Lawsuit claims Adelanto Detention Center profits from immigrants’ pain

Degrading living conditions, denial of medical care, inaccessibility to the outdoors, inadequate nutrition and overall neglectful and abusive conditions are what a recent federal class lawsuit claims detainees at Adelanto ICE Processing Center are being subjected to. 

The lawsuit alleges that the GEO Group, a for-profit, private prison corporation that operates U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, including Adelanto, has violated the constitutional rights of thousands of detainees, who have been denied basic human necessities during their detention. 

In about a year, the San Bernardino facility’s population has exploded from three detainees to nearly 2,000. 

Conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center are already under investigation after the deaths of Ismael Ayala-Uribe, a 39-year-old DACA recipient, and 56-year-old Gabriel Garcia-Aviles. Lawyers and immigrant rights advocates argue that if conditions do not improve, many other people can die at the detention center, faulting private investors and the federal government. 

Immigrant rights advocates say the Adelanto conditions are not just unsafe, but they also violate the right to humane conditions, a constitutional right that all detainees are granted, regardless of citizenship or immigration status. 

Under the constitution, all detainees must be granted necessary medical and mental health care, a safe environment and protection from abuse, which protects detainees against excessive force or inhumane treatment by staff. 

“The rights of the Constitution cannot stop at a detention center door,” Gina Amato Lough, the directing attorney of Public Counsel’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told CALÓ News. 

Amato Lough, who has been an immigration attorney with Public Counsel for 18 years, said that within the last year, the fear of retaliation and reprisal for filing lawsuits to protect the rights of immigrants has never felt greater.

“There has always been fear within the immigrant community to speak out against the government or to even apply for immigration relief when somebody is eligible, but that fear has exponentially increased with the actions of the federal government targeting law firms, organizations, individuals and advocates,” she said. “It takes a tremendous amount of courage to speak out against these injustices, but it's very important because if we don't, we have seen that the administration will trample the constitutional rights of immigrant communities.”

The lawsuit was filed by Public Counsel, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), Immigrant Defenders Law Center and the law firm Willkie Farr and Gallagher LLP and four current detainees, who are still inside Adelanto. 

The lawsuit, whose plaintiffs include Todd M. Lyons, ICE acting director; Jaime Rios, director of the Los Angeles Field Office, Enforcement and Removal Operations; and Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was officially filed last month.

Sophia Wrench, an attorney at Public Counsel, said the lawsuit looks to hold DHS and ICE accountable for the overcrowding and overwhelmed staffing that has led to illness and, for some, even death. 

“This lawsuit could not have happened if folks who are, or were, inside were not brave enough to share their stories with us,” Wrench told CALÓ News. 

Wrench said she also fears for retaliation against the detainees and defendants of the case. 

“We are still very worried about retaliation against people who speak out. [The plaintiffs] are under the custody of the government, and so ICE controls every aspect of their lives: when they can sleep, get medical care, eat, what air they breathe and so it becomes very dangerous in some ways.”

The lawsuit alleges that countless detained individuals have suffered medical issues with limited access to proper care. 

The lawsuit mentions that one detained individual had the top of his finger bitten off and developed an infection that went untreated and that another detainee, who has inconsistent access to his epilepsy medication, regularly experiences seizures. 

In addition, the lawsuit also says many detained individuals with disabilities are left to fend for themselves and elderly detained individuals with mobility issues are often forced to sleep on top bunks despite their difficulty climbing up ladders. 

A history of receiving delayed medical attention or none at all is not new to the facility. The families of Ayala-Uribe and Garcia-Aviles have both spoken out against the conditions at the facility that they said killed them both.

Gabriel Garcia, son of Garcia-Aviles, said his father was detained last year in Costa Mesa on October 14 and passed away on October 23. 

He said during this time, the family was never notified that Garcia-Aviles was sick. That was until he received a call notifying him that his father was in critical condition, and to arrive with his family at the local hospital to say their goodbyes. 

“We got there and there were still officers standing outside [his] room, as if he was going to run. He was intubated,” Garcia said in a press conference that took place last month. “We didn’t get answers.” 

Jose Ayala, the brother of Ayala-Uribe, said his brother died after being at Adelanto for a month. 

“We found out [about] his passing early in the morning when the police came to knock at our door,” Ayala said in the same press conference. 

Ayala said that although his family knew that his brother was sick, they never knew he was scheduled for surgery or that he had even been transferred to the hospital. “He had many dreams, like becoming a graphic designer, that were cut short,” he said. 

The detention center, which is about a one-and-a-half-hour car ride away from L.A., is run by the GEO Group, a company whose name had made local headlines when, back in the summer, it was reported that Mark Walter, principal owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, served as CEO of Guggenheim Partners, which held monetary investments in that group.

Wrench said these horrible conditions inside Adelanto leave many people to abandon their legal rights and self-deport. 

“The system is designed to terrorize, to inspire fear and to degrade the rights of detained individuals as a business practice. They're making it so bad that people want to leave and they're forcing detained individuals to self-deport even when they have pending applications or a case that they're working on,” she said. 

 Alvaro M. Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said being detained for a civil infraction should never result in serious illness or even death. “Overcrowding, squalid conditions, and denial of proper medical care are pressure tactics ICE is using to coerce ‘voluntary’ departure,” he said. 

Lough said after the filing of the lawsuit, attorneys and the plaintiffs are waiting for a hearing. They hope the lawsuit can provide court-ordered reforms for the multibillion-dollar detention center. 

“We will continue fighting for the rights of immigrant communities for as long and as hard as we can and we will not give up. This lawsuit is a really important part of that struggle,” she said.