detainee

WASHINGTON — The day after immigration raids began in Los Angeles, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Pomona) and three other members of Congress were denied entry to the immigrant detention facility inside the Roybal Federal Building.

The lawmakers were attempting an unannounced inspection, a common and long-standing practice under congressional oversight powers.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said too many protesters were present on June 7 and officers deployed chemical agents multiple times. In a letter later to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Torres said she ended up in the emergency room for respiratory treatment. She also said the protest had been small and peaceful.

Torres is one of many Democratic members of Congress, from states including California, New York and Illinois, who have been denied entry to immigrant detention facilities in recent weeks.

Jim Townsend, director of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy at Wayne State University in Michigan, said the denials mark a profound — and illegal — shift from past practice.

“Denying members of Congress access to facilities is a direct assault on our system of checks and balances,” he said. “What members of Congress are trying to do now is to be part of a proud bipartisan tradition of what we like to call oversight by showing up.”

Subsequent attempts by lawmakers to inspect the facility inside the Roybal Building have also been unsuccessful.

Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Los Angeles), who was with Torres the day she was hospitalized, went back twice more — on June 9 and on Tuesday — and was rebuffed. Torres and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) tried at separate times Wednesday and were both denied.

Gomez and other Democrats have pointed to a federal statute, detailed in yearly appropriations packages since 2020, which states that funds may not be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of conducting oversight, any facility operated by or for the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or otherwise house aliens …”

The statute also states that nothing in that section “may be construed to require a Member of Congress to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility” for the purpose of conducting oversight. Under the statute, federal officials may require at least 24 hours notice for a visit by congressional staff — but not members themselves.

Under ICE guidelines published this month for members of Congress and their staff, the agency requests at least 72 hours notice from lawmakers and requires at least 24 hours notice from staff.

The agency says it has discretion to deny or reschedule a visit if an emergency arises or the safety of the facility is jeopardized, though such contingencies are not mentioned in the law.

Gomez said an ICE official called him Tuesday to say that oversight law doesn’t apply to the downtown L.A. facility because it is a field office, not a detention facility.

“Well it does say Metropolitan Detention Center right here in big, bold letters,” he says in a video posted afterward on social media, gesturing toward a sign outside the building. “But they say this is a processing center. So I smell bull—.”

Department of Homeland Security police patrol the street after detaining a protester at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A. on June 12.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

If no one is technically being detained, Gomez said he rhetorically asked the official during their call, are they free to leave?

Torres visited the facility in February by setting up an appointment, her staff said. She got another appointment for last Saturday, but ICE canceled it because of the protests. When members emailed ICE to set up a new appointment, they got no response.

Gomez said he believes ICE doesn’t want lawmakers to see field offices because of poor conditions and lack of attorney access because of ramped-up arrests that have reportedly left some detainees there overnight without beds and limited food.

In some cases, lawmakers have had success showing up unannounced. On Friday, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Redlands) toured the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility, north of San Bernardino. After being denied entry to the Adelanto Facility on June 8, Chu and four other California Democrats were allowed in on Tuesday.

“Just because ICE has opened their doors to a few members of Congress does not excuse their inflammatory tactics to meet deportation quotas,” said Rep. Mark Takano (D-Riverside), who visited Adelanto with Chu. “Accountability means showing a consistent pattern of accessibility, not just a one-off event.”

The representatives learned the facility is now at full capacity with 1,100 detainees, up from 300 a month ago. Chu said they spoke to detainees from the L.A. raids, who she said were not criminals and who are now living in inhumane conditions — without enough food, unable to change their underwear for 10 days or to call their families and lawyers.

Chu said the group arrived early and stood in the lobby to avoid a repeat of their previous attempt, when facility guards kept them off the property by locking a fence.

Tom Homan, President Trump’s border policy advisor, departs a meeting with Republican senators who are working to cancel $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress at the Capitol in Washington on June 11.

(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

In an interview with The Times this month, Trump’s chief border policy advisor Tom Homan said members of Congress are welcome to conduct oversight, but that they must contact the facility first to make arrangements. The agency has to look after the safety and security of the facility, officers and detainees, he said.

“Please go in and look at them,” he said. “They’re the best facilities that money can buy, the highest detention standards in the industry. But there’s a right way and wrong way to do it.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for Homeland Security, said in a statement to The Times that requests for visits are needed because “ICE law enforcement have seen a surge in assaults, disruptions and obstructions to enforcement, including by politicians themselves.”

She added that requests for visits should be made with enough time — “a week is sufficient” — to not interfere with the president’s authority under Article II of the Constitution to oversee executive branch functions.

DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, flanked by Deputy Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Madison Sheahan, left, and acting Director of ICE Todd Lyons, speaks during a news conference in Washington on May 21.

(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, slammed the guidance Wednesday on X.

“This unlawful policy is a smokescreen to deny Member visits to ICE offices across the country, which are holding migrants — and sometimes even U.S. citizens — for days at a time,” he wrote. “They are therefore facilities and are subject to oversight and inspection at any time. DHS pretending otherwise is simply their latest lie.”

Townsend, the congressional oversight expert, said the practice goes back to when President Truman was a senator and established a committee to investigate problems among contractors who were supplying the World War II effort.

“That committee conducted hundreds of field visits, and they would show up unannounced in many instances,” Townsend said.

More recently, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) drove to the Pentagon in 1983 and demanded access to ask questions about overspending after being stonewalled, he said, by Department of Defense officials.

The Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to mean that Congress has wide authority to conduct oversight to show up unannounced in order to secure accurate information, Townsend said.

National Guard members stand at post at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 10.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration is trying to hide the truth from the public. Last week, Padilla was shoved out of a news conference, forced to the ground and handcuffed after attempting to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“The Trump administration has done everything in their power but to provide transparency to the American people about their mission in Los Angeles,” he said during an impassioned floor speech Wednesday in which he cried recounting the ordeal.

In an interview Wednesday with Newsmax, McLaughlin accused Democratic lawmakers of using oversight as an excuse to stage publicity stunts.

“The Democrats are reeling,” she said. “They have no actual message and so they’re doing this to get more attention and to manufacture viral moments.”

On Tuesday, Gomez wore a suit jacket with his congressional lapel pin and carried his congressional ID card and business card in his hand — “so there would be no mistake” as to who he was. He said he was concerned that what happened to Padilla could also happen to him. He was denied access anyway.

Gomez said federal officials should be fined each time they deny oversight access to members of Congress. He said he and other members are also discussing whether to file a lawsuit to compel access.

“When you have an administration that is operating outside the bounds of the law, they’re basically saying, ‘What recourse do you have? Can you force us? You don’t have an army. We don’t need to listen to you,’” Gomez said. “Then you have to put some real teeth into it.”

Times staff writer Nathan Solis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

NEWARK, N.J. — Protesters outside a New Jersey federal immigration detention center locked arms and pushed against barricades as vehicles passed through gates, inmates inside relayed word that meals had been delayed, and Newark’s mayor cited reports of a possible uprising and escape as disorder broke out at the facility.

Much is still unclear about what unfolded at the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement opened a 1,000-bed facility this year as part of President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

Photos and video from outside the facility Thursday show protesters pushing against the gates amid word that detainees inside were upset about delayed meals.

Amy Torres, executive director of New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, said some officers sprayed pepper spray and tackled and dragged protesters away from the facility. She said some protesters had minor injuries, but no one was hit by the vehicles.

An attorney for someone detained at the facility told NJ.com people inside became violent after meals were delayed.

“It’s about the food, and some of the detainees were getting aggressive and it turned violent,” attorney Mustafa Cetin said. “Based on what he told me it was an outer wall, not very strong, and they were able to push it down.”

Attorneys with clients inside Delaney Hall have had calls canceled and have not been able to get inside the facility Friday, according to Araceti Argueta, a spokesperson for the American Friends Service Committee, a nonprofit that represents immigrants.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who’s been critical of Trump’s immigration crackdown, early Friday called for an end to this “chaos and not allow this operation to continue unchecked.”

“We are concerned about reports of what has transpired at Delaney Hall this evening, ranging from withholding food and poor treatment, to uprising and escaped detainees,” he said.

It’s unclear whether there have been any escapes.

In a statement issued Friday, American Friends Service Committee said people inside the facility reported getting small portions of food, with breakfast at 6 a.m., dinner at 10 p.m. and no lunch.

Messages seeking comment were left with ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and local police.

GEO Group, which owns the facility referred questions to ICE.

ICE housed more than 53,000 people nationwide at the end of May, its latest public figures, which is well above its budgeted capacity of about 41,000 and approaching all-time highs.

Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said late last month that ICE should make at least 3,000 arrests a day. That would mark a dramatic increase from Jan. 20 to May 19, when the agency made an average of 656 arrests a day.

Delaney Hall has been the cite of clashes this year between Democratic officials who say the facility needs more oversight and the administration and those who run the facility.

Baraka was arrested May 9, handcuffed and charged with trespassing. The charge was later dropped and Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver was later charged with assaulting federal officers stemming from a skirmish that happened outside the facility. She has denied the charges said she was doing her job as a lawmaker conducting oversight.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday told conservative judges in Texas they must offer a hearing to detained Venezuelans whom the Trump administration wants to send to a prison in El Salvador.

The justices, over two dissents, rebuked Texas judges and Trump’s lawyers for moving quickly and secretly on a weekend in mid-April to put these men on planes.

That led to a post-midnight order from the high court that told the administration it may “not remove any member of the putative class of detainees.” The administration had argued it had the authority to deport the men as “alien enemies” under a wartime law adopted in 1798.

On Friday, the court issued an unusual eight-page order to explain their earlier decision. In doing so, the justices faulted a federal judge in Lubbock, Texas, and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for taking no action to protect the due process rights of the detained men.

The order carries a clear message that the justices are troubled by the Trump administration’s pressure to fast-track deportations and by the unwillingness of some judges to protect the rights to due process of law.

On a Saturday in mid-March, Trump’s immigration officials sent three planeloads of detainees from Texas to the maximum-security prison in El Salvador before a federal judge in Washington could intervene. The prisoners included Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who had an immigration order that was supposed to protect him from being sent back to his native El Salvador.

Afterward, Trump officials said the detained men, including Abrego Garcia, could not be returned to this country. They did so even though the Supreme Court had said they had a duty to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

The same scenario was nearly repeated in mid-April, but from a different prison in Texas.

ACLU lawyers rushed to file an emergency appeal with U.S. District Judge James Hendrix. They said some of the detained men were on buses headed for the airport. They argued they deserved a hearing because many of them said they were not members of a crime gang.

The judge denied the appeals for all but two of the detained men.

The 5th Circuit Court upheld the judge’s lack of action and blamed the detainees, saying they gave the judge “only 42 minutes to act.”

The Supreme Court disagreed with both on Friday and overturned a decision of the 5th Circuit.

“A district court’s inaction in the face of extreme urgency and a high risk of serious, perhaps irreparable consequences” for the detained men, the justices wrote. “Here, the district court’s inaction — not for 42 minutes but for 14 hours and 28 minutes — had the practical effect of refusing an injunction to detainees facing an imminent threat of severe, irreparable harm.”

“The 5th Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings. Procedural due process rules are meant to protect” against “the mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or property,” the majority said. “We have long held that no person shall be removed from the United States without opportunity, at some time, to be heard.”

Justices Samuel A. Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented last month, and they did the same on Friday.

A judge approved a plan Friday to move more than 100 youths out of a troubled Los Angeles juvenile hall that has been the site of riots, drug overdoses and so-called “gladiator fights” in recent years.

Los Angeles County Superior Judge Miguel Espinoza signed off on the L.A. County Probation Department’s plan to relocate dozens of detainees from Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey, months after a state oversight body ordered the hall to be shut down.

The Downey facility, home to approximately 270 youths, most of whom are between the ages of 15 and 18, has been under fire since last December, when the Board of State and Community Corrections ordered it closed because of repeated failures to meet minimum staffing requirements. The probation department has faced a years-long struggle to get officers to show up to work in the chaotic halls.

But the probation department ignored the state board’s order to shut down. Since the body has no power to enforce its own orders and the California Attorney General’s Office declined to step in, Los Padrinos continued to operate in defiance for months. In that time frame, several youths suffered drug overdoses, a teen was stabbed in the eye and 30 probation officers were indicted for allegedly organizing or allowing brawls between youths.

Acting on a legal challenge brought by the L.A. County Public Defender’s Office, Espinoza last month ordered probation officials to begin shrinking the number of youths held at Los Padrinos so it could comply with state regulations.

Roughly three-quarters of the youths at Los Padrinos are awaiting court hearings connected to violent offenses including murder, attempted murder, assault, robbery, kidnapping and gang crimes, according to the probation department.

The probation department made its plan to de-populate Los Padrinos public earlier this month, promising to remove 103 detainees from the facility by June.

Under the department’s plan, youth who are awaiting trial on cases that could land them in the county’s Secure Youth Treatment Facility will be moved to Barry J. Nidorf Hall in Sylmar. Others will be moved out of Los Padrinos and into the lower-security camps, where some juvenile justice advocates say teens perform much better and are far less likely to act violent.

“This plan reflects our continued commitment to balancing public safety, legal compliance, and the rehabilitative needs of the young people in our care,” the department said in a statement. “It is key to note that the court denied an indiscriminate mass release of youth, and that Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall will not be fully depopulated or closed.”

Espinoza originally weighed shutting down the facility last year when the public defender’s office questioned the legality of its continued operation in defiance of the BSCC. On Friday, he declined to adopt a plan from the Probation Oversight Commission that could have resulted in the release of some youths through a review process.

Some members of the oversight body expressed frustration that Espinoza’s order won’t solve the larger issues that have plagued the probation department for years. Milinda Kakani, a POC board member and the director of youth justice for the Children’s Defense Fund, also noted the moves might cause some youths to backslide by returning them to Nidorf Hall after they had already graduated from the prison-like SYTF, which some derisively refer to as “The Compound.”

“I imagine it’s deeply damaging to a young person to go back to the facility they had worked so hard to get out of,” Kakani said.

Espinoza warned he could take further action if the department’s plan does not bring it into compliance with state regulations. It was not clear when the next BSCC inspection of Los Padrinos would take place and a spokeswoman for the oversight body did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The probation department must provide Espinoza with an update on conditions at Los Padrinos by July.

A Los Angeles construction worker from Vietnam was among 13 immigrants roused by guards in full combat gear around 2:30 a.m. one day last week in a Texas detention facility, shackled, forced onto a bus and told they would be deported to Libya, two of the detainees’ lawyers said.

“It was very aggressive. They weren’t allowed to do anything,” said Tin Thanh Nguyen, an attorney for the Los Angeles man, whom he did not identify for fear of retaliation.

Libya, the politically unstable country in North Africa, is beset by “terrorism, unexploded landmines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict,” according to the U.S. State Department. Human rights groups have documented inhumane conditions at detention facilities and migrant camps, including torture, forced labor and rape.

The construction worker, who has a criminal conviction on his record, had lived in the U.S. for decades and has a wife and teenage daughter. He was arrested after appearing at an annual immigration check-in at a Los Angeles office two months ago and then shuffled around to various detention facilities before arriving at the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall.

In the early morning hours of May 7, he was placed on the bus from the detention facility south to what was likely Lackland Air Force Base. From there, he and the rest of the group sat for hours on the tarmac in front of a military plane in the predawn dark, unsure what was going to happen. The men hailed from Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mali, Burundi, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico and the Philippines, the attorneys said. None were from Libya.

“My client and the other men on the bus were silent,” Nguyen said in court files. “My client was extremely scared.”

The plane hatch was open. Military personnel bustled in and out, appearing to bring in supplies and fuel the plane. Photographers positioned themselves in front of the military aircraft.

“Suddenly the bus starts moving and heading back to the detention facility,” said Johnny Sinodis, an attorney for another detainee, a Filipino who grew up and went to college in the United States and also had a criminal conviction.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts had issued a warning to the administration to halt any immediate removal to Libya or any other third country, as it would violate a previous court order that officials must provide detainees with due process and notice in their own language. Lawyers had scrambled to get the order after media reports confirmed what their clients had told them: Removals to Libya appeared imminent.

Sinodis said his client and others were returned to the detention unit and placed in solitary confinement for 24 hours.

In his declaration, he said his client spoke to a Mexican and a Bolivian national who were in the group. Each had been told that their home countries would accept them, but the officials still said they were going to send them to Libya.

It’s been a week since the incident, and the lawyers said they are still fighting to stop their clients deportations to a third country.

The Trump administration deported hundreds of mostly Venezuelan men to a prison in El Salvador, invoking a wartime law to speedily remove accused gang members. Their deportation drew immediate challenges and became the most contentious piece of the immigration crackdown. Officials have also sent people to Panama who were not from that country.

This month, the foreign minister of Rwanda said in a televison interview it was in talks with U.S. officials to take in deported migrants.

It’s unclear how Libya came to be a possible destination for the immigrants. Two governments claim power in the nation. The Tripoli-based Government of National Unity has denied any deal with the Trump administration. The Government of National Stability, based in Benghazi, also rejected reports that it would take deportees.

The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that it had information that at least 100 Venezuelans held in the Salvadoran megaprison weren’t told they were going to be deported to a third country, had no access to a lawyer and were unable to challenge the removal.

“This situation raises serious concerns regarding a wide array of rights that are fundamental to both U.S. and international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement. “The manner in which some of the individuals were detained and deported — including the use of shackles on them — as well as the demeaning rhetoric used against migrants, has also been profoundly disturbing.”

Sinodis said his client had already been in custody for months and been told that he would be deported to the Philippines in late April. But that month, he was transferred from the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., to Texas. An officer in Tacoma told him the decision to move him there came from “headquarters,” according to court documents.

On May 5, he was scheduled to be interviewed by two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Texas. He expected to learn of his deportation date. Instead, they handed him a one-page document that said he would be deported to Libya. He was shocked, Sinodis said.

The man asked the officers whether there was anything he or his attorney could do to avoid this. They said no.

Nguyen said his client, who doesn’t speak English fluently, had a similar experience on the same day. The officers handed him a document in English that they said would allow him to be free in Libya. He doesn’t even know where Libya is and refused to sign the document. The officers told him he would be deported no matter what he did.

The next day, Sinodis said, his client’s commissary and phone accounts were zeroed out.

Sinodis finally reached an officer at the detention center who told him, “That’s crazy,” when asked about Libya. His client must have misheard, he said. But his client, who grew up on the West Coast, speaks fluent English.

Then on May 7, as things unfolded, the attorney reached another officer at the facility, who said he had no information that the man was going to Libya, and referred him back to an officer in Tacoma. A supervisor downplayed the situation.

“I can assure you this is not an emergency because the emergency does not exist,” the supervisor told him, according to court documents.

Shortly after noon that day, a detention center officer who identified himself as Garza called and told him he was looking into it, but so far had “no explanation” for why his client was told this, but he also couldn’t guarantee it didn’t happen.

Less than an hour later, his client called to tell him that he had been taken to an air base. He said when he was pulled out of his cell in the early morning, he saw the same two officers that interviewed him and asked him to sign the removal papers.

“He asks the officers, ‘Are we still going to Libya?” Sinodis said. “They said yes.”