A video shared by attorneys shows a California ICE detainee holding up a water bottle crawling with "worm-like creatures" just weeks after a judge ordered the facility to fix its water problems.
The footage, filmed last week and shared with The Guardian by attorney Margaret Hellerstein, shows Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man detained for months at the Adelanto ICE facility, displaying a plastic bottle filled with water containing what appeared to be small swimming pests. Parias, known online as TikTok creator Richard LA, said he poured the water into the bottle himself to preserve it as evidence after staff distributed it to detainees from communal jugs.
"We need proper drinking water, better treatment," Parias said in a statement translated from Spanish by his attorney.
Parias previously made headlines after being shot by an ICE agent in October; a judge later dismissed the resulting assault charge against him, and he was transferred into ICE custody, where he now faces removal.
The video surfaces amid an ongoing class-action lawsuit over "dangerous conditions" at Adelanto, which is run by private prison company Geo Group. A federal judge recently ordered ICE to guarantee detainees "24-hour access to clean, potable drinking water" after plaintiffs alleged the facility's water was discolored, foul-tasting and frequently ran out for hours.
“The video is very disturbing, and we’re looking into it,” said Rebecca Brown of the legal advocacy group Public Counsel, one of the firms bringing the lawsuit. “Detained individuals have long complained about the quality of the water … We’ve heard of water being murky, tasting terrible, having unknown things in it.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not directly address the video, saying only that Adelanto draws water from the same municipal supply used by the surrounding community. In a separate court filing this week, DHS lawyers claimed independent testing confirmed the water meets FDA cleanliness standards. DHS further argued that Geo Group is the party responsible for ensuring habitable conditions in Adelanto.