Lawsuit alleges inhumane conditions at Adelanto ICE facility

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights announced a new lawsuit Monday against federal immigration agencies for claims of inhumane conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County.

The organization claims people detained in the Adelanto facility lack drinkable water, healthy food, clean clothes, places to sleep and access to medical care. Failing to provide these basic necessities, CHIRLA says in court documents, amounts to punishment — violating detainees rights to due process.

“ We are really at a moment where we are seeing a human rights crisis right before our eyes,” CHIRLA policy director Jeanette Zanipatin said at a news conference Monday. “And the detention centers, especially the one at Adelanto, is where we are seeing it unfold in real time.”

Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Public Counsel are assisting in the case against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security.

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 ”We're asking both that the judge force Adelanto, the detention facility, to ensure that basic medical care is being provided, that basic hygiene and sanitary conditions, food and water are provided, and that oversight is conducted over the facility,” said Alvaro Huerta, director of litigation and advocacy at Immigrant Defenders Law Center.

ICE and Homeland Security have not responded to LAist about the case or claims in this article.

A question of constitutional rights

When CHIRLA announced the lawsuit on Monday, Zanipatin said there has been “a long history of unsafe and abusive conditions” at the Adelanto facility. She referenced a July 2025 report from the nonprofit Disability Rights California that found conditions at the facility were “dangerous and inadequate for all people, especially for those with disabilities.”

Court documents filed by CHIRLA also reference previous reports that found issues at the facility, including a 2018 report from the DHS Office of Inspector General that found “a number of serious issues that violate ICE’s 2011 Performance-Based National Detention Standards and pose significant health and safety risks at the facility.”

Those issues included findings of nooses in detainees’ cells, improper use of disciplinary segregation and inadequate medical care.

“Based on interviews with detainees and medical staff and a review of independent reports,” the report states, “we concluded that detainees do not have timely access to proper medical care.”

CHIRLA claims in their lawsuit that Adelanto leadership rejected the findings of the inspector general report and took no corrective action.

The concerns raised by CHIRLA as they announced the lawsuit closely resemble the findings of Disability Rights California, which also claimed detainees were not provided adequate medical care, food, water or clean clothing. The organization also reported that some people had limited access to communication with their loved ones.

Huerta claimed that the conditions in the Adelanto facility are poor by design.

“ Adelanto, like most ICE prisons, is engineered to be so punishing, so relentlessly soul crushing, that people abandon their rights and accept deportation even when they have strong asylum claims or a clear pathway to legal status,” Huerta said.

He said 32 people died while detained by ICE nationwide in 2025, and at least 6 more have died in January. Two people died at Adelanto last fall, Huerta said.

Family members speak out

Mariel Garcia told LAist she would call her father, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, nearly every day. That ended when he was detained by immigration agents in Costa Mesa on Oct. 14.

Garcia-Aviles had a work permit, his daughter said, but he was detained and taken to Adelanto. She said she tried many times to ask the facility staff to allow her to call her father, or even to get an update on his condition, but she was never able to talk to him again.

Worried, she said she got a call from the staff at Adelanto.

“ They called me the day he was passing away,” Garcia told LAist, “They're like, go tell your family and friends to come and say their last goodbyes because your father's in critical condition.”

Her brother, Gabriel Garcia, said that when they arrived at the hospital their father was intubated and “lifeless." Still, he said, there were law enforcement officers standing outside the hospital room.

Garcia-Aviles died Oct. 23 at age 56.

Jose Ayala also talked about the loss of his brother, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, while he was detained in the Adelanto facility.

“ He was there for about a month and we knew nothing of his condition,” Ayala said at Monday’s press conference, “just that he was sick and that he wasn't getting any help when he asked.”

Ayala said his family learned of his brother’s death when the police came and knocked at their door. He said staff at Adelanto did not tell them Ayala-Uribe had been hospitalized or that he needed a surgery, which ICE said in a news release was for an abscess.

Ayala told LAist that he was able to talk with his brother over the phone a couple of times when he was detained, and Ayala-Uribe was joking with him about the poor conditions of the facility causing him to lose weight.

“ One of the last things he told me,” Ayala recalled, “was, ‘We'll see who comes out skinnier.’”

He said his brother was 39 when he died on Sept. 22, 2025.

CHIRLA alleges in court documents that staff at Adelanto were aware Ayala-Uribe was having a potentially life-threatening medical emergency three days before his death, but he was taken back to his cell after being seen by the facility’s medical team.

An ICE news release said Ayala-Uribe “was evaluated by an on-call medical provider Sept. 18, provided medication, and returned to his dormitory,” but did not mention the severity of his condition.

The cause of both deaths remain under investigation, CHIRLA said in an accompanying news release.