Motion to Intervene Granted, One Major Step Closer to Unsealing Crucial Records and Video Footage of Abuse at Notorious Adelanto Immigration Facility
April 13, 2026
Media Contacts:
Public Justice, communications@publicjustice.net
Tamara Marquez, Communications Director, ICIJ, tamara@ic4ij.org
Ben Camacho, The Southlander, 562-287-4629, ben.camacho@thesouthlander.com
Emily Elena Dugdale, Executive Editor, Los Angeles Public Press, eedugdale@lapublicpress.org
RIVERSIDE, CA — Public Justice’s motion to intervene in Hugo Gonzalez, et al. v. The GEO Group, Inc., et al. has been granted, clearing a huge hurdle to unsealing documents. The case challenges a major use of force and deployment of chemical agents at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, a notorious immigration detention complex operated by the private corrections giant GEO Group. Despite the First Amendment right of access to court records, there are over fifty documents under seal, including video footage and critical internal documents.
A hearing on the motion to unseal will be held on Monday, May 18. If successful, the records and documents the motion seeks to unseal would provide footage, emails, reports and logs of a use of force incident that occurred in June 2020 and impacted the roughly 100 people detained in the units at the time. Public Justice represents independent local newsroom Los Angeles Public Press, local news cooperative The Southlander, the First Amendment Coalition and the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice as intervenors asserting the public’s right to access these important materials.
“Now that we are intervenors, we can meaningfully pull back the curtain on what went on inside Adelanto and how people were treated by a corporation entirely responsible for their care and funded by the taxpayer,” said Jacqueline Arkush, Justice Catalyst Fellow at Public Justice. “The public deserves to see what our money pays for and what GEO is so determined to keep secret, nearly six years later.”
“We are pleased that we are moving one step closer to public transparency from an agency that continues to evade accountability while upending lives,” said Emily Elena Dugdale, Executive Editor of Los Angeles Public Press. “We hope journalists and watchdogs across the region and country will benefit from this increased exposure.”
“People were tortured inside the Adelanto ICE prison. GEO Group is fighting to keep the records secret so the public is kept in the dark about what’s really going on there,” said Ben Camacho, reporter at The Southlander. “The taxpayers who fund that facility deserve transparency.”
“Our organization has been on the ground for years, supporting people detained at Adelanto, and we have seen firsthand the devastating human toll of this facility. The lack of transparency has denied people justice for far too long. Unsealing these records is a critical step forward, but it also underscores what we have known all along: this facility is fundamentally harmful and must be permanently shut down.” said Javier Hernandez, Executive Director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.
GEO Group is the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) largest contractor and acts as a one-stop-shop for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s mass deportation machine. At the start of 2026, the private prison company reported a record $254 million in profit last year, an estimated 700% increase over 2024’s revenue data.
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The First Amendment Coalition protects and promotes a free press, freedom of expression, and the people’s right to know. Nonpartisan and nonprofit, FAC believes that the broadest range of engaged and informed communities is essential to the health of our democracy — that the values expressed by the First Amendment provide a blueprint for an inclusive, equitable society and a responsive, accountable government. To that end, FAC educates, advocates, and litigates to advance government transparency and First Amendment protections for all.