Once on the brink of closure, Adelanto facility will resume detaining immigrants
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- A federal judge has lifted a pandemic-era court order that had reduced the population at Adelanto to just two detainees.
- The repopulating of the facility is not connected to the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
WASHINGTON — One of California’s largest immigrant detention facilities is set to begin holding immigrants again now that a federal judge has lifted a pandemic-era court order that had reduced the population to just two detainees.
The move comes more than a year after discussions over its potential closure led workers at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center to urge the federal government not to shut it down. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had issued temporary contract extensions every several months while awaiting resolution of the legal case.
In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Terry Hatter Jr. of the Central District of California wrote that “the ban on new detainee intakes at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center … is temporarily lifted pending a final fairness hearing.”
The legal dispute centered on conditions at the facility for both employees and detainees and was not connected to President Trump’s current crackdown on immigration. Even so, the facility, which can hold nearly 2,000 detainees, could play a major role in the administration’s enforcement efforts as it follows through on Trump’s pledges to round up people living in the country illegally.
The White House announced a short time later that Trump had signed a presidential memorandum on Guantanamo.
Neither the immigration agency nor GEO Group — the Florida-based private prison corporation that manages the facility — responded immediately to requests for comment.
The population at Adelanto began dropping dramatically in 2020 after an outbreak of COVID-19 tore through the facility, prompting Hatter to order the release of detainees and to prohibit new intakes and transfers.
“We would have loved to keep the intake ban for as long as we possibly could, but the intake ban really arises from the pandemic and the fact that it was not fair to hold people in there,” said Eva Bitrán, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “We don’t believe that anybody should be confined in immigration detention and certainly not at Adelanto, given its record of human rights abuses.”
The ban will be lifted permanently once the court issues a final approval of the settlement, which the federal government and immigrant advocates reached Dec. 23. Bitrán said final approval could come as soon as mid-March.
For now, the facility can repopulate to a maximum of only 475 people. The population cap, also established under the pandemic order, will lift upon final approval of the settlement, Bitrán said. The facility has a capacity of 1,940.
Adelanto is a former state prison about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles that began operating as an ICE detention center in 2011. In total, California facilities can hold nearly 7,200 detainees.
Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents many of the employees at Adelanto, said he was glad to learn that the facility would be repopulating because it was a waste of taxpayer money for it to sit empty.
“It’s a state-of-the-art facility and it was very clear, really from the previous administration and this one, that there’s a need for beds,” he said. “I’m glad to see that our people didn’t lose their jobs, that the facility is open and that our folks are getting back to work.”
GEO Group employees previously told The Times that the facility requires up to 500 workers at full capacity. Erwin said 350 union members were slated to be terminated had the facility closed.
Churches took in refugees from battle-scarred Central America in the 1980s, a precursor to their current focus on undocumented immigrants.
The federal government moved to lift the ban last year and the ACLU opposed it, Bitrán said, because the government had provided no assurances that it would protect people upon intake from bringing COVID-19 back into the facility. After some back and forth, they finally moved toward settling the case.
Bitrán said she never would have thought that five years later there would still be a ban against new detainees at the Adelanto facility.
“For us this is a huge victory,” she said. “But there was always a ticking clock on that intake ban.”
A coalition of immigrant rights groups called Shut Down Adelanto, of which the ACLU of Southern California is a member, has advocated for the facility’s closure for years, citing numerous health, safety and human rights violations. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2021 issued a warning to GEO Group after finding that misuse of a chemical disinfectant spray had caused detainees to suffer nosebleeds and nausea.
Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who has been strongly in favor of Adelanto’s closure, said she will continue monitoring conditions there.
“Frankly, I’m scared for the safety and security of immigrants detained now by GEO Group in the Adelanto facility and the ones who will be detained there by the Trump administration’s ICE raids,” she said.
Although the Biden administration ended contracts with several detention facilities across the country, the Trump administration has quickly moved to vastly expand immigrant detention.
On Wednesday, Trump signed a memorandum directing the federal government to begin using the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for the detention of 30,000 “high priority” immigrants.
Justice Dept. halts legal programs for detained immigrants, cuts off advocates’ access to facilities
The suspension of advocates’ access to immigrant detention centers eliminates most chances for detainees without a lawyer to receive basic legal information.
“This will double our capacity immediately,” Trump said at the White House earlier in the day. Those remarks came just after Trump signed the Laken Riley Act, his first legislative win this term. The law will increase detention by requiring that immigrants charged with certain crimes, such as theft, be detained.
Congress funded 41,500 immigrant detention beds last fiscal year. Before Trump took office, more than 39,000 people were already being detained. During his first term in 2019, immigration authorities detained a high of more than 55,000 people.
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