Rep. Vargas urges ‘dismantle ICE’ after refused entrance to Otay prison

Rep. Juan Vargas issued a call to ‘dismantle ICE’ on Friday after being denied entrance to the Otay Mesa Detention Center where immigrants are held.

Vargas, a Democrat who represents south San Diego County, said he has visited the site multiple times in the past and had always been granted access before. He was responding to several constituent complaints about substandard conditions in the detention center.

“Each and every time that I’ve previously come here — announced or unannounced — they’ve always allowed me in,” Vargas said. “Today, they didn’t. I attempted to negotiate with them, I said that I had every right to be here under the law — a judge has allowed that — and they refused entry. They did not allow me to enter to observe anything.”

The senior warden, Christopher J. LaRose, told Vargas it wasn’t up to him, it was up to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the federal government. LaRose works for CoreCivic, a private prison company. The Otay Mesa Detention Center is a minimum/medium security federal prison under contract with ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service.

“I’ve received so many complaints now, my office has, that again conditions are less than standard and getting people sick,” Vargas said. “And unfortunately, recently now, I’ve been receiving reports that they are putting people in cages like they used to. And they didn’t allow me to see if that’s true or not.”

ICE did not respond immediately when asked for comment.

In October, Vargas was joined by Sen. Alex Padilla, Rep. Sara Jacobs, and Rep. Mike Levin in attempting to gain access to and observe conditions at an ICE detention center in the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building and United States Courthouse in Downtown San Diego.

After being repeatedly turned away, the legislators sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting director of ICE Todd Lyons, laying out a pattern of “ignored requests and stonewalling” by DHS, raising concerns that the agency is blocking congressional oversight in violation of the law.

ICE at the time told the legislators that only requests approved seven days in advance would be allowed to inspect its facilities — a new policy put in place last summer by the DHS.

“Congress has the duty and responsibility and the right to oversight for these facilities. We’re going to see now if we’re going to sue them to get in, because this is outrageous,” Vargas said Friday. “Again, I have every right to be there. I don’t know what they’re doing there. I mean what are they doing? I mean you see now it’s like one of those bad movies where they are throwing things over the fence and saying `Help me.’ This is the terror that I’m going through.”

When asked about what Democrats have to do to contest ICE, Vargas admitted they “have to do a lot more.”

“What we have right now is an invading army,” he said. “What they’ve done is they’ve trampled on the Constitution and the rights of the people. Now they’ve even murdered people. So now, we just can’t say OK, everything’s fine, we’re just going to give you less money.

“No, that agency should be dismantled completely. Everybody thinks that ICE is natural; ICE was created fairly recently and it’s been a rogue agency that has not operated well. Something has to change.”

City News Service contributed to this article.