Lab Assistant Abraham Jimenez loads blood samples for automated serology testing for measles immunity status at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health laboratory in Downey on Feb. 26, 2026.
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Ariana Drehsler
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CalMatters
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Topline:
California is battling measles outbreaks across seven counties as federal funding cuts gut local health departments and vaccine skepticism fuels spread among unvaccinated children.
Outbreaks: California has a high enough vaccination rate — about 95% of kindergarteners — to provide herd immunity against measles, but throughout the state pockets of unvaccinated communities drive outbreaks, experts say.
Read on... for how local health departments are fighting the infection with less funds.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
When a possible measles case is identified in California, a phone rings at the local health department and the clock starts ticking.
Laboratory workers need to process samples as soon as possible to confirm the case. And a public health nurse must call the patient to find out where they’ve been and who they’ve been in contact with recently.
If test results are positive, the communicable disease team has 72 hours or less to identify anyone who has been exposed and may be at high risk of infection or serious illness. Those people must quarantine or take a dose of a post-exposure prophylaxis to prevent spread. For the next 21 days nurses will monitor the group for symptoms.
“That’s ridiculously infectious,” said Dr. Sharon Balter, director of acute communicable disease control with Los Angeles County public health. “It balloons very quickly, and because measles spreads very fast we have to get on it right away. We can’t say we’ll wait until tomorrow.”
California has a high enough vaccination rate — about 95% of kindergarteners — to provide herd immunity against measles, but throughout the state pockets of unvaccinated communities drive outbreaks, experts say.
Shasta and Riverside counties are working to contain localized outbreaks. These are the first measles outbreaks in the state since 2020 and are happening at a time when health departments have less money and fewer staff than in recent years. In total, seven counties have reported a total of 21 measles cases this year, according to the California Department of Public Health.
“The United States is experiencing the highest numbers of measles cases, outbreaks, hospitalizations and deaths in more than 30 years, driven by populations with low vaccination rates,” said California Public Health Officer Dr. Erica Pan in a statement earlier this month. “We all need to work together to share the medical evidence, benefits, and safety of vaccines to provide families the information they need to protect children and our communities."
Containment comes with high costs
Investigating any communicable disease is time-intensive and expensive. The first three measles cases reported in L.A. County this year cost an estimated $231,000, according to a health department analysis.
Why does it cost so much? Because a disease investigation often requires a legion of public health nurses, physicians, epidemiologists and laboratory scientists to follow-up with hundreds of contacts, Balter said.
A computer shows an analysis of measles sequencing results at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health laboratory in Downey on Feb. 26, 2026.
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Ariana Drehsler
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That includes sometimes visiting homes or exposure sites. For example, a recent exposure at a daycare required nurses to wring urine out of used diapers to test babies for measles. County health workers monitored 246 people who had been exposed to those first three measles cases — and the work is ongoing.
On Feb. 19, the county reported its fourth measles case. All of them were related to international travel. Other cases in California also have primarily been related to travel either internationally or to states where there are outbreaks. An unvaccinated child in Napa County contracted measles in January after traveling to South Carolina.
Riverside County health officials reported one measles case where the child had not traveled recently, and Shasta County health officials suspect their first case could be related to travel in Southern California but are waiting for DNA testing for confirmation.
Orange County reported two travel-related cases this year.
Health departments have fewer resources, more cases
Local health departments rely heavily on federal funding to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, but last year, the Trump administration slashed nearly $1 billion of public health funding from California. This year it attempted to claw back another $600 million from California and three other Democratic states.
Pending lawsuits froze the cuts, but local health departments are treating the money as a lost cause because they cannot bear the financial risk if a judge eventually rules in favor of the Trump administration.
Health departments are also confronting decreased public confidence: The high-profile questioning of vaccine safety and effectiveness by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has complicated public health’s struggle to contain the spread of preventable infections.
California Democratic leaders are aggressively fighting Kennedy’s direction. They sued to block the administration’s new vaccine guidelines, which stripped universal recommendation from seven childhood vaccines. They blame Kennedy and the Trump administration for “dismantling” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and stoking fears over debunked claims that vaccines cause autism.
The state also released its own vaccine guidelines and formed an alliance among four western states to share public health information and recommendations.
“Everything including the outbreaks, the financial cuts, the questions from the federal government that are arising are making our work very difficult,” said Dr. Regina Chinsio-Kwong, Orange County public health officer.
Lab Assistant Abraham Jimenez loads blood samples for automated serology testing for measles immunity status at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health laboratory in Downey on Feb. 26, 2026.
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Ariana Drehsler
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CalMatters
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Lab Assistant Abraham Jimenez loads blood samples for automated serology testing for measles immunity status at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health laboratory in Downey on Feb. 26, 2026.
The outbreak, which lasted four months, spurred state lawmakers to pass some of the strictest childhood vaccine requirements in the country.
But even a single measles case requires “vast amounts of infrastructure” to contain, Chinsio-Kwong said. On average, the department identifies and monitors 100 exposed people per case. Since the start of last year, Orange County has lost $22 million in federal cuts to public health. The department is trying to protect their communicable disease surveillance work, but it gets harder with every cut.
“We're trying to prioritize our communicable disease control division,” health officer Chinsio-Kwong said. “There are a lot of different federal cuts, but we're putting that as front and center: That has to be saved no matter what.”
Measles spread in unvaccinated groups
Six hundred miles north, Shasta County is grappling with its first measles cases since 2019 and the state’s largest outbreak of the year.
In late January, a sick child visited a health clinic in Redding with measles symptoms that laboratory testing later confirmed. Health officials interviewed 278 people and identified six locations where others were exposed: a restaurant, a church basketball game, a gym, a park, Costco and the clinic.
They also identified seven other cases among family members or neighbors who were in close contact with the child.
It can take 21 days from the time of exposure for measles symptoms to develop. On Feb. 19, just before the end of that period, health officials confirmed a ninth case.
That person didn’t recognize the symptoms and visited several places while contagious, including a school, a church service, a basketball game and a clinic, said Daniel Walker, a Shasta County supervising epidemiologist. Now, the contract tracing process has started over. The communicable disease team expects to interview even more people this time.
All cases have been among children who were unvaccinated or did not know their vaccination status.
“It’s a great time to get immunized, because you can’t know when you’re next going to be exposed…especially because we’re in an outbreak situation,” Walker said.
Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.
Josie Huang
is a reporter and Weekend Edition host who spotlights the people and places at the heart of our region.
Published April 4, 2026 5:01 AM
A Chinatown resident waits for a fresh load of laundry.
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LAist
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Topline:
Chinatown has no laundromats, leaving many working-class residents without a basic service. A mobile laundry truck, paid for by the local council district, is offering free washes twice a week as a temporary solution.
Why it matters: Without laundromat options, some residents are forced to wash clothes by hand or spend time and money traveling outside the neighborhood.
Why now: Council member Eunisses Hernandez is using $250,000 in district funds for a year-long contract with LA Laundry Truck. She said constituents and neighborhood advocates have long told her about the need for greater laundry access for residents.
The backstory: Newer housing developments are bringing in higher-income residents with amenities like in-unit laundry. Meanwhile, advocates say, many older buildings don't have laundry rooms or have aging machines often in disrepair.
What's next: Hernandez say the mobile service will serve as a stopgap until a more permanent solution is found, like a community-run laundromat.
In Los Angeles, the soundtrack is familiar. Car horns, the whine of leaf blowers.
But in the middle of Chinatown, another sound cuts through the din: the rhythmic hum of washers and dryers from a trailer parked outside the Alpine Recreation Center.
Chinatown hasn’t had a laundromat for as long as anyone around can remember. This mobile setup – run by the nonprofit The Laundry Truck LA – has become the neighborhood’s de facto laundromat, offering the service for free to locals, twice a week.
For 70-year-old Sam Ma, it’s been a relief.
Ma, a retired construction worker, picked up freshly-laundered items — two pairs of pants, a hat, and some socks, bundled in a white garbage bag for the bus ride home.
He usually washes his clothes by hand. But about two weeks ago, he was hit by a car. Bruises and cuts cover his hands, making it difficult to scrub heavier items.
“The things I can wash, I wash,” he said in Mandarin. “But these are too thick. It’s too hard.”
Rebel Fox of The Laundry Truck L.A. hands a garbage bag filled with newly-laundered sheets to a local.
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Nearby, Laundry Truck employee Rebel Fox checked him out with a clipboard after handing him his load.
“We help a lot of seniors out here,” Fox said. “And we offer folding services, too. It really helps people who don’t have the dexterity in their hands.”
The Laundry Truck started out in 2019 providing laundry services to people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles and has expanded to high-need communities, like Eaton Fire survivors.
In February, the nonprofit started operating in Chinatown under a year-long contract with Council District 1, showing up every Wednesday and Thursday at 9 a.m.
A sink or bathtub
Chinatown advocates say the lack of a laundromat is especially hard on low-income tenants living in older, neglected buildings.
Maintaining laundry rooms may require major plumbing upgrades and hookups that many landlords avoid.
Newly-constructed residential buildings are typically being constructed with in-unit laundry.
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Advocates say in buildings that do have shared coin-operated machines, they may be broken or in constant use. Many residents decide to launder clothes by hand — in sinks or bathtubs.
“In one building, the sinks were so small, people had to cut their sheets in half just to wash them,” Trinh said. “They’d wash one half, then the other.”
A reversal of access
Those who could benefit from a laundromat include seniors on fixed incomes, and workers living paycheck to paycheck, including garment workers and home health aides.
“You’re talking about low-income, financially-stressed households,” Paul Ong said.
Ong, who studies urban inequality at UCLA, says Chinatown reflects a broader pattern: as neighborhoods change, basic services can disappear.
Each pile of dirty clothes is labeled with customers' names.
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The neighborhood’s last full-service grocery store closed in 2019 after the property was sold to a developer. Meanwhile, new market-rate housing has gone up, catering to higher-income residents with amenities like parking and in-unit laundry.
“The irony is that historically, laundry was bread and butter for the Chinese community,” Ong said.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese immigrants built livelihoods around laundry work — one of the few industries open to them at the time.
Nowadays, laundry options have become hard to come by.
Seeking a lasting fix
Residents without access to machines have to leave the neighborhood entirely to find a laundromat in Lincoln Heights or Echo Park, which has seen its own laundromats disappear.
Laundry can be spotted drying on balconies across Chinatown.
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“The long-term, permanent solution is that a laundry service opens up,” in the neighborhood, said Council member Eunisses Hernandez, who represents Chinatown.
Hernandez says constituents have asked for a laundromat from the time she was knocking on doors as a City Council candidate.
Hernandez, who is up for re-election this year, says the neighborhood could benefit from a community-run laundromat offering affordable services.
“If private industry is not making that investment in Chinatown then perhaps it’s up to the city – and the people of that neighborhood – to build something for them,” she said.
In the meantime, Hernandez has directed about $250,000 from her district — using TFAR payments from developers building larger projects — to cover a year of mobile laundry services.
The contract with the Laundry Truck runs through next February.
After that?
“We’ll keep filling the gap until we get to a permanent solution,” Hernandez said.
Could that solution be combined with housing?
Some community advisors to a new affordable housing project being developed on the northwestern edge of Chinatown have been pushing for a self-service laundry that would be open to other neighborhood residents, says Eugene Moy who sits on the advisory board of New High Village.
But any fix will take time. That project, Moy said, could be two years out from even breaking ground.
Taking a load off
Back at the truck, the machines continue to spin. By mid-afternoon, nearly 18 loads of laundry are done.
The trailer for the LA Laundry Truck is set up outside the Alpine Recreation Center, across from Castelar Elementary School.
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Two months in, there are kinks to work out. How to get more residents to take advantage of the unit's capacity? Its machines can churn out 40 loads per shift.
There is also the question of whether some seniors are physically able to transport their laundry even a few blocks.
But the service is starting to get regulars. One woman on her second visit stood by the trailer, cradling just-washed clothes in her arms while clutching her daughter's teddy bear, now a sparkling white.
"If it keeps going, I'll keep coming," said the woman who gave her last name as Mo. "It's very convenient."
Her apartment building doesn’t have a laundry room. Sometimes she asks a friend next door if she can use theirs. With three children, the cost adds up quickly.
Thinking aloud, she calculated how much she saved that day.
About $8, she estimated — money she said could now spend on her kids.
People dance along to music at one of the L.A. River Dance parties.
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Michael Marshall
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Topline:
The Los Angeles River isn’t just for walking and biking, you can join other Angelenos and dance in the middle of it.
Why: Local club the Gratitude Group has been helping Angelenos unplug and connect with one another by throwing dry dance parties in unexpected places around L.A.
What's next: The next L.A. River dance party is happening tomorrow, Sunday. Read on to learn more.
There’s a fair amount of recreational activities Angelenos can do in and around the Los Angeles River like biking, walking, even kayaking, but did you know you can also dance in the dry river bed of a Los Angeles icon?
Adam Weiss, founder of the Gratitude Group leans over and DJs a set at his Los Angeles River dance party.
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Dancing in the sun
Adam Weiss is the founder of the Gratitude Group, a club that hosts various events across Los Angeles like dance parties at the River, a screen-free reading club at the Central Library and meditative sound baths at Elysian Park. That’s just this weekend alone.
Weiss has been hosting the free dance parties for about two years now. The locations vary. Previously he’s held them at the Elysian Park helipad.
“Everybody wants to dance, they're just waiting to be invited to dance, and then if you're a good DJ, you just keep the floor packed,” said Weiss, who also deejays these events. Lately it's been a lot of disco, funk and soul. Weiss also likes to keep the gatherings dry, meaning no drugs or alcohol. He thinks it makes people engage with each other more.
“So the focus really is on connection and dancing,” Weiss said.
Attendees of the Los Angeles River dance party move to the music.
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Michael Marshall
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Ariana Valencia lives in Burbank and attended last month's dance party, also at the L.A. River. She says dancing in the middle of the concrete riverbed made the city feel like a playground that she could explore.
“I’d never been to the L.A. River prior to that. You think it’s just a little swampy little pond, but it was actually really full,” said Valencia. “I would have never thought that was in the middle of the city.”
Uniquely Los Angeles
Weiss says part of the appeal is not just getting people outside but to get them to experience Los Angeles differently.
At the last event, people walking or biking along the river path joined on a whim — some even brought their kids. Weiss says that’s exactly the kind of reaction he hopes for.
“ I want it to be family friendly. I want it to feel welcoming. I want it to be inclusive,” Weiss said. “My main thing is I just want people to actually dance. I think it feels good to dance.”
A woman and two children join in on the dance party.
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Michael Marshall
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For Valencia that inclusiveness is part of the draw. She says she’ll be joining again this Sunday.
“Even though it wasn’t advertised as a dry event I think the fact that it was a family friendly kind of thing was appealing to me,” said Valencia.
Join the party
After the last dance party went viral, Weiss says more than 1,500 people have RSVP-ed for tomorrow's event. This compelled him to close reservations.
Weiss plans to hold the event every other week this Spring and Summer — taking place either at the River or the Elysian Field Helipad with its amazing view of the city.
Weiss wants to start branching out too, and is eyeing the Culver City Stairs as a possible location.
“ I just wanna bring people to cool interesting places to dance,” Weiss said.
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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez
is an arts and general assignment reporter on LAist's Explore LA team.
Published April 4, 2026 5:00 AM
Pomona Mayor Tim Sandoval (left) and painter Paul Botello look at one of five murals in a park in Pomona, that depict the life and activism of Cesar Chavez.
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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist
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Topline:
Artist Paul Botello painted five Chavez murals in this Pomona park decades ago. Now, with allegations of sexual assault agains the labor leader, he, along with the city's mayor, is assessing what changes should be made to honor the movement's activism while reflecting the icon's tarnished reputation.
Why it matters: Communities across Southern California and the country are grappling with how to remove the images and name of Cesar Chavez from public places while upholding the legacy of this civil rights movement.
Why now: Southern California has a large concentration of murals, plaques, street names, and statues of Cesar Chavez. The dialogue in Pomona which is happening between an artist, a city elected official, and an ethnic studies scholar signals a more nuanced approach to the reevaluation of Chavez’s legacy.
The backstory: Pomona’s Cesar Chavez Park was the result of activism by neighborhood leaders who wanted to create a safe space for families amid escalating gang warfare between Black and Latino youth in the early 2000s
What's next: Pomona’s mayor plans to bring up changes to the Cesar Chavez murals at Monday’s City Council meeting.
At Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona, a mural depicts the now-disgraced farm worker leader from the waist-up, in a serene, almost Buddha-like pose. To his left, a lady justice figure holds the scales of justice and on the right, there are images of farm workers toiling in a field. Chavez looks like a saint.
One of five murals at Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona, painted by Paul Botello.
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“And that's what people thought he was,” said Pomona Mayor Tim Sandoval as he stood in front of the mural.
But after several women stepped forward accusing the late labor icon of sexual assault, that view has radically changed. Now there are calls to remove his image from public spaces, widely impacting Southern California, which has a large concentration of murals, plaques, street names, and statues dedicated to him.
But do the entire murals have to be removed, or can there be a more nuanced approach to the re-evaluation of Chavez’s legacy — a re-evaluation that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?
This week, the artist Paul Botello, Pomona Mayor Sandoval, and Pitzer College Emeritus Professor José Calderón, a former activist who was involved in getting the murals painted, met up at the park, in the shadow of the busy 57 freeway, to discuss how to go forward.
The story behind the murals
In the early 2000s violence between Black and Latino gang members gripped Pomona.
“When a young Latino was killed, we actually did a march all the way from City Hall to what is now this park,” said Calderón.
Calderon helped organize that march. He said activists were inspired by something Chavez liked to say, that when you get angry, don’t take it out on others — organize.
So they lobbied for the park, which was filled with trash and syringes, to be cleaned up and made family friendly. And because they used his quote, it was named Cesar Chavez Park.
Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona was dedicated after activists lobbied the City of Pomona to help curb gang violence.
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Muralist Paul Botello was chosen to create five murals at the park that depicted Chavez from youth, through his service in the U.S. Navy during World War Two, to key moments during his farm worker activism.
Today, while he feels betrayed by Chavez, he’s also keen to preserve parts of the murals which tell the bigger story of the exploitation of farm workers and the fight to improve their conditions.
While California state law says an artist must be consulted if there are any proposed changes to a mural, the ultimate decision will be made by Pomona City Council.
Sandoval said he has not received calls or emails at City Hall. But people in his various social and civic circles have told him, he says, that Chavez’s images should be removed.
Paul Botello holds mock-ups of changes he'd like to make to his murals of Cesar Chavez at a park in Pomona.
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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist
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Botello had brought mock-ups of the alterations he’d like to make to each mural. For the mural which depicts Chavez in a Buddha-like pose, for example, he wants to replace his face with the face of a farmworker wearing a hat.
He also wants to keep much of another mural, which depicts Chavez as a teenager in a suit surrounded by boys and girls sitting on rows of tilled soil. His one change is to turn the image of Chavez into a Zoot Suiter, a rebellious Mexican American youth from the mid 20th century.
A mural by Paul Botello depicts Cesar Chavez and children on a farm.
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“ 95 percent is going to be there because it just represents all the youth who also toil in the field to help their parents,” he said.
Calderon agrees with these more targeted changes. He fears painting over the murals entirely would erase the neighborhood activism that led to the creation of this park.
The right and the white supremacists are already using it to say, ‘see this is what we told you about Cesar being anti-immigrant, but now they're going a little bit further and they want to wipe out ethnic studies.
— José Calderón, emeritus professor, Pitzer College
He’s also concerned their removal would give fuel to people who oppose Latino activism and the growing movement in public education to require the teaching of Latino history.
“The right and the white supremacists are already using it to say, ‘see this is what we told you about Cesar being anti-immigrant’”, he said. “But now they're going a little bit further and they want to wipe out ethnic studies”.
A mural at Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona.
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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist
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While Botello wants to keep the mural of Chavez serving in the U.S. Navy, because he believes it's important to show that Latinos have contributed to this country's military, he’s keen to make a change in the fifth mural.
It depicts a young man and woman above the phrase “Sí se puede,” the famous farmworker slogan, “yes, we can.”
The young man is clearly Chavez. Botello says he wants to replace it with the face of Dolores Huerta, the woman who led the United Farm Workers with Chavez and has accused Chavez of rape.
Mayor Sandoval says he plans to bring up Botello’s proposals at the next city council meeting.
Demonstrators recently marched around the Adelanto ICE Processing Center to demand the release of people detained there.
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Libby Rainey
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LAist
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Topline:
An LAist analysis shows that the Adelanto ICE Processing Center — the immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles — is among the top 10 facilities across the U.S. placing people in solitary confinement.
Why it matters: About 1,800 people are held at Adelanto today. In court filings, detainees there have said that isolation is used to punish them for speaking out against inhumane and unsanitary conditions at the facility.
Who’s responsible? The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment. In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments.”
The backstory: In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up last June, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled and has climbed since.
What's next: Earlier this year, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. The coalition has since requested an emergency court order to prevent further harm. A hearing is scheduled for April 10.
Read on … for details about the use of solitary confinement at Adelanto.
The immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles has placed dozens of people in solitary confinement each month since June, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up in June 2025, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled. By July, it was 73; by August, 105.
The most recent data available shows that number went down slightly in January, to 74 people.
Ranked by percentage of the detainee population in “segregation,” as it is called at immigrant detention centers, Adelanto is among the U.S.’s top 10 facilities as of January, according to an LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data.
The data shows that of 229 ICE facilities that reported holding people since October 2024, between 50 and 60 usually reported putting at least one person in segregation in a given month. Out of the facilities that did place people in solitary confinement, Adelanto tended to do so less often than others until June 2025. (The facility held just a few people from October 2024 into January 2025.) When ICE’s presence increased in L.A. in June, the number of people sent to isolation in the facility also shot up — three to five times as many people have been isolated in Adelanto compared to the average facility that used any solitary confinement.
Since June, only two facilities have sent people to solitary confinement more times than Adelanto: one southwest of San Antonio, the other in central Pennsylvania.
Both of those facilities held twice the number of detainees as Adelanto on average from October 2024 through September 2025; but the number of people held in Adelanto since then has tripled, growing larger than either of the other facilities to hold an average of 1,800 people a day since October.
How we reported this
LAist used official, publicly available data from ICE about its detentions nationwide and at specific facilities.
To calculate percentages of people held in isolation as of January 2026, LAist also used official ICE data as recorded by both TRAC Immigration and the Internet Archive that was no longer available on ICE's public website.
Records of “special and vulnerable populations” for the fourth quarter of the 2025 fiscal year and records of monthly segregation placements by facility from September 2025 were missing from ICE's data and are not reflected in LAist's analysis.
More on solitary confinement
According to ICE, detainees may be placed in segregation for “disciplinary reasons,” or because of:
“Serious mental or medical illness.”
Conducting a hunger strike.
Suicide watch.
The agency also says it might place detainees “who may be susceptible to harm [if left among the] general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression.”
Not only is ICE holding more people in solitary confinement, but the agency's data also shows that detainees across the country are being isolated for longer periods of time. Detainees ICE considers part of the "vulnerable & special population" spent an average of about two weeks in solitary confinement each time they were isolated in 2022, when ICE first made the data available. By the end of 2025, the average stay in isolation had risen to more than seven weeks straight.
The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment.
How isolation can affect immigrant detainees
UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last 15 days or more to be torture, though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution.
The UN also maintains that solitary confinement should be prohibited for people “with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”
In January, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of current detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. In addition to an unsanitary environment and a lack of healthy food and clean drinking water, detainees say solitary confinement is frequently used to punish those who speak out about conditions at the facility.
People held in immigrant detention centers are technically in “civil detention,” meaning that they are being detained to ensure their presence at hearings and compliance with immigration orders — notto serve criminal sentences.
According to the immigrant rights groups’ complaint, one detainee was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the showers being broken. Another detainee said that, after asking a guard to “use more respectful language toward him, he was ridiculed, written up and given the middle finger by a guard who shouted, ‘Who the f--- do you think you are?’” Then, the detainee was placed in solitary confinement for 25 days.
Alvaro Huerta, the director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing detainees at Adelanto, told LAist that when people are placed in isolation at the facility, they’re typically in the same cell for 23 hours per day, unable to receive visits from their families.
For clients who are experiencing mental health challenges — especially those with suicidal thoughts — being placed in solitary confinement “can really exacerbate their condition,” he added.
In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” The agency has also said that detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” and that all detainees “receive medical, dental, and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.”
Huerta called that “laughable.”
“We have countless examples of people who have said that this is not true, that they're not getting the medication that they're requesting, that they're not being seen for chronic conditions and emergency conditions,” he added. “And we know it's not true because 14 people have died in ICE custody this year alone.”
