Detainees launch hunger strike over conditions at GEO Group-run Adelanto ICE complex

On May 19, 2026, at least 20 men held at the Desert View Annex launched a hunger strike, refusing meals while also boycotting commissary accounts and limiting phone calls to pressure their custodians. The Desert View Annex is one of three immigration detention facilities in the Adelanto complex in San Bernardino County, California — the state's largest immigration detention site, holding more than 2,000 people — operated by the private prison company GEO Group under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In a statement read at an online press conference organized by immigrant-rights groups, the strikers called the strike "the only way we have to raise our voice." Their demands include due process and bond reform, timely medical and mental-health care, a diet that sustains basic health, clean water and functioning facilities, accountability for detainee deaths, and the ability to organize and communicate with advocates without retaliation. Advocacy groups separately reported a hunger strike at the Adelanto Processing Facility West beginning around May 15.

The event recorded here is the pattern of inhumane custodial conditions the strike protests, not the protest itself. Detainees and their attorneys describe medical appointments that take weeks or months to approve and then last about a minute, often ending with the prescription of Tylenol, Advil, or a salt packet; decreasing food portions as commissary prices rise; mold, unsafe drinking water, and overcrowding; and the use of solitary confinement to retaliate against those who speak out about conditions. A California Department of Justice report, grounded in interviews with detainees across the state, found that four people died at the Adelanto facility between September 2025 and March 2026, and Cal DOJ inspectors documented water-quality failures; California Attorney General Rob Bonta has called the detention center "inhumane." The Adelanto complex has long drawn scrutiny, including over its high use of solitary confinement, and a coalition of immigrant-rights groups filed a federal lawsuit earlier in 2026 seeking to compel improvements in conditions there.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security denied that any hunger strike is occurring. A department spokesperson told LAist, "There is no hunger strike at Adelanto," and said ICE provides three meals a day, an adequate supply of drinking water, and comprehensive medical care from the moment a person enters custody; GEO Group referred questions to the federal government. That denial stands against the accounts of detainees, their attorneys, family members, and advocacy groups. Both the documented conditions and the government's contested response are recorded here so that the dispute reaches editorial review and continued reporting rather than being resolved in this entry.

Updates

2026-07-16 — Federal judge orders improved water, medical care access at Adelanto [5, 6]

U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes granted a preliminary injunction ordering ICE to immediately provide detainees at the Adelanto complex with 24-hour access to clean potable drinking water and improved medical care, finding detainees were likely to succeed on claims that conditions violated their Fifth Amendment rights.