It was Erick Lopez's 316th day at the notorious Adelanto ICE Processing Center when guards announced the facility would be put on lockdown for the second time in a week in June 2020. Lopez and the others detained there would be forced to spend almost 24 hours a day in their cells and go without phone calls or visits.
But this time, men in several units in the Adelanto West facility – a freestanding building of the same facility – refused orders to “rack up”, a term referring to people returning to their cells, preventing the lockdown from fully going into effect. Instead, they remained in the common areas in protest, some sitting or standing outside of their cells.
What happened next is the subject of an ongoing federal class action lawsuit against private prison contractor GEO Group, the operator of Adelanto detention center. The five plaintiffs in the case allege that GEO Group employees violated their civil rights when they used excessive force to break up the sit-in, including the use of chemical weapons.
Newly unsealed videos in the case show the moments shortly before, during, and after GEO Group deployed force. Because private prison operators are not subject to the same public records laws as the government, these videos, obtained only after GEO Group was forced to unseal them in federal court, offer a rare look inside a facility that continues to face allegations of inhumane conditions.
‘Use whatever force is necessary’
As the second lockdown loomed, trust between the guards and those being held in the detention center had already been frayed.
Previously, the men held in the facility’s west building had been told that lockdowns would only be a few hours, according to court records. But by June 12, 2020, they had just come off a lockdown spanning over 40-hours between June 7, 2020, and June 9, 2020, and were facing another one.
The first lockdown was ordered by then-warden James Janecka in response to a demonstration outside the detention center on June 7, 2020, where a roughly 300-person protest demanded ICE be abolished. According to news reports, unsealed documents, and a press release, protesters damaged staff cars, broke multiple facility windows, and injured at least one GEO Group staffer.
GEO Group claims that the June 7 lockdown was necessary to protect the safety of its employees and the facility’s population. Attorneys for the plaintiffs have disputed that, highlighting that Adelanto "had a practice of locking down detainees in response to protests outside the facility, even though detainees had no control over outside protesters' actions," and instead characterized the lockdowns as retaliatory.
It’s unclear exactly when the first lockdown was called off, but an email from Janecka disclosed in the lawsuit appears to show that phone service was reactivated around 11:30 a.m. on June 9.
The Southlander is digging into GEO Group, starting with this coverage on the June 12, 2020 incident. Sign up for our $10 a month membership to keep these stories coming. Or make a one-time gift!
Another protest planned for three days later made it onto GEO Group’s radar.
“Jim, we don't want to have another Portland. We don't want to look like Portland,” Janecka testified in a deposition when asked what ICE’s Officer In Charge, Gabriel Valdez, had told him.
“I'm going to tell you right now, use whatever force necessary to put those detainees in their cells. I am not going to have detainees controlling any of our housing units,” Valdez ordered, according to testimony from Janecka.
Court filings show Valdez’s statements were in reference to protests outside an ICE detention facility in Portland, Oregon that had occurred in the weeks prior. At the time, the country was in the midst of the George Floyd Uprising.
But inside the walls, behind steel barriers, and in view of a sprawling network of surveillance cameras, Lopez and others detained at Adelanto remained segregated from the outside world.
He, along with many others in his unit, wore a red-and-white uniform that GEO Group mandates for people it detains on ICE’s behalf. His dark hair was tied in a small bun. He sat at the entrance of his cell, room 208, hunched over, mouth covered with his hand, and faced the common area of the unit when a representative for GEO Group strolled into the dayroom to make an announcement.
“I need you guys to rack up. You’re in violation of facility rule 198,” announced a GEO Group staff member. “Okay? That’s a major rule violation, just to let you guys know.”
Lopez and the others refused this demand. Unsealed footage showed they protested the lockdown order by sitting down or standing outside of their cell doors.
GEO Group staff member tells Ward 3C to "rack up." Credit: The GEO Group, Inc.
Negotiations between GEO Group and the detained men lasted for around 5 hours but ultimately fell flat. Court records indicate that Valdez granted Janecka the discretion in managing the men who resisted the lockdown.
GEO Group claims the men became angry and threatened the detention center’s staff. However, the unsealed video footage — whose release was contested by the private prison company — depicts dozens of men in common areas and near their cell doors, watching GEO Group’s SWAT-like force, the Correctional Emergency Response Team (CERT), wearing helmets, gas masks, armed with pepper spray, and hopper-fed PepperBall launchers, as they stormed into the units and prepared to engage.
A prison riot that never happened
Within minutes of CERT entering 3C, Lopez, who by then had his face covered by a surgical mask, found himself inhaling a cloud of pepper spray as he quickly stood up, ran into his holding cell, and vomited. Moments later, he walked out of his room, back onto the balcony, and vomited again. Below him, CERT continued to launch a barrage of chemical weapons at Lopez and the other men after the men refused the lockdown ordered by GEO Group.
CERT storms Ward 3C. Viewer discretion is advised. Credit: The GEO Group, Inc.
The Southlander is digging into GEO Group, starting with this coverage on the June 12, 2020 incident. Sign up for our $10 a month membership to keep these stories coming. Or make a one-time gift!
According to the unsealed video footage, the air in parts of the unit soon turned white as potent chemical irritants shot from CERT’s PepperBall launchers, filled the room and marked the walls. The footage of the incident, captured via GEO Group’s camcorder and surveillance footage, shows men coughing and covering their noses and mouths while CERT continued to shoot and flood the unit with pepper munitions, including directly at some of the people being held in the unit. Some of the men yelled in agony as others retreated into their cells. Off-camera, someone repeatedly stated in a command-like tone to “saturate” the area. GEO Group’s technical term for this type of chemical weapon usage is called “area saturation.”
The violence stemming from GEO Group’s chain of command has been at the center of the class action lawsuit filed in 2022 by the victims and their attorneys.
According to court filings, both sides still dispute some facts of the case. The Southlander’s review of the now-unsealed footage reveals that GEO Group’s CERT quelled a prison riot that never happened, in response to a riot outside the detention camp that never transpired, based on an ICE officer’s worry that an antifa-like mob and detained people would take over the Adelanto detention center.
GEO Group and ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment. The Southlaner could not reach Lopez in time for publishing.
Lopez and his fellow plaintiffs alleged battery, assault, negligence, and a violation of the Bane Act by GEO Group during the June 12, 2020, use of force and subsequent events. The Bane Act is a California state law that prohibits anyone, including the government and corporations, from interfering with an individual’s constitutional rights by force or threats – and the plaintiffs alleged that GEO Group’s use of force in response to their protest was a violation of this act.
The records recently unsealed by U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal in response to a motion to unseal by attorneys at Public Justice reveal the alarming scenes previously described only in court filings.
“I was throwing up while the pepper balls were being thrown into my cell, and I couldn't breathe because I had the smell of pepper – of pepper in my nose and my mouth,” Lopez testified.
‘Try not to take things personally’
GEO Group, a publicly traded prison operator, has made hundreds of millions of dollars of profit in recent years, according to its quarterly earnings reports. Additionally, the company has been lavished with billions in taxpayer funds to warehouse immigrants, a practice that has expanded since the start of the second Trump administration.
It currently has 26,000 beds across the country under contract with ICE, a partnership that generates roughly half of GEO Group’s revenue, according to its most recent annual report to investors. In 2025, GEO Group was awarded new or expanded contracts totaling up to approximately $520 million in annual revenues, representing the largest amount of new business the company has won in a single year in its history.
Among GEO Group’s biggest shareholders are institutional investors like BlackRock, Pentwater, and Vanguard.
For decades, gross human rights violations have been alleged at its facilities, including medical neglect, inhumane conditions, failing to properly investigate sexual abuse, and exploitative forced labor programs. Hundreds of people who have been detained inside facilities operated by GEO Group were forced to work for nothing or as little as $1 a day, which they alleged in a class-action lawsuit violated federal forced-labor laws.
Allegations of excessive use of force have also plagued GEO Group, including multiple incidents at Adelanto involving chemical weapons.In 2020, the company settled a lawsuit brought by eight Central American migrants who were pepper sprayed while on a hunger strike to protest conditions at the facility.
A 2021 inspection report from the California Department of Justice (DOJ) also found concerning uses of force related to mental health-related episodes. The report identified a total of seven use-of-force incidents, out of a total of 37, that involved individuals in mental health crises. In one instance, a person attempted to hang himself while on suicide watch, and officers pepper-sprayed him.
The DOJ's most recent report includes an account from a person detained at Adelanto who said a GEO Group guard filled a room that contained about 50 detained people with pepper spray, causing eye irritation and skin rashes that lasted for days.
Behind the walls of Adelanto, people who get taken by ICE are subject to confinement while the immigration system decides their fate. In extreme circumstances, some have been targeted with chemical weapons by GEO Group.
The handbook given to people detained at Adelanto states that GEO Group officers are there to maintain safety and that the “tone of their voice or actions they must take can sometimes seem harsh if you have never been in an environment where there are many people… Try not to take things personally.”
The Southlander is digging into GEO Group, starting with this coverage on the June 12, 2020 incident. Sign up for our $10 a month membership to keep these stories coming. Or make a one-time gift!
Reporter's View:
Corporations like GEO Group that profit off punishment should understand that filing records under seal in a public court case is like painting a giant red X on them and telling journalists like myself to look there. There should be no secrecy for records filed in a public court case, especially a case about detention camps run by a multi-billion dollar company in business with ICE. The fact that GEO Group justified keeping records under seal by arguing that making them public would “promote public scandal” is, in my opinion, an awareness of their cruelty.
Kevin Flores contributed to this report. It was fact checked by Alex Tey. Pre-publication review was done by the UCI Press Freedom Project.
Edit on July 29, 2026 at 2:35 P.M.: A period in the informational box at the top was added. The link to a source for Lopez's 316th day at the detention center was re-added.
