Inside an immigration detention center in the desert outside Los Angeles, guards threw detainees into solitary confinement without hearings, routinely forced them into shackles, and cut off visits with family. Doctors signed off on medical assessments that never happened. Detainees were allowed to hang knotted sheets inside their cells, despite the facility’s extensive history of suicide attempts. And an extraction-happy dentist refused to fill cavities while suggesting detainees floss with threads pulled from their socks.
These were just some of the conditions inside the Adelanto Detention Facility when federal inspectors from the Department of Homeland Security arrived for a surprise visit in May, according to a searing report released today by the DHS Office of the Inspector General. Investigators concluded that conditions at the privately run facility amounted to “serious” violations of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s own detention standards, representing “significant threats to the safety, rights, and health of detainees.”
Few of the government’s findings about Adelanto are surprising, given that many of the same complaints about health care and suicide risks have been made for years by concerned advocates and public officials. But the report’s graphic details—from the bed sheets to the dentist’s remarks—powerfully illustrate the severity of the detention center’s long-running violations.
[For more on this story by MADISON PAULY, go to https://www.motherjones.com/po...ty-inspector-report/]
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