If the administration follows through with its enforcement priority, most individuals who are to be removed might end up at the largest adult detention facility in the U.S.. However, there have been some troubling developments concerning visitations since the November elections.
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ADELANTO - Visitor access to detainees at the Adelanto Detention Facility has become more restrictive since November, according to a watchdog group that monitors such activity.
Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) filed a federal civil rights complaint last week with the Office for Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, castigating a "disturbing increase" in visitation denials and wait times in the past two months at the largest adult immigration detention center in the U.S.
Rebecca Merton, the national visitation network program coordinator for CIVIC, on Thursday told the Daily Press that the timing of the alleged uptick in restrictive practices by GEO Group Inc., the facility's private operator, concerned advocates who worry about President Donald Trump's affect on immigration issues.
"Obviously, we're thinking about the election and whether that's emboldened them to a certain extent," Merton said. "I mean, we feel this complaint is so urgent because we really don't want to see any curtailment of (immigrant) rights with the new administration."
A GEO spokesman deferred all questions to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which oversees access and visitation. An ICE spokeswoman said more than once Thursday that the agency may need to defer questions to Homeland Security since they received the complaint, but she ultimately did not provide final word on whether that was the case.
The Daily Press had sought from GEO and ICE month-to-month visitation records since Jan. 1, 2016 that detailed denials, average waiting times and average lengths of visit.
Merton acknowledged that it is difficult to quantify access restrictions, but the group relies on reports from individuals in detention and has also seen more emails in recent months from visitors asking CIVIC to file complaints.
"We now have people who feel it's pointless to even drive out there and be turned away," she said. "So they don't even want to try anymore, but they do because they know how isolating detention is."
In its complaint filed Thursday accusing GEO of violating federal standards regarding social and legal visits to immigrants in ICE custody, CIVIC urges the Office for Civil Liberties "to immediately investigate these complaints of visit denials and restrictions, to promptly develop policies to address the violations, and to provide ongoing oversight on the implementation of the changes."
In one instance, the group said, a man and his two sons drove three hours to the facility to visit his wife, the children's mother, and were turned away after waiting for two hours.
Merton said she believed "dozens and dozens" of these incidents were taking place, and CIVIC is now requesting documents that reflect the facility's visitation record for the more than 1,800 detainees there.
In July 2015, the facility expanded by 640 beds and CIVIC leaders say that ICE should push GEO to expand its visitation space in response in order to curb alleged visitation denials and longer wait times.
