The visitors center at Krome Service Processing Center in Miami, Florida. The Krome campus is an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility housing over 650 ICE detainees per day. A former military base, Krome reopened as an immigration detention center during the 1980s when waves of Cuban rafters arrived on the shores of South Florida. ICE oversees the overall operations of the facility, with private contractors handling all guard operations.
Los Angeles, California – In the wake of sweeping immigration raids across Southern California, a group of congressional lawmakers visited the Adelanto ICE Processing Center on Tuesday, where they found what they described as degrading conditions for detainees swept up in the crackdown. The visit comes amid rising concern about detainee treatment, limited access to legal counsel, and opaque enforcement practices that have left families in anguish and communities on edge.
The delegation—made up of Reps. Judy Chu, Mark Takano, Luz Rivas, Linda Sánchez, and Sydney Kamlager-Dove—toured the privately run GEO Group facility roughly 60 miles east of Los Angeles, where federal agents are holding many of the recently detained immigrants. The lawmakers said detainees reported not receiving a change of clothes or underwear for over ten days and being forced to reuse a single towel to bathe. Several described unsanitary conditions and a lack of access to phones to contact lawyers or family.
“They had no idea where they were being taken, no access to attorneys, and no ability to make a phone call,” Rep. Chu said. “That’s not just disorganization. That’s a denial of due process.”
Among those detained is Mario Romero, a father arrested during a raid on a downtown clothing wholesaler. His daughter, Yurien Contreras, said she watched ICE agents walk him out of the warehouse in chains.
Another detainee was a DACA recipient detained over expired paperwork. At the same time, Rep. Kamlager-Dove reported she was still trying to locate a constituent who is deaf and mute and was taken into ICE custody without family notification.
The number of detainees at Adelanto ballooned from 350 to 1,200 over 10 days in June, lawmakers said. Some individuals arrested in the Los Angeles raids have reportedly been transferred to Texas and Florida, compounding the challenges families face trying to locate loved ones.
These conditions follow a series of highly controversial workplace raids and arrests at schools, churches, and community centers across Los Angeles. Protests in response prompted the deployment of 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines, and a temporary downtown curfew was imposed by Mayor Karen Bass. Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman has since filed new charges against demonstrators, fueling accusations that the Trump administration is criminalizing dissent and free speech.
ICE has not responded to media inquiries about the raids or detention conditions. The GEO Group stated DHS monitors its services for compliance, though lawmakers and civil rights groups say what they’ve seen tells a different story.
