Riot at Mira Loma Detention Center under investigation
L.A. County sheriff's officials are looking into the gang-related 'melee' that broke out Tuesday at the Lancaster facility. Two detainees were hospitalized.
Los Angeles County sheriff's officials are investigating a riot that broke out Tuesday involving hundreds of immigration detainees at a county-run facility in Lancaster, where guards had to use tear gas grenades to restore order, authorities said today.
The Sheriff's Department contracts with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to house about 900 detainees awaiting deportation at the Mira Loma Detention Center, according to sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore.
Sheriff's and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel spent much of the night interviewing detainee witnesses, and some who instigated the riot may be prosecuted on criminal charges, authorities said.
ICE officials plan to send a review team to Mira Loma this week to conduct an in-depth inquiry.
"Any incident not only puts the lives of the detainees but also the lives of the sheriff's officers and department personnel in harm's way," said Virginia Kice, a Los Angeles regional spokeswoman for ICE. "We are committed to doing everything we can to ensure safe, secure and humane conditions for those in our custody."
Tuesday's riot started as a morning fight between two detainees from rival gangs, then escalated by 1:30 p.m. into a "melee" in the detention center's outdoor yard, Kice and Whitmore said.
Additional deputies came to the detention center from nearby Lancaster and Palmdale stations to assist the guards with separating detainees, and the riot was diffused "within minutes," Whitmore said.
Two detainees suffered serious, though not life-threatening, head injuries during the riot and were taken to a local hospital, Whitmore said. About 20 other detainees suffered minor injuries and no deputies were injured, Whitmore said.
Mira Loma guards routinely separate detainees based on gang affiliation, and that process will be evaluated as part of the sheriff's investigation into the riot, Whitmore said. Gang leaders, or "shot callers," inside the facility can be placed in isolation, in different cell blocks or moved to other facilities, he said.
Already, 50 detainees involved in Tuesday's riot have been identified as gang members and bused to other federal facilities, he said this morning. Whitmore would not say what gangs those detainees were affiliated with or which gangs were involved in the riot.
"We do the very best we can to identify, isolate and secure them in the facility and one of the reasons we have not had any incidents up there is because of that," Whitmore said. "The big key to managing any jail is identifying an inmate's affiliation."
Last year, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a $10-million plan to expand Mira Loma.
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
anna.gorman@latimes.com
