Immigration detainees are subjected to mold on walls, contagious diseases, a lack of medical care and a lack of clean water and food at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, a lawsuit filed Monday against federal officials alleges. <\/p>\n
Two people detained at the facility have died since October, and attorneys and immigrant rights groups who filed the lawsuit allege conditions at the facility have been deteriorating as the Trump administration continues its efforts to detain and deport thousands of immigrants. <\/p>\n
The conditions \u201care designed to make people give up their legal cases,\u201d said Alvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrants and one of the groups suing the federal agencies. \u201cIt is a system built to make people break down.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint alleges that the \u201cgovernment\u2019s abuses at Adelanto are a core part of its broader scheme to harass, intimidate, punish, and deport immigrants.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the last year, the population at the facility has ballooned from three individuals to nearly 2,000, leading to crowding and worsening conditions, according to the complaint. The population of detained immigrants nationwide surpassed a high of 65,000 in November, according to TRAC<\/a>, a nonpartisan research organization. At least 73% of those detained at the time had no criminal record, the organization reported.<\/p>\n The suit was filed by attorneys with Public Counsel, a nonprofit focused on civil rights and racial and economic issues, and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA. <\/p>\n The suit seeks to have the federal agencies comply with their own detention standards, and have conditions at the facility declared a violation of detainees\u2019 5th Amendment rights. <\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called the allegations about conditions at the Adelanto facility in the federal complaint false. <\/p>\n Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, said detainees are provided three meals a day, clean water, clothing, bedding, showers, toiletries, and access to phones. <\/p>\n \u201cICE has higher detention standards than most US prisons that hold actual US citizens,\u201d said McLaughlin in an email. \u201cICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.\u201d<\/p>\n But the Adelanto facility has for years faced scrutiny about conditions at the facility and the treatment of immigrants inside. <\/p>\n A 2018 federal report<\/a> found \u201cserious violations\u201d including overly restrictive detainee segregation, and guards that failed to keep detainees from hanging braided sheet \u201cnooses.\u201d In 2023, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Geo Group alleging the company had \u201csystematically poisoned\u201d inmates using toxic chemicals to clean the facility. Geo Group, a private company that is not named in the latest suit but owns and operates the facility as a contractor for the federal government, denied the allegations in court. <\/p>\n A report from the California Department of Justice in April <\/a>also found that the six privately operated immigration detention facilities, including Adelanto, fell short in providing inmates mental health care, needed better suicide prevention strategies, and that they used force against detainees with mental health conditions.<\/p>\n Workers at the facility have previously told The Times<\/a> the facility was unprepared and understaffed for the surge they were beginning to see under the current immigration policies. <\/p>\n McLaughlin said the new lawsuit could lead to attacks against immigration officers. <\/p>\n \u201cMessaging bills like these are the type of garbage contributing to our officers facing an 8000% increase in death threats and a more than 1,300% [increase] in assaults against them,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n The Trump administration has often claimed assaults against immigration agents have increased, but an analysis of court records reviewed by The Times<\/a> indicated that the majority of alleged assaults had resulted in no injuries, and about 42% of cases involved shoving, spitting, flailing, or having water bottles thrown at them. <\/p>\n U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, which are named as defendants, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did a spokesperson for Geo Group.<\/p>\n The lawsuit filed Monday is the second to allege inhumane conditions at an immigration detention center in California. <\/p>\n In November, seven detainees at the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert said in a federal class-action lawsuit that <\/a>they were subject to inhumane conditions, including medical negligence and substandard living conditions. In December, attorneys filed an emergency motion asking a federal judge to order ICE to provide lifesaving medical care to two plaintiffs<\/a> at the facility, operated by the private company CoreCivic. ICE agreed to provide medical care to the men.<\/p>\n More than a dozen people died<\/a> last year in ICE custody nationwide, including Ismael Ayala-Uribe<\/a>, 39, who died a month after being apprehended on the job at Fountain Valley Auto Wash, where he had worked for 15 years.<\/p>\n Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, 56, who was exhibiting signs of alcohol withdrawal when he was detained on Oct. 15, was briefly detained at Adelanto before being taken to Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville, where he died.<\/p>\n Relatives of the deceased said they were kept in the dark about the health condition of their loved ones and the lack of medical care. <\/p>\n \u201cWe knew nothing about his condition other than he was sick, and he wasn\u2019t getting any help,\u201d said Jose Ayala, brother of Ayala-Uribe, during a news conference Monday. \u201cThis is something that should not be happening to anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n Mario, who declined to give a last name, said he was detained by immigration officials after 33 years in the U.S. and was held at Adelanto for two months before posting a $10,000 bail and submitting to electronic monitoring.<\/p>\n While inside, he said, he was fed only small burritos and was offered no soap to wash his hands, and detainees were forced to clean the bathroom facilities. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a prison,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n In the building where he was housed along with about 200 others, people got sick but received no medical attention, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey didn\u2019t care that we had a cough or fever,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The lawsuit alleges that detainees inside the Adelanto facility are regularly denied medical care, even when they exhibit symptoms of being sick or when large swaths of the population begin to get ill. <\/p>\n McLaughlin denied the allegations. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody,\u201d McLaughlin said. \u201cThis includes medical, dental, and mental health services as available, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.\u201d<\/p>\n Rebecca Brown, a supervising attorney for Public Counsel, called the conditions at the privately owned facility cruel.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not about public safety, it\u2019s about profit,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is degrading and unlawful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Immigration detainees are subjected to mold on walls, contagious diseases, a lack of medical care and a lack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[12659,4,450,66353,32309,451,88263,16797,204958,204959,98237,18293,2932,48182,3,11224,19079,3590,55398,452,453],"class_list":["post-432401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-attorney","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-complaint","tag-condition","tag-headlines","tag-ice-facility","tag-immigrant","tag-immigration-detainee","tag-inhumane-condition","tag-lack","tag-last-year","tag-lawsuit","tag-medical-care","tag-news","tag-nonprofit","tag-november","tag-people","tag-suit","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}