After the court’s decision, Democratic lawmakers held a conference call at the ICE facility in Los Angeles
U.S. Representatives Norma Torres and Jimmy Gomez held a press conference on the inspection of an ICE facility in downtown Los Angeles on Thursday amid reports of an undisclosed facility holding immigrant families.
The visit comes three days after a federal court judge granted lawmakers and others a temporary restraining order, preventing the Trump administration and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from implementing a policy that requires members of Congress to give a week’s notice before visiting immigration detention facilities.
Torres (D-Pomona) and Gomez (D-Los Angeles) and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit last year challenging the DHS policy. They won the case in December but are challenging it again after Noem “secretly reinstated” the seven-day notice requirement.
Congress has stipulated in annual budget packages beginning in 2020 that federal funds cannot be used to prevent a member of Congress “from entering, for the purpose of supervision, any facility operated by or belonging to the Department of Homeland Security used to detain or house aliens.”
The 14-day restraining order allowed Gomez access for the first time to see conditions at the facility. Since June, when immigration enforcement intensified in Los Angeles, he has tried to visit there several times but has been denied access.
Gomez, whose district includes the city, said he was visiting the facility to investigate reports that immigrant families and children and U.S. citizens are being held at the previously undisclosed facility known as “B-17.”
Most of the immigrants arrested by federal immigration agents are usually detained and booked into the LA facility’s basement known as B-18. The detention center has become the center of legal proceedings in the past year due to reports of brutal conditions and lack of access to lawyers. Some immigrants said they have been held at the center for weeks.
As Gomez waited to enter Thursday, she was carrying a pink jacket, a black backpack containing medication for a pregnant woman that may have been stored at the facility, and a copy of the restraining order. Torres was inside when he arrived.
When he came out an hour later, he and Torres explained what they saw to reporters.
There were cells that could hold up to 244 people.
“There was one woman in one tank, two gentlemen in the other tank,” he said. “Everything else was empty.” A pregnant woman and a family of three planned to visit in their absence.
Gomez said that while he was walking in the underground parking lot, he saw a separate locked area where six men and a woman were being held.
He said he was then shown a B-17.
“It was like a DMV waiting room, small and with windows when you walk in,” he said. “But there was no one.”
The agent told him that there were at least 15 people held in the B-18, although Gomez said that number appeared to be small.
Torres and Gomez said the conditions were not as cold as has been reported, but they suspect it was related to the power outage they recently experienced. They were concerned about the length of time people were kept at the facility and that people were not being medically examined.
“It’s always shocking when no one is there because you see [immigration raids],” said Gomez.
