Immigration detainees are subjected to mold on walls, contagious diseases, lack of medical care and lack of clean water and food at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, a lawsuit filed Monday against federal officials alleges.
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.
The conditions “are designed to make people give up their legal cases,” 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. “It is a system built to make people break down.”
The complaint alleges that the “government’s abuses at Adelanto are a core part of its broader scheme to harass, intimidate, punish, and deport immigrants.”
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 nonpartisan research organization. At least 73% of those detained at the time had no criminal records, the organization reported.
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.
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’ 5th Amendment rights.
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which are named as defendants, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did a spokesperson for Geo Group, a private company that is not named in the suit but owns and operates the facility as a contractor for the federal government.
Adelanto has faced complaints about conditions and treatment of detainees for years. Workers at the facility have previously told The Times the facility was unprepared and understaffed for the surge they were beginning to see under the current immigration policies.
The lawsuit filed Monday is the second to allege inhumane conditions at an immigration detention center in California.
In November, seven detainees at the California City Detention Facility in the Mojave Desert alleged in a federal class-action lawsuit thatthey 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 at the facility, operated by the private company CoreCivic. ICE agreed to provide medical care to the men.
More than a dozen people died last year in ICE custody nationwide, including Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, who died a month after being apprehended on the job at Fountain Valley Auto Wash, where he had worked for 15 years.
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.
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.
“We knew nothing about his condition other than he was sick, and he wasn’t getting any help,” said Jose Ayala, brother of Ayala-Uribe, during a news conference Monday. “This is something that should not be happening to anybody.”
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.
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.
“It’s a prison,” he said.
In the building where he was housed along with about 200 others, people got sick with a cough and fever but received no medical attention, he said.
“They didn’t care that we had a cough or fever,” he said.
Rebecca Brown, a supervising attorney for Public Counsel, called the conditions at the privately owned facility cruel.
“This is not about public safety, it’s about profit,” she said. “It is degrading and unlawful.”
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