The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released a report a couple days ago that says the immigrant prisoners being held in Orange County, California’s Theo Lacy jail were being served rancid lunch meats, forced into using dirty showers, and given excessive solitary confinement treatments.
As of Wednesday, there were 528 immigrants detained at Theo Lacy, according to immigration officials. The jail, which can house about 3,000 other male inmates in separate units, is run by the Orange County Sheriff’s Dept.
During a surprise visit to the jail in November, federal officials found unsafe food handling and unsanitary living conditions in the jail’s immigration units, including moldy bathroom stalls and trash-strewn cells.
The detainees told inspectors that the meat they received to eat was frequently so gross they would wash their food before eating. Detainees receive the same food that the prison population does just so you don’t think that Orange County’s Theo Lacy jail is discriminating in how terrible it treats everybody locked inside.
Inspectors found high-risk detainees in the least restrictive barracks, while medium- to low-risk detainees were kept in more restrictive modules. The report said this housing practice violates ICE standards, which bar mingling of high- and low-risk detainees.
Sheriff’s Department officials were faulted for disciplining detainees by putting them in solitary cells with no access to visitors, recreation or group religious services. Those in solitary cells were kept there for up to 30 days, during which they could access one book and were released only briefly every other day for showers.
While the Orange County Sheriff’s office has said that the issues have been addressed, the fact that our federal government is trying to expand its relationship with facilities like this goes to show the kind of dwindling oversight we can expect going forward.