California Democrats visit Adelanto ICE detention facility

ADELANTO, Calif. (KESQ) A group of California House Democrats said staff at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center kept them waiting more than half an hour Friday and used the time to mop floors and lock detainees in their cells before the lawmakers unannounced inspection of the state's largest immigration detention center.

Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, led the visit. He said the delegation did not tell U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement it was coming.

"They kept us around for over 30 minutes, and once we started walking in, it became clear why," Garcia said at a news conference outside the facility. "They clearly had been cleaning. They were washing the floors. They were putting things away."

The visit came two weeks after the Department of Homeland Security bought the three-facility Adelanto complex from private prison operator GEO Group for $950 million, and three months after a federal judge in Riverside ordered ICE to fix conditions there.

Rep. Dave Min, who represents coastal Orange County, said detainees were locked down for a head count when the group arrived, so members could not speak with them. He said the kitchen floors had just been mopped.

"You could see that the ovens, the cookware, the pots and pans that they were using were filthy, were not cleaned," Min said.

Rep. Norma Torres, who represents Pomona and parts of the Inland Empire, stayed behind to tour the women's side. She said women there told her sewage backed up a few days ago and that they were served meals while it came out of the drains. Torres said the warden told her he sent crews to fix it as soon as he learned of the problem.

Torres also said she saw hair on the floor of the men's showers and mold in the shower areas, conditions she said she had not seen on the more than 25 visits she and her staff have made with advance notice.

Rep. Judy Chu, who represents Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, said staff told the group they were waiting for a director to arrive. "It was clear that they were putting the detainees on lockdown so that they could not talk to us," Chu said.

Garcia said more than 1,800 people are held at Adelanto and that most have no criminal record. He said staff leading the tour repeatedly told the group the opposite. "That is actually a lie," he said.

Garcia also said facility leadership told him that detainees had made sexual abuse accusations and that every one had been dismissed.

Four men held at Adelanto died between September 2025 and March, and in July a Judge in Riverside ordered ICE to fix conditions there, including clean drinking water, adequate food and medical care, with two independent monitors to check its work.

The first monitor report, filed Oct. 2, described mold and larvae in the showers, and on Oct. 7 the detainees lawyers asked the judge to hold the government in contempt.

Chu said she looked at a glass of the water herself Friday and saw nothing in it, and both she and Torres said the facility has added filters since the report. DHS has said claims of poor conditions at Adelanto are false.

The federal government bought the three-building Adelanto complex from GEO Group on Oct. 2 for $950 million, and GEO still runs it under a contract through 2034. Rep. Luz Rivas, who represents the San Fernando Valley, said the contractor leading Friday's tour told the group he was surprised to read about the sale.

Federal law lets members of Congress inspect detention facilities without notice, but House Democrats including Garcia and Torres had to sue last year after DHS began requiring seven days' notice, and a federal judge in Washington ordered the agency in March to let them in. Rep. Raul Ruiz, who represents the eastern Coachella Valley, was turned away from Adelanto twice before entering with a court order in February and was not part of Friday's visit. Garcia said the court monitor is expected back in the coming weeks, and the lawmakers said they would be too.

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