Journalist Shot by Federal Agents Nears 300 Days at Adelanto With Untreated Wound After Charges Dismissed With Prejudice

Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a journalist who covered immigration enforcement in Los Angeles under the name “Richard Noticias LA,” was approaching 300 days in ICE detention as of August 16, 2026, with an untreated gunshot wound sustained when federal agents shot him during an arrest attempt near downtown Los Angeles in October 2025. The Intercept reported that his elbow wound had left his arm turning purple and that Adelanto ICE Processing Center staff were treating him with vitamin D and Bengay rather than the ibuprofen he had been prescribed. The criminal charges arising from the shooting were dismissed with prejudice by a judge who found the government had violated Parias’s constitutional rights. Deportation proceedings continued regardless, and he remained detained.

The dismissal is the load-bearing fact. A court found the government violated his rights, extinguished the criminal case permanently, and the immigration detention — a separate civil track with no equivalent remedy — continued unaffected. That structural gap is the point: immigration detention functions as a parallel system where a constitutional violation in the criminal case does not purchase release. Adelanto is a documented medical-neglect site, including a fourth death in seven months (2026-03-30–adelanto-geo-fourth-death-california-record-seven-months), and California’s Attorney General has issued repeated reports on detention deaths and reduced disclosure (2026-05-15–california-ice-detention-deaths-record-high-staffing-crisis-reduced-disclosure). The press-freedom dimension compounds it — this follows the detention of journalist Rodriguez earlier in 2026 (2026-03-16–ice-detained-journalist-rodriguez-granted-bond) and SCOTUS declining a Texas journalist press-freedom case (2026-03-23–scotus-declines-texas-journalist-press-freedom-case). Shield frameworks built for citizen reporters do not reach a journalist the government can simply place in civil detention.