Rep. Chu Commends Federal Court Order Requiring Immediate Reforms at Adelanto ICE Processing Center

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes has ordered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to immediately overhaul conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center after finding that detainees are likely to succeed on claims that their constitutional and disability rights are being violated. 

The ruling stems from a class-action lawsuit brought by detained immigrants and immigrant rights organizations citing detainee deaths, inadequate medical care, insufficient nutrition, and unsafe drinking water, unsanitary living conditions, and failures to accommodate people with disabilities. 

Judge Sykes ordered DHS and ICE to implement sweeping reforms to medical care, sanitation, food service, recreation, disability accommodations, and visitation while the litigation proceeds. Within 14 days, ICE must submit a comprehensive remedial plan for medical care and disability accommodations, and two independent, court-appointed monitors will oversee compliance.

Rep. Judy Chu (CA-28), who has conducted oversight of the Adelanto facility, pressed ICE officials over documented abuses, and has called for its closure for more than a decade released the following statement: 

“Today’s ruling affirms what we have known all along. Detainees held at Adelanto have been suffering and dying in unacceptably cruel and inhumane conditions. And those who have raised the alarm, including detainees participating in a hunger strike whom I met with last month, have faced solitary confinement or even deportation in retaliation for speaking out.

ICE must comply fully and immediately with the court's order, implement every required reform without delay, and ensure that every person in its custody receives the constitutional protections and basic human dignity they are owed.

While this ruling is an important victory for detainees and their families, it cannot erase the years of preventable suffering that occurred before the court intervened. I will continue fighting to permanently close the Adelanto ICE Processing Center because no amount of court supervision can fix a detention system that has repeatedly failed to protect human life.”

Since the start of President Trump’s second term, five people have died while in ICE custody at Adelanto or shortly after being transferred from the facility. At least 13 people have died in connection with Adelanto since it opened, making it one of the deadliest ICE detention centers in the country. Over the years, detainees, advocates, medical professionals, and oversight officials have documented serious concerns at the facility, including delayed medical treatment, unsanitary conditions, inadequate access to hygiene products, barriers to communicating with attorneys and family members, and deaths that even ICE has deemed preventable.

The Adelanto ICE Processing Center is operated by GEO Group, a private prison contractor that receives millions of taxpayer dollars each year to detain immigrants on behalf of the federal government.