Migrants decry conditions at detention site

Detainees say they're denied medication, contact with family at Mojave Desert center.

- BY RACHEL URANGA

GINA FERAZZI Los Angeles Times SAM Hardman of Tehachapi holds a sign during the Pledge of Allegiance at a California City council meeting.

Men sleep in locked cells every night on bunk beds with thin cotton blankets.

They walk in straight lines with hands behind their back to the razor wire-enclosed "yard." Guards carrying handcuffs pat them down. There are head counts, lockdowns and “segregation” units.

California's newest and largest immigration detention center looks, sounds and feels a lot like a prison. Some say it's worse.

Behind the walls of California City Detention Facility, more than a hundred men staged hunger strikes during several days this month and refused to go back to their cells, protesting poor conditions. Men with diabetes or psychiatric conditions who arrived late last month complained they couldn't get their medication. Others, who had never committed crimes or been in jails, found themselves locked behind metal doors in cold cells for most of the day.

Toilets backed up and sinks clogged for days. Some who talked back were placed in handcuffs and punished with isolation. Advocates say one hunger striker was taken out on a stretcher after coughing up blood the night before.

"They say it is a detention center. It is a prison with a name change," said an asylum seeker who arrived weeks earlier from Golden State Annex in McFarland. The man, who asked to be identified as H.S., said he can't sleep at night in the two-man cell where detainees say air constantly blows through a vent. He has no medication for an injury that he alerted them about. He misses his wife and has no idea what will happen to him.

"I've never been in prison. It's very hard and day by day, it's getting worse," he said. "Every day is like one year."