Immigrants stage calm protest; guards pepper-sprayed them

LOS ANGELES — Mohammed Abdelsalam remembers the scene as a war zone.

The 32-year-old asylumseeker from Egypt said that he and other detainees were peacefully protesting ongoing lockdowns at the Adelanto ICE Processing Facility near Victorville earlier this month when more than a dozen guards in riot gear shot pepper bullets and pepper spray at them.

The chemical irritant instantly caused his eyes to blur and his throat to close up. Abdelsalam, who has asthma, said he had to be taken to the facility’s medical center and given oxygen.

“I lost my breath and almost passed away,” he said. “My heart almost stopped.”

Alexx Pons, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that the incident occurred when more than 150 detainees became disruptive and refused directives from staff, necessitating “the use of nonlethal force to preserve order” after attempts at de-escalation were unsuccessful.

Detainees paint a different picture of what happened.

Abdelsalam and others said the facility had been under lockdown since June 7, when protesters damaged several vehicles in the parking lot and broke a few of the building’s windows, causing minor injury to an employee inside, according to the Victorville Daily Press.

Detainees said they were kept in their dorm rooms for 23.5 hours a day. Five days later, when an official announced that they needed to return to their rooms because of another planned protest by demonstrators outside the facility, detainees refused. Some stood just outside their rooms, while others sat in the common area.

It was late afternoon when guards told them to “rack up” to be counted. Detainees said they agreed to participate in the count but told guards that they “respectfully refused” to return to their rooms. They said the guards, dressed in black with face shields and gas masks, told them once more to “rack it up” before shooting them indiscriminately with pepper balls, pepper spray and rubber bullets.

Edgar Guillen said he was standing outside his secondfloor room for count when a guard standing on the lower level shot a pepper ball at him. The ball hit the wall behind him and exploded onto his face.

“I got really scared because I didn’t know to what extent they were going to take it if we didn’t go inside,” said Guillen, a 25-yearold asylum-seeker from Mexico. Afterward, he said it was impossible to sleep and breathe. He coughed and vomited through the night.

Guillen said guards refused to let him out to get cleaning supplies. So the next day, he used his bath towel and toilet water to clean his room.