California Sens. Padilla, Schiff tour ICE detention center amid concerns over detainee treatment

CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. (KABC) -- California's 2 U.S. senators visited an ICE detention halfway Tuesday arsenic questions equine implicit however detainees are being treated pursuing caller migration raids crossed the state.

Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla said they toured the California City Detention Facility successful effect to increasing reports of inadequate conditions wrong U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.

Their sojourn comes during intensified national migration operations nationwide, which ICE says person pushed the fig of radical successful national custody to much than 70,000.

"When you locomotion wrong these walls, you acquisition a antithetic trauma," Schiff said during the visit. "You get to spot what happens to folks who are apprehended by ICE."

Padilla echoed concerns astir the situation wrong the privately tally facility.

"What are the conditions like? They look a batch much similar a situation than a dormitory benignant setting," helium said. "There is separation based connected what ICE volition find level of risk."

Schiff said immoderate detainees they spoke with were taken into custody portion attending required migration appointments.

"Many of them that we spoke with were picked up astatine their migration appointments, truthful they were doing what they were expected to do, to go citizens oregon found a lawful presence," helium said.

Last month, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a missive to the Department of Homeland Security outlining what his bureau described arsenic troubling conditions astatine the facility.

According to Bonta, detainees whitethorn not beryllium receiving capable aesculapian care, deficiency due covering oregon blankets to enactment warm, and are being housed successful unsanitary areas.

Those concerns are astatine the halfway of a national suit filed successful November by 7 detainees alleging that the conditions interruption basal standards of humane treatment.

"If the medication is existent to their word, the colonisation present is lone going to grow," Padilla said. "So the request to code nutrition, aesculapian attention, intelligence wellness care, each the supra is lone going to grow."

The Justice Department and ICE person not responded to requests for remark regarding the senators' sojourn oregon the allegations astir conditions astatine the California City facility.