LA Pastor Calls ICE’s Adelanto Detention Center a ‘Place of Evil’
Sep 23, 2026
Pastor Guillermo Torres, or simply Pastor Guillermo as he is known in the community, leads immigration outreach for the grassroots organization Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice, or CLUE. (Credit Araceli Martinez)
At least three times a week, Guillermo Torres visits immigrants at the Adelanto Detention Facility. The visits, intended to bring hope and comfort, have been a lifeline for many and, for some, a means to secure their freedom.
“We don’t go to preach or convert anyone, we go to offer our presence,” Torres tells ACoM in a recent interview. “Many of the immigrants [being held] never have visits because either their families don’t have legal status or they don’t live in the country.”
Since 2011, Torres has served as director of programs for the Los Angeles-based grassroots organization, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE). Within the community, he’s won respect for his tireless work helping immigrants detained at Adelanto.
“Whenever we visit, we tell them they are not alone, and we ask them how we can walk with them for their liberation from a place this horrible,” says Torres. “I’ve never seen such cruelty,” he adds, describing the facility as a “place of evil.”
“There comes a moment”
The Adelanto ICE Processing Center, located about 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County, is one of eight such centers across California where people caught up in the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown are being held.
More than 6,000 people are currently detained in immigrant detention in the state. Nationwide that number tops 65,000, the overwhelming majority of whom have no criminal record.
Adelanto itself has been the focus of numerous lawsuits, four of them filed by CLUE, citing repeated human rights violations.
Torres admits it is difficult to process everything he sees during his visits. “There comes a moment when you just don’t want to see anymore, you want to close your eyes and turn your back,” he says.
“When the [immigration] raids started, I couldn’t get the images out of my head … and I asked God, ‘How do you process all this evil?’”
Lack of care
Torres says what troubles him most during his visits is when a detainee does not receive needed medical attention.
“Last year I met a Mexican man who was very sick. He had a serious problem, an infection in his mouth, and they didn’t provide any treatment. When I left and got back in my truck, I began to cry. The first thing I thought was that more people will continue to die in Adelanto for want of medical care.
There have been at least four deaths at Adelanto since Trump returned to office last year. Nationwide some 27 people have died while in ICE detention.
“All I can do now is to be there with those in detention, to bring them a little love,” Torres says. “Most of those arrested have done nothing wrong. That’s why places of pure cruelty like Adelanto shouldn’t exist.”
Training for visits
As for the ongoing enforcement, which has shown no signs of abating — indeed, the number of arrests continues to climb despite polling showing more Americans opposed to the administration’s tactics — Torres says churches and the clergy need to do more.
To that effect, Torres has trained more than 300 clergy members and lay leaders on how to carry out visits to places like Adelanto.
“Sometimes the clergy or people who attend are so moved by some cases that they take up collections to sponsor the payment of a lawyer for one of the immigrants,” he notes.
His group receives referrals on who they can or should visit through the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project.
“We look for asylum seekers who have no family, and no one who can support them. CLUE as an organization can be a sponsor for those who need it, and the judges accept it,” explains Torres. He adds CLUE has at times helped detainees find affordable lawyers or been a communication bridge to families.
Detainees have gone up to a year or more without a single visit, he notes. “When we come, sometimes they begin to cry.”
CLUE has also created a fund to help detained immigrants at Adelanto cover the cost of bail. To date the organization has covered bail for more than 150 people.
Organizers are now working to set up a fund to help detainees purchase goods at the commissary, or comisaría inside the facility.
Who is Pastor Guillermo?
The son of a Puerto Rican father and a Mexican mother, Torres was born in 1966 in Los Angeles. He grew up in the Pico-Union area, west of downtown, where he said he witnessed the friction between Chicanos and the undocumented immigrant community.
“The kids made fun of those who didn’t speak English,” he recalls.
Torres spent several years living with his family in Puerto Rico, where he learned Spanish. He returned to Los Angeles with his mother. His father stayed on the island.
Torres’ childhood was marked by his mother’s mental health struggles; she was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
“It was very hard. Imagine: you’re poor, and you have a mother who, although she had a big heart and a lot of empathy, was ill,” he shares. “We were very poor and I lived almost on the street. I would come home late, smoke marijuana and drink every day.”
At 12 Torres says he attempted suicide. It was a turning point in his life.
He later began attending a Pentecostal church, then went to seminary school. But his calling as a pastor didn’t come until 2007 when his sister, who worked as a diplomat in Europe, died of cancer.
“I had never felt so much pain in my soul,” Torres remembers. “That’s where my journey with God began, and my compassion for people who suffer.”
In 2006, Torres met veteran community activist and fellow pastor, Lewis Logan, who invited Torres to join CLUE, where he began to spearhead organizing within the immigrant community and where, in time, he came to be known simply as Pastor Guillermo.
This story was produced as part of “Aquí Estamos/Here We Stand,” a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and community news outlets statewide.
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