DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (KABC) — After months of denials, members of Congress gained access Monday to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in downtown Los Angeles where people in detention have reported lack of food, water and beds.<\/p>\n
Representatives accused the facility of being ‘sanitized’ before they got there after finding it nearly empty.<\/p>\n
“On this visit inside, two people were there right now. So when I said they invited us in when there was nobody there, right? So they knew what they were doing,” said Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
California representatives have repeatedly tried to conduct oversight at the ICE facility known as B-18.<\/p>\n
They reference a federal law that gives them oversight to show up at any immigration detention facility without an appointment.<\/p>\n
In June, however, the Department of Homeland Security quietly updated the policy for members of Congress<\/a> who want to visit ICE facilities, prompting outrage from some members<\/a>.<\/p>\n The new guidance asks members to give 72 hours of notice by sending an email alerting them of their visit, which the agency says fall out of the detention center “purview.”<\/p>\n Congressional representatives were finally allowed into the ICE facility on Monday during a scheduled visit.<\/p>\n Rep. Judy Chu, D-Monterey Park, said that inside the facility there are “nine cells and these are just cold, concrete floors.”<\/p>\n Members of Congress and journalists have heard reports of inhumane, overcrowded conditions in the facility.<\/p>\n People in custody there report a lack of access to food and water, among other things.<\/p>\n In some cases, detentions have lasted more than a week.<\/p>\n “I asked the ICE agents about this and they said, oh, well, there are no beds because they’re only here for at most 72 hours. And they said we feed them three meals a day,” said Rep. Chu.<\/p>\n Some have described having to sleep standing due to the overcrowding, but elected officials say that what they saw Monday was a far cry from those reports.<\/p>\n “There is quite a bit of contrast. I would say almost, it’s one is saying black and the other is saying white. It’s that different of a description of what’s going on,” added Rep. Chu about the conditions inside the ICE facility.<\/p>\n They also said they were unable to speak with any of the individuals who were detained.<\/p>\n “Your Congressman can’t talk for you or get information about you until you sign the form. And your spouse or next of kin can’t sign the form for you,” said Rep. Brad Shermand. “So your member of Congress can’t talk to you unless we show you the form and we may or may not do that.”<\/p>\n Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, said, “In addition to coming to a place like this, where we know they’ll sanitize it before we get here, we have to keep going because we have to get the message out.”<\/p>\n Eyewitness News reached out to DHS in June to find out how many people were being held at the facility and on average for how long, but has not received a response.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2025 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES (KABC) — After months of denials, members of Congress gained access Monday to a U.S.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":144889,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[85895,1582,276,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-144888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-85895","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115026772945593147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}