Four local congress members toured the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles on Monday and claimed they got a sanitized tour of the conditions inside.
Congress members Brad Sherman, Judy Chu, Maxine Waters, and Jimmy Gomez told reporters they played by the rules of the Department of Homeland Security and gave at least seven days’ notice of their intent to tour the downtown detention facilities.
“It’s like somebody broke into a building, committed a crime, but then cleaned it up and put it all back into place,” Congressman Jimmy Gomez said. “There’s only two people and nine holding cells. There’s maybe another 10 to 12 that were being processed as we were leaving, so of course that’s what we were going to see.”
Congresswoman Judy Chu said she was “deeply disturbed” by what she saw.
“All they had were two toilets, but even to get a drink of water, you have to knock on the window to get a drink of water,” she said.
Congressman Brad Sherman expressed his frustration with not just the conditions inside the center, but also with giving DHS notice.
“They have no beds,” he said. “ You sleep on hard concrete. Members of Congress should be able to view that facility with zero notice, 24/7. We wrote it in the law many years ago, and yet they required 7 days’ advance notice.”
Gomez said he thinks the display inside” shows something about this administration.
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“They don’t want to be held accountable to the rule of law, accountable to the public or to the press,” he said. They want to just show what they want everybody to see.
They say the tour left them with more questions than answers.
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