Thread: Protestors decry ‘unjust’ treatment at Adelanto detention facility

Protestors decry ‘unjust’ treatment at Adelanto detention facility
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San Bernardino County Sheriff deputies push protesters off the grounds of the Adelanto Detention Facility East as
By Jim Steinberg, The Sun
and Ryan Hagen, The Sun
POSTED: 11/25/13, 12:00 PM PST | UPDATED: 13 HRS AGO



More than 100 protesters — including three who locked themselves to the gates — took part in a peaceful rally Monday at the privately owned Adelanto Detention Facility. The protesters, with the Inland Empire Immigrant Coalition, demanded the release of three prisoners on ICE holds who they say shouldn’t be incarcerated because their infractions were minor, and because they’ve been in prison too long.photos by will lester — staff photographer

ADELANTO >> Calling for the shutdown of the immigration department and joined by the chants of more than 100 protestors, three women chained themselves to a fence on the outside of a detention center Monday to demand the release of three men inside, then were arrested themselves.

“Nobody is listening to us,” said Mitzie Perez, 22, of politicians extending all the way up to the White House.

“Maybe this will get their attention,” she said, sitting outside the prison gate, locked to it with a bicycle lock around her neck.

Perez, along with Dianey Murillo and Lizeth Montiel, put the locks around their own necks and pinned themselves for about three hours to the fence outside the Adelanto Detention Facility East, a private High Desert facility.

They called for the release of Carlos A. Hidalgo of Azusa; Santos Maltez, an Echo Park father of four; and Artyom Karapetyan, an Armenian businessman, said Alessandro Negrete, statewide coordinator for California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, which organized the protest outside of the facility, where the men were being held because of their immigration status, according to organizers.

“We don’t believe in ‘high-priority’ or ‘low priority’ but according to the (Obama) administration’s definition these particular cases are low-priority. And they’ve been detained unjustly,” Negrete said.

A spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it would take “some time” to research why the three men that the protestors wanted released were being held at the facility.

Officials said all such federal facilities, including Adelanto’s, undergo “rigorous, regular inspections to ensure the welfare of those housed there.” And according to an ICE fact sheet from a spokeswoman, most detainees at the Adelanto facility have prior criminal convictions, “including a significant number whose criminal histories are serious enough that ICE is required by law to hold them while their immigration cases are pending.”

But that didn’t stop those on Monday calling for the release of at least three of those detainees, and even be arrested for it.

Officials from the GEO Group, which owns the prison, asked the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department to remove the tresspassers from their property.

The locks on the three women were ultimately cut by firefighters, without injury to the women, and the three protesters were arrested on trespassing and vandalism charges, according to a Sheriff’s department statement.

As of late Monday afternoon, the trio were being held in the Sheriff’s West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga.

Before their arrests, the three women vowed to remain locked, by the neck, to the gate until the three undocumented male prisoners were released.

More than 50 others also protested outside the facility, chanting “shut down ICE” and “this is what democracy looks like.”

Protestors asked that, by the holidays, authorities release the three, put a moratorium on deportations, grant “deferred action” for all and stop what they call the inhumane treatment of detainees.

San Bernardino Sheriff’s deputies said in English and Spanish that if the protesters did not disperse they faced arrest for unlawful assembly, then moved the protesters off prison property and onto public land across from the facility where it is allowed.

A line of helmeted deputies holding batons advanced on the protestor group.

Behind them were two officers wearing military green uniforms; one holding a tear-gas grenade launcher, which was never used.

There was no physical contact between deputies and the protestors.

From their newly positioned point of protest — across the street from the privately owned prison — one of the protestors shouted to deputies: “you are guarding a concentration camp.”

All three arrested women are students at area community colleges.

Perez, a Riverside Community College student who said she is an undocumented resident from Guatemala, said her younger cousin, a day laborer, was arrested and sent back to that troubled Central American country, where he is hiding from gangs.

Perez said her parents moved the family to the United States to escape the repressive government and criminal elements.

The protest comes just after the release of a highly critical report by the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group Detention Watch Network, alleging abuse at the center — which is separate from the county-operated Adelanto Detention Center — and nine other institutions where immigrants whose citizenship status is in question have been detained by U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement.

As they disbanded, the protesters vowed to return to the Adelanto facility another time.

http://www.sbsun.com/general-news/20...ntion-facility

If they let out all the prisoners loose in Victorville and Adelanto they would blend right in ..

RELATED

http://www.alipac.us/f12/groups-prot...center-292960/

It is a detention center for people that have broken our laws, even if they refuse to recognize the laws they have broken, not a resort. Instead of being detained, they should be immediately deported. It would stop all of this nonsense by these show boat foreign nationals.

Three Adelanto prisoners targeted for release have criminal records

By Jim Steinberg, The Sun
POSTED: 11/30/13, 5:49 PM PST |

ADELANTO >> Three prisoners with significant criminal records were the ones targeted for immediate release during an immigration rights protest, according to recently obtained information from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

None of the three was released from custody and one of the three is no longer at the Adelanto Detention Facility East, a privately run facility that houses prisoners for ICE, authorities said.

Three area community college women students were arrested at Monday’s protest after they used bicycle locks to pin themselves to an outside gate, vowing to stay that way until the three men were released.

Sheriff’s deputies cleared about 100 other protesters from the prison site Monday at the request of prison owner Geo Group. The three women were the only ones arrested.

Artyom Karapetyan, one of the three men the protesters were seeking to have released before Thanksgiving, had been transferred to the jurisdiction of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in August due to an outstanding warrant and is still housing him, wrote Virginia Kice, an ICE spokeswoman, in an email.

“Everyone makes mistakes. These men deserve a second chance,” said Luis Nolasco, a community organizer for the Inland Empire Chapter of the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, one of the groups that staged the protest.

“These men have all been through rehabilitation,” Nolasco said.
According to ICE, Karapetyan’s criminal history includes two felony convictions in 2011, one for burglary and one for drug violations.

San Bernardino County jail records show Karapetyan had been convicted of assaulting a correctional officer, also a felony, this year.

“Karapetyan was originally ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2012. He has appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and that appeal remains pending at this time,” Kice wrote.

Alessandro Negrete, another leader of the Inland Empire immigrant youth alliance, said that after Karapetyan has served his time in jail, he will be sent back to the Adelanto prison.

Carlos Hidalgo, one of the other two men targeted by the protest, came into ICE custody in July 2012 after his release from the Los Angeles County Jail. He was then released from ICE custody under an “Intensive Supervision Appearance Program,” but he failed to comply with the rules and was ordered deported in absentia in December 2012.

Hidalgo came to the ICE facility again early this year after he was re-incarcerated in the Los Angeles County Jail, Kice said. He remains in custody following the immigration court’s decision to reopen his case.

Hidalgo has two prior convictions for driving under the influence as well as two prior convictions for probation violations, Kice wrote.

The third man, Santos Maltez, was taken into custody in March by officers assigned to the ICE Los Angeles Fugitive Operations Team based upon a lead from the Megan’s Law website. Database checks indicate Maltez was convicted of a felony sex offense in 2010. He remains in ICE custody while the agency makes arrangements to carry out the immigration court’s 2012 deportation order, Kice said.

http://www.sbsun.com/social-affairs/...iminal-records

BY DAVID OLSON
STAFF WRITER
December 02, 2013; 05:59 PM
pe.com

All three men who immigrant-rights groups are campaigning to have released from the Adelanto immigrant-detention center have felony criminal records, authorities said.

In a Nov. 25 protest outside the center and during a subsequent lobbying campaign to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, activists from several groups have been asking for the release of Carlos Hidalgo, Artyom Karapetyan and Jose Santos Maltez, so the men can be with their families.

Karapetyan is a legal permanent resident of the United States, and Hidalgo and Maltez are undocumented immigrants, said Johnathan Perez, a statewide coordinator for the Immigrant Youth Coalition, one of the organizations involved in the rally.

The men were convicted of offenses that include burglary, grand theft, possession of a controlled substance and driving under the influence.

Anti-illegal-immigration activists such as Don Rosenberg are countering with their own campaign to ICE calling for the men’s deportation.

“They’re serious criminals,” said Rosenberg, whose son was struck and killed in San Francisco by a drunken driver who later was deported for immigration violations. “They’ve committed serious crimes and don’t belong in this country. They’re a danger to society.”

Rosenberg, of Westlake Village, said he was irked by protesters’ focus on the rights of immigrants convicted of serious crimes.

Another convicted criminal at Adelanto whose case he has been following closely is that of Juan Tzun, who pleaded guilty in March to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence and driving without a license after a 2012 collision that killed Riverside County sheriff’s dispatcher Dominic Durden, he said. Tzun, who also has two driving-under-the-influence convictions, is in the country illegally and also was convicted of grand theft and probation violations.

Perez said the men served time for mistakes they made and should be allowed to return to their families. Deporting Hidalgo, Karapetyan and Maltez would leave their children — all U.S. citizens — without their father, he said.

“They’re not just punishing them,” Perez said of the federal government. “They’re punishing the entire family.”

Karapetyan is a native of Armenia; Hidalgo is from Mexico; and Maltez is Nicaraguan, Perez said.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said in an email that “the vast majority of individuals detained at the (Adelanto) facility have prior criminal convictions. The three subjects the demonstrators cited are certainly representative.”

Federal law requires ICE to keep certain immigrants in custody, including those guilty of serious felonies, she said.

Kice confirmed that Hidalgo and Maltez are in Adelanto. But she said Karapetyan was released to the custody of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department in August because of an outstanding criminal warrant.

Karapetyan is in West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga following a conviction of felony battery against a custodial officer, sheriff’s department records show.

Before Hidalgo was convicted of felony grand theft in April 2013, he was eligible in 2012 for an ICE program in which immigrants in deportation proceedings can live with their families, Kice said. Between 2001 and 2011, Hidalgo was convicted of two DUI offenses, two probation violations and failure to pay a vehicle fine. Hidalgo was taken out of the program after he stopped reporting his whereabouts to ICE and was ordered deported in absentia, Kice said.

http://www.pe.com/local-news/local-n...al-records.ece

December 3, 2013 5:08PM ET
aljazerra America

A look at life inside the state-of-the-art detention facility for immigrant detainees in Adelanto, California


A guard escorts an immigrant detainee at the Adelanto Detention Facility, Nov. 15, 2013. The facility was retro-fitted in 2011 to house detained undocumented immigrants. John Moore/Getty Images


A detainee makes a call from his segregation cell. John Moore/Getty Images


Guards prepare to escort an detainee from his segregation cell back into the general population. John Moore/Getty Images


A guard serves lunch to an immigrant detainee in a segregation cell. John Moore/Getty Images


An immigrant detainee holds his daughter during a family visit. John Moore/Getty Images


The facility can provide medical and dental care. John Moore/Getty Images


Two detainees play handball inside the facility. John Moore/Getty Images


These detaines are about to be released. John Moore/Getty Images


On average, detainees stay at Adelanto for 29 days. John Moore/Getty Images

http://america.aljazeera.com/multime...ionprison.html