When ICE officers arrested Ulises Peña López outside his home in Sunnyvale last year, his attorney said he had a medical condition that put him at serious risk. She says ICE agents knew this, but assaulted him anyway.
“They beat him in view of his wife and their baby daughter,” said Elena Hodges, Peña López’s attorney and co-director of Pangea Legal Services. “Then they transported him to a secluded alley nearby, where they continued to assault him until he lost consciousness and had to be rushed to the hospital.”
Peña López spent months in two California immigration detention centers before ultimately being deported to Mexico. Hodges says his health deteriorated while he was in custody.
“Ulises started to experience really severe neurological symptoms. He was having right-sided numbness, tingling, weakness. He had to be rushed and re-hospitalized because he just wasn't getting better and wasn't receiving appropriate medical care,” she said.
Peña López and his family filed a lawsuit on Monday against ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, as well as GEO Group and CoreCivic— the two private prison companies that operate the facilities. The lawsuit alleges civil rights violations that include medical neglect and disability discrimination.
His case follows a recent settlement reached by GEO Group over conditions inside the Golden State Annex detention center, the same facility where Peña López was detained. Co-executive director of WorkSafe Stephen Knight called that settlement a significant win.
“This case originated during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Knight said, “when detained workers who earn just a dollar a day, filed a complaint exposing GEO's failure to provide them with even basic protections that are due all California workers.”
GEO Group announced on Tuesday that it reached a settlement with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, agreeing to pay over $100,000 and implement worker safety protections across more than a dozen facilities it operates in California.
The settlement recognizes that, under California law, detained workers are entitled to workplace protections. This is the first time this has been set as a legal precedent.
“It's a landmark victory to recognize the humanity of these workers in detention,” says Knight. “That they are entitled to the same dignity and respect that all labor in California has protected under our laws.”
Hodges, Peña López’s attorney, celebrates the win and says that there’s a growing momentum to connect the dots between immigrant justice cases.
“When we're seeing ICE brutalizing community members in the streets who are trying to protect each other, when we're seeing people in detention being harmed in these really systematic, intentional ways, these are all connected,” Hodges said.
She says these cases raise broader questions about accountability in immigration enforcement.
KALW reached out to DHS and ICE. In an email, DHS responded that any claims of subprime medical care at ICE facilities are false. It wrote: “It is a longstanding practice to provide comprehensive medical care from the moment [someone] enters ICE custody. This includes medical, dental, and mental health services as available, and access to medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care. For many, this is the best healthcare they have received their entire lives. In accordance with established ICE policies and their training, staff always use the minimum amount of force to safely deescalate situations.”
