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At a protest this month outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Adelanto, advocates derided what they said are substandard conditions for the roughly 2,000 people imprisoned at the Adelanto campus.
Multiple protesters said the detention center would be more aptly described as a “concentration camp,” drawing parallels to some of the darkest moments in U.S. and world history. For protesters who opt to use such a charged phrase to refer to immigrant detention, doing so isn’t just a matter of accuracy; above all, they seek to prevent further harm.Current and former detainees say immigrants at the ICE processing center experience rotten food, inadequate medical attention and punitive isolation.If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.against ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, seeking to “end the inhumane and illegal conditions” at this facility. The lawsuit describes Adelanto as an unsanitary place where “disease and illness are rampant.” “Mold grows on bathroom and dormitory walls,” the lawsuit says. “Individuals across various dormitories contracted an infectious skin disease called a staph infection — and more than a dozen detained individuals hospitalized.”What is the state’s role at Adelanto?During inspections at Adelanto, Bonta said in a press statement, his team witnessed"shockingly inadequate medical care, a failure to accommodate people with disabilities, disturbingly unsafe and unsanitary conditions and a lack of basic necessities.” Bonta also said detainees have reported “denied access to facility phones for prolonged periods,” which impeded their ability to contact their families and legal counsel.The federal government has denied claims of substandard conditions. In a press statement issued after the death of a detainee, ICE said it is “committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.”“Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay,” the statement continues. “This is the best health care tha many aliens have received in their entire lives.”outside Adelanto, in partnership with sister organizations across Southern California. In a message to protesters ahead of the event, the group referred to the detention center in Adelanto as a “concentration camp for immigrants.” Out in the Mojave desert, others also made connections to the past. “ I'm here today fighting for the fathers, the mothers and community members who have been abducted,” said N. Suzuki, a member of Nikkei Progressives, an intergenerational community organization based in Little Tokyo. “This is a moment in history, much like it was for Japanese Americans during World War II,” they added, referencing the U.S. incarceration of more than N. Suzuki and Amy Oba carried a poster with an excerpt from Civilian Exclusion Order No. 69, a 1942 army directive forcing people of Japanese ancestry — most of them U.S. citizens — to leave their homes.Elisa Schwartz, a resident of the San Fernando Valley, traveled nearly 100 miles to join protesters in Adelanto. She also referred to the detention centers as “camps” and said that as a Jewish person, it felt “heavy” to be there. “I remember hearing this from my mother when I was a kid,” she said. “‘ other people, you can start to hurt them. Once you start to hurt them, you herd them and you can destroy them.’ And this is what this is — make no mistake.”, backs protesters’ use of the phrase to refer to conditions inside U.S. immigration detention facilities. Her book, published in 2017, looks at how the idea of concentration camps came into being; how these places led to extermination centers likeTo write her book, Pitzer conducted research in two dozen countries, across four continents. She also spoke with current and former detainees from various camps, as well as guards. All this was anchored in years of archival work., Pitzer defines “concentration camps” as the mass detention of civilians “without due process or a real trial, on the basis of identity — usually political, racial, ethnic or religious” she told LAist.Pitzer said she’s not interested in forcing anyone to use the phrase “concentration camps” to refer to U.S. immigrant detention centers. Instead, she explained why doing so is valuable: As protesters at Adelanto aimed to convey, the phrase can help others “recognize that term as an escalation of the usual state of detention.” Given that some 70,000 immigrants are currently imprisoned across the U.S., she added, “the current potential for harm is vast.” Those who support the Trump administration’s mass deportation project might be inclined to say that undocumented immigrants are being detained because they crossed the border without authorization, Pitzer noted, and that “theresomething that they've done.” But breaching immigration law is a civil offense, not criminal, she said. Plus, “historically speaking,” when governments detain civilians en masse, they devote a lot of time and resources to criminalizing them. “In Nazi Germany, for instance, spent years criminalizing German Jews so that they literally could not be there legally. The whole goal was to turn them into ‘illegal aliens,’” she said. In Pitzer’s view, “It's clear that people who are being rounded up are being detained because of skin color, because it's suspected that they're Latino.”in an ongoing case on immigration stops, wherein he gave federal agents the green light to continue making those stops based on factors like “speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent” and “apparent race or ethnicity.” That text, Pitzer said, “starts to clarify why actually happening and why does fit the definition of concentration camps.” “When people hear the phrase ‘concentration camps,’ they get a little bit confused, and they immediately think of death camps and extermination centers,” she added. “But what they might not realize is that all around the globe ... there were many, many other camps that never became extermination centers. Yet, they were still terrible places.” In Argentina, in Chile and in the Soviet Union, she said, “those early camps looked quite a bit like some the U.S.” Camps in each of those nations had their “own local cultural conditions,” Pitzer added. But many of their features — including the lack of access to medical care, sanitation and healthy food for detained civilians, and starting with “people being kidnapped off the street by masked gunmen” — are not unlike what’s happening in the U.S., she said.The state has a program for self-employed workers and small business owners, but workers don’t always know to opt in.LA’s main homelessness agency is at risk of blowing federal audit deadline, auditor warns L.A. Homeless Services Authority executives were far behind in turning in required documents for a crucial oversight check, per the lead auditor. You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our connected community. We are free to tell the full truth, to hold power to account without fear or favor, and to follow facts wherever they lead . Our only loyalty is to our audiences and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen our community. Right now, LAist has lost $1.7M in annual funding due to Congress clawing back money already approved. The support we receive from readers like you will determine how fully our newsroom can continue informing, serving, and strengthening Southern California.Climate & Environment
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