Groups challenge conditions at California migrant detention center

Roll Call -  Civil rights groups filed a lawsuit over conditions at the largest immigration detention center in California, as migrant advocates and Democratic members of Congress have pressed for more oversight of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement expansion.

The complaint in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, filed Wednesday, focuses on detainees at the California City Detention Facility, a previously shuttered state prison in the Mojave Desert that the U.S. has repurposed as an ICE detention facility.

The ACLU and other groups describe a range of inhospitable conditions at the facility that they call unconstitutional, including a lack of access to medical care, insufficient accommodations for people with disabilities and infringement upon religious exercise of detainees.

“Conditions at California City Detention Facility are dire,” the complaint states. “The facility is decrepit. Sewage bubbles up from the shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of the cells. People are locked in concrete cells the size of a parking space for hours on end, and officers threaten them with violence and solitary confinement. Food is paltry and people go hungry.”