SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — An internal government watchdog that conducted surprise inspections last summer at four short-term immigration holding facilities in the San Diego area found sanitation and other standards weren’t always met.
“A lot of the findings tracked with what my clients have reported about their journeys through these facilities,” said Tracy Crowley, managing attorney of the San Diego office of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General made the surprise visits to the holding sites in San Diego, Chula Vista, Otay Mesa, and San Ysidro last August.
The watchdog found areas of the Chula Vista Border Patrol Station failed to meet cleanliness and sanitation standards and took photos of dirty holding cells, toilets, and bunk beds.
“If you had shown me those pictures with no context, I would've thought I was in a third-world country, you know, surely not the United States of America,” said Crowley.
Team 10 has spoken to several detainees this year who’ve spent days in temporary holding facilities they described as cold and dirty.
“The sleeping conditions are disgusting,” Canadian woman Jasmine Mooney told Team 10 in an interview while she was detained in March.
CBP officers detained the entrepreneur at the San Ysidro Port of Entry after she tried to get a visa at the immigration office.
Mooney, who previously had a TN visa revoked, said she spent a week in a cell at the border before being arrested by ICE, who took her to the Otay Mesa Detention Center and later transferred her to Arizona.
“They put me in a cell, in a tiny cell with six other women with a mat on the floor, bright fluorescent light, no blankets, no pillow, they gave me foil to wrap around my body like a dead body.”
German citizen Lucas Sielaff also spent two days in a holding cell at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in February after trying to enter from Mexico with his fiancée, who is an American citizen.
“It was awful. You’re in jail, and you have to wait, and you don’t know when you can get out,” Sielaff said in an interview from Germany after he was deported.
Sielaff, who spent a total of 16 days in detention, said a CBP officer thought he was violating the terms and conditions of his visa.
“They accused me (of living) in America instead of visiting, but there was no proof that I overstayed anything,” he said.
Sielaff and Mooney, who spent 12 days in ICE custody, were not allowed to simply turn around to Mexico, which shocked immigration attorneys. Both were eventually escorted to the airport and deported on commercial flights home.
Detainee money goes missing
According to the Inspector General, more than half the detainees at a temporary migrant processing facility in Otay Mesa were held for more than three days in violation of government policy.
The internal watchdog also found that CBP did not comply with standards for processing, documenting, and storing detainees’ personal property.
“None of the four facilities properly itemized and documented one or more forms of personal property, including currency, credit cards, jewelry, cellphones, and/or identity documents.”
The Inspector General said valuables were kept in an “open-air caged area” and took photos of cash stored in a safe with no record of who it belonged to. The OIG noted there were "allegations of money missing from a detainee's backpack."
“I've had clients cross recently held in these facilities and their passport goes missing, and that's a critical piece of evidence for their asylum case,” Crowley said.
The internal watchdog made four recommendations for improvements and concluded the agencies involved have made some improvements.
Team 10 asked CBP for comment on the findings, but didn’t get a response.
