to sleep in plastic chairs near overflowing toilets.<\/p>\n Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, were among the Democratic members of Congress who sought to visit the Broadview facility and other centers to scrutinize the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.<\/p>\n Durbin, in a news release<\/a> last month, said he and Duckworth \u201chave repeatedly requested to conduct oversight on the conditions inside of the Broadview ICE facility and have been unable to. What does President Trump\u2019s Department of Homeland Security have to hide?\u201d<\/p>\n House Democrats have filed a lawsuit in Washington contending the Trump administration is unlawfully denying lawmakers and their staffs from oversight visits.<\/p>\n