‘It will drive you crazy’: Letters reveal what life is like inside Adelanto ICE detention center

Sixty-year-old Abraham Torres Fernandez spent the first eight months of ICE detention in total silence.

Eighteen years ago, he fled his home country of Cuba, where he worked as a shopkeeper, to escape poverty and build a new life in the United States, Fernandez said. He later obtained permanent residency status, he said.

When federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Fernandez at a Tampa airport last April, he said they seized his hearing aids and never returned them.

“When I arrived (to Adelanto), they showed me my belongings, including my hearing aid, but they wouldn’t give it to me,” he wrote in Spanish.

Lipreading words in Spanish was the only way Fernandez was able to understand anyone for those eight months.

On a day a reporter visited Fernandez inside the Adelanto facility, he was wearing shoes two or three sizes too small. “They don’t care,” he said in Spanish. He also had a skin infection on his right thigh.

Later that day, he was given hearing aids. But, he said, they don’t work well enough to hear anyone over the phone.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Fernandez said, sitting hunched over in a plastic chair in the facility’s visitor room.

The Southern California News Group obtained handwritten letters from 10 people detained inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and conducted numerous interviews, in-person and over the phone. Their personal accounts describe an environment of monotony, pain and severe stress as well as claims of insufficient food, water and medical care. One man described life inside Adelanto as “torture.”

Fernandez is one of those individuals. He was detained in 2025 despite having permanent residency status due to previous arrests, including allegedly assaulting a police officer in 2021 and for allegedly entering someone’s home without their permission while intoxicated in 2022, according to his lawyer. In 2023, a Travis County court issued a warrant for Fernandez’s arrest.

However, Fernandez’s criminal history does not justify his stated treatment by federal agents, said Alvaro Huerta, a civil rights lawyer and the director of litigation and advocacy for the Immigrant Defenders law firm.

“We’re talking human beings here. We’re talking about people who deserve respect and dignity,” Huerta said. “Regardless of what they’ve done and even if they’re in the country without status, they don’t deserve to be treated like that.”

In the Mojave Desert, the Adelanto ICE Processing center’s east and west facilities combined can hold up to 1,940 people. Next door, the Desert View Annex, a former state prison, can hold up to 750 people. All three facilities are owned and operated by private-prison company GEO Group.

At the beginning of 2025, only a handful of people were detained inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. As of November, 1,786 were detained inside the facility. Last June, the Trump administration began flooding cities in Southern California with federal immigration agents to aid in its intensified immigration crackdown. The number of people in ICE custody has since reached over 68,000 people, according to federal government data, and most have no criminal convictions.

The men detained in Adelanto who wrote the handwritten letters are from Mexico, Nicaragua, Malaysia, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Cuba. The majority have spent years creating a life in the United States, some with spouses and children. Some have been convicted of crimes and others have no criminal record.

They have been kept in ICE detention anywhere from six months to almost three years.

Though everyone’s experience in ICE detention is different, themes emerged from the letters: the agonizing uncertainty over when they’ll see life outside, the longing to be reunited with loved ones, and a medical system that operates with a lack of urgency.

‘Medical care is terrible’ 

Among the detainees is a man named Jose Mauro Salazar Garza, 51, who has been held inside two Adelanto ICE detention facilities for almost three years.

Garza was detained by ICE in July 2023 after spending over four years in prison on two counts of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, according to court records.

Adelanto “looks like prison, smells like loneliness, feels nasty and frustrating and many more things I can’t describe but it will drive you crazy,” Garza said. He also said conditions inside Adelanto are worse than prison.

About a year into ICE detention, he lost the tip of his right pinky after another detainee bit it off and ate it, according to Garza, who filed several grievance forms about it. After a trip to a hospital, he said he was thrown into solitary confinement for several weeks.

“I wasn’t given a shower, I was just thrown in a cell that was leaking,” he wrote.

He wasn’t given antibiotics for months and it was only after his infected finger burst while he was sleeping that he received the medication, he said.

“I was never treated as a simple human being,” Garza wrote. “Now I’ve got a limp on my left leg, one finger less on my right (hand), a broken mind, broken body, broken heart but God is on my side.”

Medical requests can take weeks, if not months, to be acknowledged, several detained men reported.

“If you fell down on the floor and you are looking like you’re dying, maybe they’ll come but they don’t really come fast. They’ll come in 10 minutes or something like that,” said detainee Aaron Micó-Vargas, 34, in a phone interview.

One detained man from El Salvador witnessed older men collapse after their medical requests went unanswered. His name is being withheld for fear of retribution in his immigration case.

“I have seen older people taken to medical on a wheelchair because they collapsed as a result of being sick and not getting the right proper treatment when they requested, only then they were treated and that is sad and negligence on their part,” he wrote.

The man from El Salvador had his own medical issue. He made a request for care due to a sore throat, cough and fever. Two weeks later he was given an inhaler and allergy pills.

“But (for) the infection in my throat and the chronic cough I didn’t get anything, so I am still sick and the cough has gotten worse,” he wrote.

There’s a constant fear of becoming sick inside Adelanto, and some detained people have created cleaning schedules inside their unit.

“This way we avoid getting sick, since it takes more than a month to get a simple pill because the medical care is terrible,” wrote a formerly detained man named Juan. He has since been released on bond.

An ICE spokesperson provided a written statement in response to requests for comment about the detainees’ reported conditions.

“Allegations like these are categorically FALSE and do nothing more than distract the public from the work our brave men and women of ICE law Enforcement are doing to arrest pedophiles, murderers, rapist, gang members, and terrorists — even during looming government shutdowns. … Additionally, ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that all ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards.”

Lawsuit cites insufficient staff

Recently, four Adelanto detainees and an L.A. nonprofit filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against federal authorities and agencies alleging inhumane conditions inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center.

A longtime facility employee warned that the drastic population surge inside the facility in 2025 was dangerous because the detention center lacked a sufficient number of experienced staff members, the lawsuit alleges.

For years, this ICE facility has been at the center of dozens of lawsuits and several documented cases of abuse and neglect.

In 2018, the Office of Inspector General reported their findings of an unannounced visit to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, where they found nooses made out of braided bed sheets in detainee cells, among other serious issues that violated ICE’s Performance-Based National Detention Standards.

In 2025, Disability Rights California released a report on their visitation findings, which concluded that people with disabilities detained inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center are subjected to abuse and neglect. One man with diabetes reported receiving his medication twice in 10 days — a medicine he’s supposed to receive twice a day.

Last year, Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, and Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, 56, died after being detained inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. Ayala-Uribe’s family say he was denied proper medical care while in ICE custody.

The operators of the facility, GEO Group, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

In response to requests for comment about the reported conditions inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, DHS’ assistant secretary for public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, responded with a written statement.

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. Additionally, ICE gives all illegal aliens arrested a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys.  All detainees receive full due process. … Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE. ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens. … It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment an alien enters ICE custody. This includes medical, dental, and mental health services as available, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. This is the best health care than many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

Detainees try to keep the faith

Religious faith and regular check-ins with his family serve as Garza’s lifeline inside Adelanto.

“That’s how I’ve been making it all this time. … this place is sickening but thank God he’s keeping me strong-minded,” he said during a phone interview.

He preaches once a week in his unit, while other detained men take the lead on the remaining days.

In another unit, Micó-Vargas leads religious services three times a week in English Spanish, and Portuguese. Like Garza’s, Vargas’ sermons serve as a space of solace.

“I was one day reading my Bible and praying and I felt like something told me, ‘OK, you should do the same but in (other languages)’ … because everybody needs that,” he said.

In addition to reading the Bible and attending religious services, men pass the long days by watching TV, calling loved ones, cleaning, reading outdated immigration law books at the facility’s library and sleeping.

Detained people get about four hours of sleep a night without being interrupted by mandatory counts, they said. In the west facility, they sleep in cells with two sets of navy blue metal bunk beds, where the only window to be found is the narrow slit on a military-green door. In the east facility, they sleep in bunk beds that fill a large open room. The small pillows and thin uncomfortable mattresses make it difficult to sleep, some said, and so does the light that never turns off.

They eat inside a dining area illuminated by fluorescent lights and filled with nearly a dozen metal tables and stools, according to the detainees. The detained men said the food is insufficient and repetitive, leaving only those with the privilege of receiving commissary funds to eat something else.

People go hungry inside the Adelanto facility, Garza said, and on several occasions, the food served has been rotten.

The water inside Adelanto has an odd color and odor, while shower water is reportedly scalding hot at times, detainees said.

“The water that we shower (with) smells bad like rotten water. They take forever to bring us drinking water and the water tastes bad,” wrote a formerly detained 30-year-old man named Luis Zamora Ruiz. After writing his letter, Ruiz was deported to Mexico.

Some described a sense of agonizing uncertainty not knowing when they will see life outside the walls of Adelanto. The thought of being deported plagues their minds, but many hold on fighting their immigration cases from inside ICE detention with the hope of being reunited with their loved ones.

“It has been a frustrating and depressing time for me in here, but I have to continue to fight because of my wife and my three-year-old son. …They give me the strength to fight for my case and hopefully the chance to be reunited with them one day,” wrote a formerly detained man named Zhiyou.

Fighting for freedom

During his six months in ICE detention, Zhiyou spent an hour a day inside the facility’s library studying immigration law to prepare for his own representation, though the outdated books created a barrier to learning the latest law. The books, 10 years old or more, are just one of several legal obstacles he and other detained people will face.

Zhiyou was recently released on bond.

Immigration courts in the U.S. are backlogged with millions of cases, a system that has become even more strained after the Trump administration fired nearly 100 immigration judges in 2025. The Adelanto Immigration Court has a record-high backlog of 3,446 cases so far in fiscal year 2026, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse organization, contributing to longer times in detention.

“The larger number of cases means people move through the system more slowly,” said Niels Frenzen, a law professor and co-director of USC’s immigration law clinic.

Fighting an immigration case from an ICE detention center is more challenging than fighting it from the outside for a myriad of reasons, Frenzen added.

“The big obstacle is that you’re being held in an ICE prison that has horrendous conditions … there’s no right to a lawyer in immigration court removal proceedings. You can only have a lawyer if you can afford one or if you can find a free lawyer from a non-profit organization,” he said.

Nonprofit immigration organizations around the country are resource-strained. And the cost of retaining a lawyer for someone in ICE detention is much higher than it would be if the person could visit a lawyer’s office and prepare for the case, Frenzen said.

“And as a result, if you can’t get a lawyer, you’re not eligible for bonds, you’re being chained in very bad overcrowded conditions with poor food, no recreation, guards always trying to get you to waive your rights, people give up and accept deportation rather than asserting their rights in front of an immigration judge,” Frenzen added.

State Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena, recently introduced Senate Bill 995, the Masuma Khan Justice Act, that intends to create increased oversight over ICE detention centers in California and impose fines and license revocations for facilities that fail to meet health and safety standards.

“Private detention centers have earned millions in profits and continued to secure contracts with government agencies, despite well-documented cases of health and safety violations. It is time for the State of California to use its legal and moral authority to inspect private detention facilities, hold bad actors accountable and close facilities with consistent, documented cases of human rights abuses,” Pérez said.

For Micó-Vargas, the chance of being reunited with his 3-year-old son has prevented him from self-deporting.

“So every time when I get anxious to get out of here, I pray, put everything in the hands of God, read the Bible, ask God for patience and peace and finally think of my little angel, Davis, and I think I have to be strong. He needs me. I have to wait and make everything possible to continue here for him,” he wrote.

The closest taste of freedom felt inside the detention center, as described by some men, is the daily hour spent outside in a fenced yard. It’s roughly the size of a small soccer field made of dirt and concrete, where no trees or grass can be found.

“I love seeing [the birds] and sometimes it’s nostalgic to just see them on the top gate of the little yard.” Garza said. “They look down on me and it’s like if it asks me, ‘Why are you in this big cage!’ ”

Read Adelanto detainee’s letters here: