Immigrant detainees contribute to ‘chaos’ at overcrowded, understaffed Victorville prison, union says

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sent immigration detainees to the Federal Correctional Complex in Victorville in early June, John Kostelnik was told they wouldn’t be there long.

“We get 1,000 detainees, and I said, ‘Do we get more staff?’ ” said Kostelnik, president of Local 3969 of the American Federation of Government Employees. “They said, ‘No, it’s only for 120 days.’ “

In fact, the agreement between ICE and the Bureau of Prisons to house the detainees runs through June  2019. The Bureau of Prisons is being paid $107.62 per detainee housed per day, up to a maximum of $39.2 million for the year.

Prison already overcrowded

The 1,000 detainees sent to Victorville — the lion’s share of the 1,600 placed in prisons around the country by ICE that weekend — were coming to a prison campus that already had more than 3,500 inmates housed in four different prisons at the complex, located in California’s High Desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Six hundred others went to federal prisons in Oregon, Phoenix, Seattle and Texas.

About a week after the detainees were sent there, prison staff members protested outside, waving signs that warned that “budget cuts will result in death!”

“Nobody’s died, thank god,” Kostelnik said.

But prison shortages are nothing new at the complex. The prison normally has about 400 correctional officers, according to Kostelnik. That’s too few to handle the 3,649 inmates imprisoned there, he said.

“They admitted last year they didn’t have enough service staff,” he said. “We don’t have enough staff to monitor the inmates and detainees.”

Prison staff only got four days of warning that the detainees were coming, he said.

“We got notified late Monday and they started arriving on Friday,” said Kostelnik, who’s worked at the prison for more than eight years.

Staff members cleared out half of one of the complex’s medium-security prisoners, transferring the previous tenants to another of the medium-security facilities on site. But things were chaotic, with conflicting instructions from the bureau and ICE.

“No one knows who’s in charge,” Kostelnik said. “What use of force rules do we use? Do we use ICE rules, Bureau of Prisons rules?”

Eventually, Kostelnik said, the staff was told to follow Bureau of Prison rules.

“It went from a position to where we were warning about chaos, then to straight chaos,” he said.

Temporary staff has been brought in from other federal prisons to help out.

“It’s not enough, it’s not better, and it’s more expensive,” Kostelnik said. “Just hire more people. And last week, they just announced they’re going to cut positions.”

The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to an interview request, saying it does not comment on matters of pending litigation or matters that are the subject of legal proceedings.

Temporary medical workers

According to the Bureau of Prisons, for every 1,000 general-population inmates, a prison should have one physician, three midlevel practitioners, a registered nurse, one or two licensed practical nurses and/or medical assistants, two health information technicians, and a medical clerical staff person.

“In reality, it’s one doctor for 4,358 inmates and detainees,” Kostelnik said. The prison has a second doctor, but that physician serves in an administrative role, rather than providing day-to-day medical care.

Twenty-five medical staffers have been sent to the Victorville on a temporary basis to assist with initial intake screenings, physicals and general care of Victorville detainees, the Bureau of Prisons said in a statement.

The statement also the bureau provides “medically necessary health care” to detainees, something the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California disputed in June.

“There’s a red button they (detainees) can push for medical care. One of them was told by a guard that if he pushed it, he would be asked if he’s being raped or if he’s dying,” said ACLU attorney Eva Bitran, who has met with immigration detainees in Victorville. “If it’s neither, he would get no care.”

On Wednesday, the ACLU announced it was suing the bureau  over its treatment of detainees in Victorville.

“We’ve needed medical staff for a very long time,” Kostelnik said. “We hired a medical staffer and he quit on the second day of his second week. Nobody wants to work for us.”

Not only can medical personnel find better pay elsewhere, in the prison they run the risk of being redesignated as a prison guard with a medical staff “augmentation,” meaning they can be left alone with prisoners, without a second staff member in the room with them.

Chickenpox, scabies outbreaks

Health and safety concerns arose soon after the detainees arrived in Victorville. There have been more than 50 chickenpox cases and 60 scabies cases, according to Kostelnik.

At first, detainees only had one increasingly filthy set of clothes — they didn’t even get a second set to wear on laundry days. That didn’t change until Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, visited the prison and the congressman heard about the issue from detainees.

“While there was an initial shortage of uniform jumpsuits for ICE detainees at FCI Victorville-II, the issue has been resolved and the detainees are receiving a weekly exchange of clothing,” the Bureau of Prisons has said.

And then another health issue arose: Some of the detainees are defecating in the showers and in the yard.

“We were having a lot of crap in the shower,” Kostelnik said. “It was like this for a while.”

Getting the areas cleaned up has been a challenge.

“A detainee has not been convicted, so they’re not technically a criminal, so we can’t force them to work,” Kostelnik said. “When the detainees are in their unit, we can’t get them to clean up their area. Or do we get inmates in there to clean up?”

Prison staff has to keep the detainees separated from most direct contact with inmates, who reportedly have protested having to clean up after the detainees.

“You bring the inmates in to clean the showers, but how do you do that?”   Kostelnik said. “Do you lock the detainees in their cells?”

That separation is necessary not just for the detainees’ safety, but also to preserve order.

“You act as you’re treated,” Kostelnik said. “The last thing we want is for the detainees to start acting out and behaving like a criminal.”

Increasingly, though, the two populations are mixing.

“They’re now having detainees signing waivers to be near inmates, so they can get their hair cut,” Kostelnik said.

That will last “until they’re in an inmate fight or an inmate slits their throat,” he said.

Language barriers arise

Additionally, the prison also doesn’t have staff capable of speaking to all of the inmates, many of whom are not from Central and South America, but from Africa, India or Afghanistan, creating cultural and linguistic challenges.

“We have a lot of trouble. ICE provided with us with a number to call to get a translator. They let us know it’s very expensive to do it,” Kostelnik said. “And you can’t do that inside a unit. You can’t say, ‘Oh, you’re getting upset with me? Let me go get the phone.’ “

Detainees are shown training films, educating them about such things as the Prison Rape Elimination Act, “but they’re not being presented in their languages,” Kostelnik said.

The cultural differences also are causing problems for female prison staff.

“They don’t listen to the female staff. They make obnoxious, sexual comments to the female staff. I’m not defending them, but this is just the culture,” Kostelnik said. “I’ve had seasoned female staff who were ready to just get up and go.”

For the most part, guards have adapted, pantomiming to communicate with some prisoners, and figuring out who speaks enough English to work as the translator for a whole group.

At meal times, detainees are shown a picture of a chicken and a carrot so they can pick a meat or vegetarian meal, instead of writing down the choices for the inmates, according to one person connected with the prison.

“We don’t have the food service staff, period, to do anything,” Kostelnik said. “That’s where you see all the corners being cut.”

Five hundred people at a time eat in the dining hall, far more than the prison staff can safely monitor, and groups of detainees and prisoners have to be cycled through rapidly to make sure they are served.

There’s not enough staff to monitor trays of food being sent to the Special Housing Unit, where the most problematic prisoners are kept, meaning no one is keeping an eye on one of the primary ways contraband is moved around the prison.

Congressman wants more training, more staff

The prison’s plight has not gone unnoticed: On June 22, Rep. Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, wrote to Hugh Hurwitz, the acting director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, asking for more staff and training in Victorville.

“While I wholeheartedly support enforcing our immigration laws and securing our southern border, I want to ensure that the influx of new detainees at FCC Victorville does not create added safety issues for correctional officers, staff, or detainees at the facility,” Cook wrote. “I urge BOP to increase staffing levels at FCC Victorville to match the increase in population the facility has experienced.

“Furthermore, I urge ICE to support and train FCC Victorville staff so they are properly equipped to implement policies and procedures that may be unfamiliar to them when dealing with immigration detainees.”

A month later, Cook’s office still had received no response, according to a spokesman.

For the most part, detainees just sit in confinement all day, unable to go outside or do work.

“Every once in a while, they get to go outside, and you see the look on their faces like they’re a newborn baby,” Kostelnik said.

The isolation is taking a mental toll on some of the detainees.

“We’ve had three detainees either attempt suicide or have suicidal thoughts,” Kostelnik said. “We’ve had to put them on suicide watch.”

The numbers of detainees being held in Victorville totaled more than 740 last week, but that figure constantly fluctuates.

“We’ll lose a chunk of them, and the next day, we’ll get 150 of them,” Kostelnik said. “I have no idea where they’re coming from, but we get new ones all the time.”

Staff Writer Roxana Kopetman contributed to this report.