‘It will drive you crazy’: Letters reveal what life is like inside Adelanto ICE detention center

Sixty-year-old Abraham Torres Fernandez spent the first eight months of ICE detention in total silence.

Eighteen years ago, he fled his home country of Cuba, where he worked as a shopkeeper, to escape poverty and build a new life in the United States, Fernandez said. He later obtained permanent residency status, he said.

When federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Fernandez at a Tampa airport last April, he said they seized his hearing aids and never returned them.