Transcript of June 8, 2026 interview with Benjamin Wood 

by Mick Rhodes | editor@claremont-courier.com

Benjamin Wood, 44, legal director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice. He grew up in Ontario, lives in Montclair, and is a member of Claremont United Church of Christ.

Courier: How did you become involved with the hunger strikers at Adelanto?

Benjamin: Well, I’m the legal director at the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice. We’re a nonprofit based in San Bernardino, and one of the services we offer to the community is immigration legal services. And have always had a focus on the facilities there in Adelanto. And yeah, things have just gotten a lot worse this year. So those are really the kind of cases that I try to prioritize when I’m doing my work.

Are you a lawyer?

I’m what’s called an accredited representative. So, the Department of Justice has a program by which they recognize nonprofit organizations and accredit individuals Individuals working with those organizations to be able to represent people before immigration without being lawyers. They call us accredited reps or DOJ reps. It’s kind of mouthful, but we can’t claim to be lawyers. Very strict laws about that.

How long have you been doing that?

I started in 2015, so coming up on 11 years now.

So you mentioned that things have changed. Can you tell me what’s changed and how it has affected the people you represent?

The conditions have always been poor, but with the overcrowding that has been going on ever since around this time last year when the massive waves of raids were unleashed all over Southern California, the way that has impacted the population inside the detention facility has overwhelmed the staff to the point where there’s no housekeeping. The only way that things get clean is if the detainees themselves clean it. If GEO — it’s run by a private prison corporation — if the GEO Group staff gives them, cleans the place to clean with. I mean, the food is horrible. The water is dirty. They don’t wash the water receptacles.

But I think what people are most frustrated about is, well, there’s two things: one is the medical neglect is, as I’m sure you’ve probably heard, horrid. The death rate inside of detention is higher now than it ever has been. I think … over 20 people have died in detention or shortly after getting out.

I was partially accredited representative, meaning I was not able to do cases in court yet, and I got the full accreditation in like 2022. So I’ve only been doing court cases since then, and everybody who’s detained is in court.

But I’ve been visiting for a long time, because even when I had the partial I could still do visits and do intakes and stuff like that.

But that facility was on its way to getting shuttered. There’s been a nationwide campaign to close down these facilities, and it was on the short list. There was negotiations with the Biden [administration] and everything like that.

It was down to like three people … three individuals. The east facility was empty. The west was down to three. And desert view annex had like hundreds of people. But at least we were close to closing the one side of the facility.

So there are three facilities there: the annex and the east and the west. And before January 2025 the annex was robustly occupied, but the other two were near empty?

Correct. East was completely empty and west was down to three people.

What does the capacity look like now?

Now from what I understand it’s pretty much at capacity. They don’t share all the population updates like they used to when they were under court order. But from what the detainees tell me it’s pretty much full.

And the segregated units are also full because the strike leaders are being put into administrative or disciplinary segregation, as if they’re retaliating against them.

And they tell me that it’s completely full now.

Are we talking about hundreds?

I think it’s around 2,200 across three facilities.

So are there 2,200 hunger strikers there?

No, they’re not all on strike. It’s really hard to get an actual solid count because they don’t really have good communication across the different facilities or even between the units and within the same facility. You’re kind of counting on people from the outside to make that connection.

On I think it was Wednesday of last week I talked to one of my clients who’s in desert view in the annex, and he said that in his unit there was about 60 people who were fasting.

How long has the fast been going on?

Well, it’s a little bit different depending on the facility, but I think it’s on day 10 right now. I could double-check.

You mentioned court, but are you also inside the Adelanto facility when you see the people you represent?

Yeah, they have an area where we do legal visits.

And what are you observing when you’re there?

Well, from my point of view things don’t look too much different because they kind of  escort us down a narrow hallway into the legal area and we don’t really see the mess hall or the infirmary or the dorm units. So from what I see it is the same, but the strictness [detainees] have shared with me is what is different.

What are some of the things they’ve shared with you that have been alarming or different?

They’re really upset about the way that it’s basically impossible to get bonds now.

Why is that?

There’ve been some policy changes. Back in July of last year there was a new memo issued by the acting director of ICE that said that anybody who entered without a visa would be held for mandatory under the section of the law requiring mandatory detention. Um, and that’s a lot of our people in our community. And then shortly thereafter, about a month later, the Board of Immigration appeals, which makes precedent, binding decisions, basically codified that in a decision that they made.

There’s been a lot of back and forth in the courts, especially in our area. One of the lawsuits about it is called Maldonado Bautista, which is here in the Central District. The decision in that case vacated that policy of not allowing people to [have a bond hearing].  The policy says that the judge doesn’t have authority to grant bonds to Judge Sykes … So the government appealed that vacatur to the Ninth Circuit, and the Ninth Circuit stayed the vacatur.

It’s everywhere because it’s having impact nationwide everywhere except in the Central District. But this was so in theory, people that entered without a visa should be eligible for bond.

The judges should have authority to grant bond, but they’re finding any excuse, any pretext to deny bond. They’re saying people are flight risk because of any little thing they could find on their record, or that they’re a danger to the community because of some arrest 20 years ago where charges never got filed. Or they’re setting bonds very, very high, like $100,000, and who can afford that?

So people are having a hard time getting a bond hearing for very various reasons, it sounds like mainly because they’re putting roadblocks that didn’t exist before in front of these immigrants that are trying to bond out.

What other things are you observing there or hearing about?

Well, the medical neglect, like I mentioned, is a really big one. It’s very difficult to be seen [by a nurse or doctor]. You have to fill out paperwork and submit it, and usually it just pretty much falls on deaf ears. Um, and so people are, you know, especially when they’re ill … they’re having to submit multiple medical [forms] and then maybe two weeks later they can be seen by a nursing staff in the infirmary. But to actually see a doctor, the wait times are two, three months to get care. And the facilities they have, they’re inadequate to deal with a lot of common conditions.

How many detainees are there in all three units?

It’s around 2,100 and maybe as many as 2,200.

Okay, so out of those 2,100, 2,200 people, there’s a nursing staff that’s hard to get to. And then there’s one doctor or or a group of doctors? How does that work?

It’s hard to know that too. But I’ve seen the names of like at least three different doctors on medical paperwork for my clients. So yeah, I think there’s probably at least three.

You say that the water vessels are not clean; so there’s mold?

Yeah, there’s mold everywhere in those facilities. The water jugs, they’re basically not clean, so they get like a slime on the inside, and it’s just not sanitary. It’s not safe for human consumption.

And it wasn’t this way before Trump took office the second time?

There’s always been issues with the water, but I think the way that they’re understaffed and using the staff in selective ways is another thing that’s kind of grating on people. Like if you need help with something, you need to go to see a doctor, nothing happens. But if there’s any kind of internal dispute between detainees, then they rush in really quick and separate people and put people in segregation. That sort of thing.

What about the food?

The food is horrible. It’s the same thing every day, no variety. The salad bar, the lettuce is black. Um, I remember when this first started, they would complain a lot about the cabbage. It’s not a flaw or anything; it’s just raw cabbage, which is also probably not culturally appropriate for most of the detainees [who are primarily from Latin American countries]. But there are people from everywhere. And for the Muslim detainees, there’s not really any such thing as a halal meal. It’s just slop. They complain that it’s like dog food.

Can you give me some other examples of how the food is atrocious?

Yeah, the rice being undercooked, like crunchy, so you can’t really eat it.

Are people getting sick from the food?

I’ve had clients that have developed gastrointestinal problems because of the food. I have one guy that did develop some stomach problems, and then they prescribed him some medication and it was expired.

Are any of your clients involved in the hunger strike?

My client in desert view, he participated one day … everybody in his unit fasted that day to protest that they were being barred from yard time, because [detention facility management] was taking away yard to retaliate against all the people who were hunger striking. So kind of has its back and forth effect: So retaliation, willful neglect, and collective punishment.

Tell me about Thursday’s thing at CUCC.

The main request that I got from the strikers was to keep this issue front and center, keep it present in people’s minds. And inviting members of the congregation or the community to participate in an action like this is a way to keep it front and center in the hearts and the minds of people nearby.

I’m also hoping to use it as a recruitment tool to get more people doing visitation,  because that’s another one of the issues is the isolation. You know, there’s folks who are so isolated from their families and their, their legal support and their clergy support because of the distance. And fasting along with them is another way to kind of break down those walls.

Where can we guide people who want to get involved?

You can send them to the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice. My colleague Esperanza is the one that represents IC4IJ and the Shutdown Adelanto Coalition, which brings together multiple organizations from across the state and I think a little bit beyond,  some nationals. And she also does the visitation trainings for lay folks.

So the hope is to get people to pay attention to this and not forget about it, essentially.

Yeah, absolutely. And when we’ve seen that when there’s political pressure and media pressure, it has an effect. And it’s really the only thing that has an impact. I mean, the courts have their role too, but getting the word out, raising awareness, and sharing the stories, sharing information, that’s what’s going to help make the change.

Can you give me a recent example of a poignant story you heard that affected you?

On Thursday I talked to a Salvadoran immigrant who has been detained for two years. And he’s participating in the strike. At that time he had been striking for I think five days. He has two U.S. citizen children here. And he’s been denied bond twice. So he’s one of those people that’s stuck in there. And he’s participating in the fast. One of the things that GEO has done to retaliate, we suspect, is shutting down the electricity and then shutting down the means of communication. There are a couple tablets inside the units that the inmates, the detainees can use to call their family members, call outside. And so when they lose that communication when the electricity gets cut. And when the electricity gets cut, they also have to do an emergency count.

So members of Congress visited last Monday, and on Tuesday they cut the power. So they’re doing an emergency count and everybody has to come out and line up. And so then while everyone’s lining up, the power came back on. And so he said, ‘Well, the emergency is over, so we don’t need to do counts anymore.’ And they grabbed him by his shoulder. So now you have to come and do the count. And he says, ‘Hey, you don’t have to grab me.’ And because he protested the fact that they were laying hands on him, they put him in disciplinary segregation. So it’s a kind of example of … But he suspects the real reason that they put him into segregation was because he’d been fasting for the past five days.

How old is this man?

37.

And where was he picked up?

He lives in North Hills. So he was going to work and they stopped him claiming they were looking for somebody else. They even had a picture of him, and he thought they were police at first, so he gave his ID and they said, ‘Oh, did you know that you had an open case?’ And they took him in after that.

The people at Adelanto, are they all Southern Californians or are they from all different areas?

I think most of the people that I see are from here. We also try to prioritize inland residents because we have a really big lack of legal resources here. And so we try to fill that need, but especially when there’s this kind of political issue, I try to prioritize hunger  strikers. So, one of the strike leaders was transferred here from Georgia, for example. And I’ve met people that have been transferred from New Jersey, from Texas, but I think the bulk of them are from California.

What got you into this work?

I grew up in Ontario, so I’ve just always been surrounded by the immigrant community my whole life. It’s very diverse in Ontario, but mostly the Spanish-speaking immigrant community and several generations in. And I learned to speak Spanish. I felt like that was a gift the community gave me. I saw a lot of the injustices that go on, and I felt like I was a person that could do something about it. So I started getting involved. And I’ve just really had a passion for helping ever since.

You mentioned some of the people you have helped got out of Adelanto; how often does that happen?

It’s more and more uncommon lately. We’re having to more and more refer to the federal courts, which is out of reach for people like me that are accredited representatives. It’s more expensive. It requires more training and expertise and you know, for us, more collaboration, which is great. We love to collaborate. But before all this stuff happened we could file a bond motion to get somebody out, a $1,500 bond or maybe $5,000, just by showing they had ties to the community and they weren’t a danger. And now we’re having to take everything all the way to federal court.

Fortunately there are law schools like USC, which has an immigration clinic, and they’re filing group habeas petitions. And especially I think because we’re nonprofit, they’re happy to take on the cases we refer to them. But yeah, it’s a lot of work and it’s a lot tougher to get people out.