Legislators insist that ice keep them away from the Adelato facility

From Deborah BrennanCalmness

This story was originally published by CalmattersS Register about their ballots.

Two members of the Congress of the Internal Empire were locked at the gate of the ice processing center Adelato last week as they tried to check the voters held there.

The episode illustrates the obstacles that some democratic legislators have survived, trying to monitor the conditions in ice retention centers and what they say are restrictive rules that prevent congressional supervision.

Reporter Raul Ruiz, a democrat of the desert, plans to learn if the detainees have legal representation and have seen an immigration judge and whether they have access to health, hygiene and nutrition.

“I had a questionnaire that was prepared with the staff and ACLU and other organizations who asked if they were authorized for a lawyer, telephone calls, if they were able to communicate with their loved ones if their rights were read,” Ruiz said.

On Monday, July 7, he applied to Ice to tour the facility last Friday with a Norma Torres reporter, a Democrat from Ontario. An Instagram Post From the two legislators, they showed a more announcement from Torres’ office on July 3, and also wanted to schedule a visit.

Both requests meet the ice requirements for 72 hours of notice, Ruiz said. But these were kind gestures, he said, since then Federal law does not require a preliminary notice of Visits to congress supervisionS When Ruiz and Torres arrived, Ice turned them on.

“They turn and tell me it’s now seven days of notice,” he said. “They continue to move the target. We showed up with the hope that the congress member of the Norma Torres Congress and I could have entered the facility and talk to an ice agent and do the job. As soon as they saw us, they closed the gate and locked it with a chain and a dead stitch.”

The two legislators published a Video outside the locked gateRequireing to enter and call for the resignation of the Minister of Homeland Security Christie NEEm.

On the same day, said Ruiz, reporter Jay Obernolte, a Republican from Hasperia, also scheduled a visit and was allowed inside.

An ICE statement said Obernolte had provided seven days of removal of a detainee, but Ruiz and Torres did not do so.

“Congressman Raul Ruiz and Congress Norma Torres showed up on the approved visit of Rep.” They were advised that ICE would be more than happy to adapt his visit – he was provided with DHS policy. “

In a Message on x After a visit on Friday, Obernolte said he was pleased with the conditions he had watched. He toured hostels, cafes and recreation facilities, monitored the dishes and confirmed that detainees had access to a legal counsel.

“It is clear to me that this facility does its job: it guarantees that the detainees are treated humanely – with access to medical care, legal representation and timely hearing – while helping ICE to fulfill its mission to impose our laws on immigration,” the Obernolte writes.

A larger group of MPs in Southern California who visited the facility in June reported facility problemsS They found that the detainees were held “without enough food, clean clothing, the ability to call their families or access to a lawyer,” according to a reporter Judy Chu, a Democrat from Pasadena.

Ruiz said the requirement of a 72 -hour notice – and, moreover, that the seven -day period of notice – it makes it difficult to say whether the facility is constantly maintaining humane conditions or exploded before the congress visit.

He will try to schedule a visit again with at least seven days of notice. If he is still unable to access, he will consider legal action to challenge restrictions. Efforts to access immigration detainees are related to a proper process, as well as the work of democracy, Ruiz said.

“When you have an executive branch that deliberately denies a member of the legislative branch to ensure supervision of the enforcement branch, then you begin to go down a very dangerous slippery slope, which contradicts the Constitution and ideas of the founder fathers and three co-branches of the government,” Ruza said. “They did not want a single figure to act like a king.”

This article was Originally Published on CalMatters and was reissued under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Noderivatives License.