Detainees inside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center’s Desert View Annex are on a hunger strike to raise awareness of the conditions inside the facility.
A press conference to announce the hunger strike was held on Monday, May 20, by the Defend Migrants Alliance in Southern California, alongside several other community organizations, including the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition.
Representatives from Defend Migrants Alliance said the purpose of going public with the action was to amplify the urgent demands of the 20 people on strike, who say they want basic human rights and to be treated with dignity inside the facility.
Bertie Hernandez was detained at the center in 2019 during Donald Trump’s first administration. Now, they are a part of the legal team that defends immigrant children through the Shutdown Adelanto Coalition. They say that conditions have not changed since they were detained at the Adelanto facility. In fact, they say conditions have worsened.
“There is a lack of hygiene products, the food is rotten, there is medical neglect, and the abuse is day-to-day in the detention center,” Hernandez added in Spanish at the conference. “I experienced this directly. I was kept in a human cage.”
They say California should set the example for other states to follow.
However, when Rep. Jay Obernolte visited the center in June 2025 following reports of callous conditions, he found detainees treated “as humanely as possible,” and took to social media to “debunk terrible allegations in the press about detainees being mistreated inside the facility.”
Personal testimony
Other speakers included family members of people inside Desert View Annex, a survivor of the neighboring Adelanto facility, the brother of a formerly detained person, and a lawyer who serves several people inside.
One such speaker was Eva, the wife of a detainee on hunger strike who has been held in Adelanto for seven months. Eva requested her last name not be used for safety concerns.
During the press conference, she said it’s been a horrible experience throughout. When her husband got detained, he was on his way to his landscaping job early one Saturday morning. Eva says she suffers from depression and that her husband was her anchor.
Her spouse was in the process of getting therapy on a broken finger at the time he was picked up. According to Eva, an infection resulted in the loss of mobility from his finger to his elbow while detained, and he eventually cut off his own finger to try to mitigate some pain. His requests for medical attention are ignored, she alleged.
She directly addressed the detention officers and asked that they acknowledge what the detainees are going through. They’re afraid, they’re intimidated, they’re yelled at, yet they’re willing to make themselves heard by taking action with the strike.
The strikers’ demands
The strikers have seven core demands, which the Defend Migrants Alliance summarized as:
Donate to support the Detained Immigrant Bond Fund, and assist the release of migrants from detention at https://www.cluejustice.org/detained-immigrant-bond-fund.
What is the Desert View Annex?
The Desert View Annex is an adjacent detention unit within the same large ICE complex as the Adelanto ICE Processing Center. Together, the two units form the largest ICE detention complex in California, with a combined capacity of about 2,690 beds operated by GEO Group under a multi‑million‑dollar ICE contract.
The Processing Center is the main facility, and the Desert View Annex is a satellite unit that supplements its capacity. Previous reports have identified the Adelanto processing center among the top 10 in the U.S. for solitary confinement.
McKenna Mobley is a reporter for the Daily Press. She can be reached at mmobley@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Adelanto ICE center detainees begin hunger strike for better conditions
Reporting by McKenna Mobley, Victorville Daily Press / Victorville Daily Press
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