Adelanto Protest

The protest today, led by the Inland Empire Immigrant Youth Coalition and the Justice for Immigrants Coalition of Inland Southern California, took place outside the privately run Adelanto Detention Facility East. In their press release the coalition cited a recently released report by the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group Detention Watch Network. The report details alleged abuses of prisoners at the Adelanto facility and nine other similar institutions across the nation where immigrants whose citizenship is in question have been detained by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to await federal deportation hearings. The Adelanto Detention Facility East, referenced in the recently released report, is a privately run company not to be confused with the San Bernardino County-operated Adelanto Detention Center. In the post-9-11 era, the federal government has implemented a mandatory detention policy for immigrants of questionable citizenship status. The system is so massive and mismanaged that ICE is incapable of overseeing it, resorting to outsourcing operations to predatory private prison companies and rural jails seeking to supplement their incomes, according to the Detention Watch Network report “Expose & Close, One Year Later: The Absence of Accountability in Immigration Detention,” released on Nov. 19. Among the report’s key findings: prisoners going long periods without food. When they are served food, it is often rotten and infested with worms or maggots. When families come to visit, they sometimes have to pay a fee and can only talk to their loved one via closed-circuit television.

Another common thread at all the facilities examined in the report: substandard physical and mental health care that leaves prisoners with even the most serious of ailments with nothing more than a dose of Tylenol or ibruprofen. Detention Watch Now is now calling for ICE to close the worst detention centers, which are highlighted in the report, including Adelanto, where straitjackets and solitary confinement are used to punish and deter immigrants from reporting mental health issues, according to the report.

The Adelanto Detention Facility East is owned by the Boca Raton, Fla.-based corporation The GEO Group. On its website, the company touts itself as the “world’s leading provider of correctional and detention management and community re-entry services to federal, state and local government agencies.”

See La Prensa article.

ADELANTO: Arrestan tres jóvenes protestando el trato de inmigrantes detenidos – See more at: http://www.laprensaenlinea.com/noticias/noticias-historias/20131125-adelanto-arrestan-tres-jovenes-protestando-el-trato-de-inmigrantes-detenidos.ece#sthash.WJPWlxse.dpuf

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *