José Ricardo Viveros was released from the Adelanto Detention Center in November 2020, but almost two years later, her emotional and physical health suffers from the consequences of the abuse she experienced.
“I barely leave my house. It scares me that they will lock me up again in Adelanto, a place where human beings are not seen as human beings but as animals”, he says.
But he also says that during his 6-month stay at Adelanto, he was taken to the Victor Valley Global Medical Center in the city of Victorville, where they made him sign some documents that he did not understand because they were in English, and they fitted him with a pacemaker.
“I felt bad after that surgery. I can’t grab anything with my left arm. My shoulder hurts. My hand swells; and I feel a ball above my heart”.
The worst happened – he says – when he himself removed the staples from the open heart operation that they performed to put the pacemaker.
“As much as I asked them to take me to the hospital to have them removed, they never listened to me, citing the pandemic as an excuse.”
And to date, he says that he has not been able to obtain the medical file that records all the health problems that arose during the time he was in Adelanto. “I personally went to the hospital, and to Adelanto itself, and they don’t want to give it to me; and I need it to give it to the doctors who treat me now”.
Viveros has 64 years, of which 22 has lived in the United States for years. He is married with 3 adult children. He currently lives in the community of Selma in the Central Valley of California.
When he was in the process of obtaining residency, he was detained by the police when he stopped his car in a parking lot in the city of Laguna Hills in Orange County.
“The truth is that I had taken the one i went And since I wasn’t feeling well, I decided to park the car and stay there until I felt better. I fell asleep, the police knocked on my window and took me into custody”.
He says that they charged him with driving while intoxicated and kept him in custody for several months in 2019; and when he thought he was free, they handed him over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE)
“They took me handcuffed to Adelanto in the middle of the pandemic. And I was there for about six months until I regained my freedom in 2020”.
But that time during the height of the coronavirus, he says that they were continually sprayed with the chemical HDQ neutral, supposedly to prevent infections. Neutral HDQ is a disinfectant that is promoted as a virus destroyer.
“For my age, that was very delicate. In addition, all my ills increased. I suffer from high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, gastritis and prostate”.
Fastest impact of the chemicals that were spread throughout the facilities, to him and other of his colleagues, caused countless problems in the sight.
“Our eyes wept and burned. They took us to the eye doctor, who prescribed some drops that we were never given. But in general, we suffer a deterioration of the vision to the point of blurry vision”.
It was a very hard period because the detainees had to inhale the chemical.
“Our lungs were affected. Last week I went to the hospital because I couldn’t breathe”.
Without a doubt, the most bitter suffered in Adelanto occurred when they took him to the hospital. “My brain swelled, and I was short of breath. They put me in an induced coma for several weeks”.
And the most traumatizing thing came when he had an open heart operation to put in a pacemaker.
“The whole time I was recovering, they kept me chained to the stretcher and watched over by guards from the GEO Group who They are the ones who manage the Adelanto prison”.
He relates that his recovery process at the Victorville hospital was quite humiliating.
“The guards were inside my room and they talked a lot. I even had to listen to fights over the phone with his wives. They ate inside, in front of me; and I recently operated, felt nauseated by the smell of food. Even more so, when without any shame, they released pestilent and noisy gases, and then they laughed”.
He confesses that psychologically everything he experienced affected him a lot.
“The agents of GEO Group feel superior to us. They see us as criminals.”
And he says that thank God that he did not get the coronavirus, but he saw many of his classmates boil with fever and fall sick to the floor.
“It was a very stressful time, full of an anxiety that consumes one”.
Adds that the food is disastrous. “On one occasion they gave us a pizza so hard that a colleague lost a tooth, he barely bit it.”
José Ricardo says that he wanted to make this complaint about the mistreatment experienced in Adelanto , even when he knows that he is not the first, the only one or the last to experience it.
“I make this story so that once again, people become aware of all the atrocities that they are committed in Adelanto, and for us to fight for that place to be closed because the damage they do to immigrants is great. One is very affected.”
This Mexican immigrant is awaiting a residency hearing in the immigration court of San Francisco.
And he underlines that when he was handed over by the local Laguna Hills police to ICE, the Sanctuary Law was already in force, which began to be applied in California in 2018, and prohibits collaboration between local police and immigration.
José Topete, who was a partner cell in Adelanto de José Ricardo, maintains that the consequences of everything they did with them inside, they suffer now in freedom.
“We have documents to prove everything we suffered. There are videos that show what we are reporting.”
He adds that since he left Adelanto, his throat and mouth are very dry, headaches, dizziness and trouble breathing.
“I think it is a consequence of the chemicals that were sprayed on us during the pandemic.”
Real America News is awaiting a comment from GEO Group about reported abuse.