Defending the Dignity and Rights of Immigrants in Detention

Since early 2025, immigrant communities in the United States have lived under siege. Families have endured unlawful mass raids in their neighborhoods and watched loved ones disappear into a detention system where abusive and illegal conditions are allowed to persist, and accountability has vanished. In Southern California, thousands of people are funneled into the Adelanto ICE Processing Center—one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country—after being apprehended in immigration raids. 

Every person—regardless of their background, status, or skin color—deserves to be treated humanely and with dignity. But inside Adelanto, people are subjected to conditions that would be considered abuse in almost any other setting. Detainees are routinely denied urgent medical care: requests for treatment are ignored, delayed, or dismissed as not serious enough to warrant attention. One man lost the top of his finger and went untreated for months. Another, who has epilepsy, is denied consistent access to medication and suffers repeated seizures without timely medical response. 

People with disabilities are neglected and abandoned. Elderly detainees with mobility impairments are forced to climb ladders to sleep on top bunks, risking serious injury because basic accommodations are denied. At least two people have died in custody—raising grave questions about whether adequate care was ever provided. 

Conditions at Adelanto are unsanitary and dangerous. Mold grows on walls. Dormitories have experienced outbreaks of contagious disease, sending people to the hospital. People are forced to live amid filth, hunger, and cold: food is insufficient and sometimes spoiled, drinking water appears dirty and foul-tasting, and thin blankets are inadequate for warmth. When detainees protest the conditions or speak out, they are met with retaliation and punishment, including isolation. This is cruel and degrading, and it is unlawful. 

Adelanto has a long and well-documented history of unsafe and abusive conditions and has been the subject of repeated investigations and public condemnation. Yet in less than a year, the federal government’s mass raids drove the detained population at Adelanto from just three people to nearly two thousand—without sufficient staffing, adequate medical infrastructure, or basic safeguards to protect health and safety. A longtime staff member warned the surge was “dangerous,” and state inspectors confirmed those fears, describing “alarming” conditions and documenting abuse and neglect of detainees with disabilities—comparing the treatment of human beings to “dogs in cages.” Operated by the private for profit prison company GEO Group, Adelanto exemplifies a system where human confinement is monetized, and the incentive is to keep people detained rather than safe.  

On January 26, 2026, four people currently detained at Adelanto filed a proposed class action lawsuit on behalf of everyone who is or will be detained there, together with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA). The lawsuit seeks to end the unlawful and dangerous conditions at Adelanto and to secure enforceable protections, including adequate medical care, disability accommodations, safe and sanitary conditions, and meaningful oversight. 

The Constitution does not stop at the doors of a detention center, and being in custody does not strip anyone of the right to basic medical care, humane treatment, or dignity. It protects all “persons”—including immigrants and detained people—from cruel treatment, deliberate indifference to medical needs, and punitive conditions of confinement. Detention cannot mean lawlessness, and no one should be caged, commodified, or forced to endure trauma simply for seeking safety or opportunity.