A report released Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California alleges widespread abuse of homeless people in the Mojave Desert city of Lancaster.

Sheriff’s deputies contracted by the city routinely push homeless people into the inhospitable desert, where they often face additional pressure from county officials, the report contends.

The report, “Banished and Abandoned,” describes a “dragnet of criminalization” within the city limits in which deputies and city code enforcement officers “regularly bulldoze encampments of unhoused people and order them to move by threat of citation.”

The actions push them out of the city into remote areas where they have to walk long distances for water and food, the report said.

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