{"id":53160,"date":"2026-08-03T21:38:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T21:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=53160"},"modified":"2026-08-03T21:38:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T21:38:37","slug":"ice-detainee-reveals-video-of-drinking-water-apparently-contaminated-with-worm-like-creatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2026\/08\/03\/ice-detainee-reveals-video-of-drinking-water-apparently-contaminated-with-worm-like-creatures\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE detainee reveals video of drinking water apparently contaminated with worm-like creatures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Attorneys for a man detained in a\u00a0California\u00a0immigration detention center have released footage showing him holding up a bottle of water from inside the facility that appeared to be contaminated with worm-like creatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The footage came from a video call with Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man who has been detained for months at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, north-east of LA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret Hellerstein, one of Parias\u2019s attorneys, shared the footage with the Guardian on Thursday and said it was filmed this week. The clip is brief and grainy, but shows him holding up a plastic bottle filled with water, which appeared to have small pests of some kind swimming inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parias, in a statement shared by Hellerstein, described them as \u201cworms\u201d or some kind of \u201clarvae\u201d, though it\u2019s unclear what exactly was in the bottle. He said the water was given to residents to drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to repeated questions about the video, with a spokesperson saying in an email that the facility gets its water from the city of Adelanto and provides the \u201cthe same water used by residents and businesses in the area\u201d. Geo Group, the private prison company that runs the ICE facility, did not respond to inquiries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The footage has surfaced weeks after a federal judge\u00a0ordered\u00a0ICE to ensure that people detained in Adelanto had \u201c24-hour access to clean, potable drinking water\u201d. The ruling was a response to a\u00a0class-action lawsuit\u00a0challenging \u201cdangerous conditions\u201d at Adelanto, with detained plaintiffs alleging they were denied sufficient food, clean drinking water and proper medical care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parias said in his statement that the contaminated water came from jugs that staff had given residents for drinking. He said he poured the water with the worms into a bottle to preserve it as evidence. He showed the bottle to a relative on a video call, which was shared with his attorneys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is what they give us: contaminated water, water with larvae, water with little black worms, which is slowly killing each one of us who are detained here,\u201d Parias said in his statement, which his lawyer translated from Spanish. \u201cWe need proper drinking water, better treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exact source of the water in the footage was not clear, and it also was not clear how widely this water was distributed to residents in the detention center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parias is a TikTok creator known as Richard LA. He received national attention after he was\u00a0shot by an ICE agent\u00a0in October and then charged with assault. A federal judge dismissed the charge and he was\u00a0transferred to ICE custody\u00a0where he is facing removal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I saw the video, I was horrified and disgusted. I felt sick to my stomach,\u201d said Hellerstein. \u201cThis is video evidence. They can\u2019t just sweep it under the rug.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The footage has circulated widely among advocates and immigration attorneys in recent days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lawyers involved in the class-action case said they had seen the footage, but also had not heard direct accounts from other detained residents about the specific contaminant shown in the video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman<\/a>
A woman holds a sign calling for the closure of the Adelanto center. Photograph: Jay Calderon\/Desert Sun\/USA Today\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe video is very disturbing and we\u2019re looking into it,\u201d said Rebecca Brown, supervising attorney at Public Counsel, a public interest law firm that brought the lawsuit, alongside several other organizations. \u201cDetained individuals have long complained about the quality of the water \u2026 We\u2019ve heard of water being murky, tasting terrible, having unknown things in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carl Bergquist, counsel with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, another group representing the class-action plaintiffs, said the footage was concerning and raised questions about whether the government was complying with the judge\u2019s order to provide clean water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The class-action\u00a0lawsuit\u00a0said the tap water at the facility was \u201cdiscolored and tastes odd, raising serious concerns about its potability\u201d, with lawyers writing: \u201cThe \u2018drinking\u2019 water provided in coolers often appears dirty and regularly runs out for hours at a time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The judge\u2019s recent order called for consistent water access and improvements to other standards. In a\u00a0filing\u00a0challenging the judge\u2019s order this week, lawyers for DHS said the drinking water had been \u201csampled and tested at various distribution points by an independent third party \u2026 and determined to be clean per Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DHS has also\u00a0argued\u00a0in court that Geo Group as a contractor is\u00a0responsible\u00a0for the conditions of the facility. Geo Group is not a defendant in the lawsuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attorneys for a man detained in a\u00a0California\u00a0immigration detention center have released footage showing him holding up a bottle of water from inside the facility that appeared to be contaminated with worm-like creatures. The footage came from a video call with Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a Los Angeles man who has been detained for months at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":48391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"theguardian","_post_source_url":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4836,183,6573,2848,7960,9784,9331,10507,12950,9387,9304,1458,11180,11273,6496,2264,10925,6094,12005,10454,10560,10342,10776,7123,7964,11973,8536,8306,5278,5655,11259,9253,10480,5374,11410,7592,8206,6348,8033,8869,5273],"class_list":["post-53160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-access","tag-assault","tag-black","tag-california","tag-case","tag-charged","tag-city","tag-court","tag-customs","tag-detained","tag-detention","tag-distribution","tag-drink","tag-drug","tag-food","tag-government","tag-ice","tag-immigration","tag-judge","tag-killing","tag-la","tag-law","tag-lawyer","tag-los-angeles","tag-north","tag-one","tag-plastic","tag-prison","tag-quality","tag-security","tag-shot","tag-sick","tag-spanish","tag-sun","tag-swimming","tag-tiktok","tag-treatment","tag-us","tag-video","tag-water","tag-woman"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53161,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53160\/revisions\/53161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}