CA report details deaths, medical care at ICE detention centers

from Wendy Fry and Sergio OlmosCalMatters

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Six people died in California immigration detention centers last year as the overcrowded facilities struggled to provide basic medical care. according to a new state investigation detailed conditions inside the facilities.

The 175-page report, released Friday, offers the most detailed look yet at the detention centers, which are often in remote areas of the state and difficult for lawyers, families and advocates to reach.

It documented the highest number of deaths since the state began inspecting the centers seven years ago. According to 2024, there will be no deaths in California detention centers American Immigration Lawyers Association list to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement press, who are tracking them, and the attorney general’s office.

The deaths come as the Trump administration has waged a mass deportation campaign — starting in Los Angeles — that has increased the detention center population by more than 150 percent.

Eighteen people have died in facilities this year across the country, about one person a week. Since the start of the Trump administration, 48 people have died in custody. That’s what a study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found the current rate is nearly seven times higher than fiscal year 2023 levels at 88.9 per 100,000 people.

In California, four of the deaths occurred at the ICE Adelanto processing center in San Bernardino County. Two other people died at the Imperial Regional Detention Center near the U.S.-Mexico border in Calexico. In all four Adelanto cases, the families of the deceased allege the facility failed to provide adequate medical care, the report states.

The Department of Homeland Security has called allegations in the lawsuit about conditions at Adelanto false.

“ICE is regularly audited and inspected by outside agencies to ensure that ICE facilities meet performance-based national detention standards,” a DHS spokesman said at the time when the lawsuit was filed.

CalMatters contacted ICE and the three private prison companies that operate facilities in California. ICE, GEO Group, MTC and Core Civic did not immediately respond to a request for a response to the AG’s report.

California Department of Justice inspections are required pursuant to law of 2017 in response to concerns about conditions. Investigators and medical experts made two-day site visits to each facility and interviewed 194 people from more than 120 countries.

State inspectors interviewed 194 detainees for the new report, making it one of the largest reviews of its kind between July and November 2025.

Last year, inspectors focused on lapses in mental health care at the six facilities operating in California in the early months of Trump’s second administration. This year, state investigators examined how the dramatic increase in the number of detainees has worsened conditions and access to medical care at all facilities now operating in California.

Some detainees described having only beans and bread to eat, which gave them diarrhoea, and extremely cold temperatures, which caused them to try to turn their socks into extra sleeves. In one facility, investigators documented a lack of sufficient toilets to serve the population, with detainees reporting dirty bathrooms.

State investigators wrote that the detention centers did not increase medical staffing to match the dramatic increase in the number of detainees. At a new detention center that opened in a former state prison in California City last year, investigators described “crisis-level” medical staffing that contributed to delays in care. At the time, the center had only one doctor for nearly 1,000 inmates.

Several detainees wept as they relayed the conditions of their detention in California City to state investigators. Most of those detained have not been convicted of crimes.

“This is cruel, inhumane and unacceptable,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, adding that his office was “working tirelessly to shed light” on the conditions.

All detention centers are run by private companies under contract with the federal government. State investigators wrote that the companies and the federal agency failed to meet their own standards of care.

“The federal government and facility operators face a significant choice: reform their practices and bring these facilities into compliance, or continue their inconsistent policy of prioritizing detention over safety, which will likely result in dire human and legal consequences,” the state report said.

Reduced civil rights protections

State investigators also detailed in their report how the Trump administration is rolling back federal protections for detainees.

Starting in January 2025, the federal government cut funding to legal programs to inform people about their rights, shut down the Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog and suspended protections for transgender detainees, the report said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement stopped including congressionally mandated data on transgender people in its biweekly statistical reports in February 2025, the report said. The agency also removed from its website a policy memorandum that committed the agency to creating a safe environment for transgender people.

Loba, a transgender woman from El Salvador who was detained in California City for six months in 2025, told CalMatters that she experienced traumatic sexual harassment and intimidation by guards while housed in male dorms. She asked CalMatters to identify her only by her first name because she fears retaliation for speaking out about conditions and her safety in her home country.

The situation was so stressful, she said, that she finally decided to sign her voluntary departure papers to return home to El Salvador.

“That’s absolutely why,” she said. “I’ve been fighting my immigration case for two years and not being around my community and the lack of support for the LGBTQ+ community in detention centers and then being bullied was really upsetting. It was very traumatic.”

The report also addresses other complaints raised by detainees and their families.

During one incident in Adelanto, a person reported to state inspectors that security guards had deployed pepper spray in a closed room containing about 50 people.

At San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, investigators noted concerns about strip searches. The report states that Otay Mesa is the only facility in California that has a policy of searching inmates after every visit they have with someone who is not a lawyer.

The women described the searches as “humiliating” and “humiliating” after being frisked in front of male officers, sometimes even while menstruating. Both men and women described feeling “forced” by the practice. One man told investigators they stopped visiting family altogether to avoid searches.

Two new detention centers

During the investigators’ visits, 6,028 people were held in immigration detention centers in California. This is a 162% increase from the 2,300 carried out during inspections in 2023. California has the third largest population of ICE detainers after Texas and Louisiana.

California is also home to two of the seven largest facilities nationwide. Those detained in California are mostly from Mexico, India, Guatemala, El Salvador, China, Russia, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela and Honduras.

California Democrats have passed policies during both of Trump’s terms that were intended to block detention centers from operating. In 2019, California tried to ban private, for-profit detention centers from operating in the state, but GEO Group, one of the major private prison operators, successfully sued to stop it. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ban violated the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by preventing the federal government from enforcing immigration enforcement.

ICE opened two detention centers in California in the past year, first the one in California City and then one in McFarland called the Central Valley Annex. It began accepting detainees in April 2026 while the report was finalized, but the state says it will begin monitoring that detention center as well. Both facilities were previously used to house inmates from state prisons under contracts with the California corrections system.

Democrats in California have introduced a number of bills this year to push back against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. One by Assemblyman Matt Haney, D-San Francisco, will tax places of detentionwith the funds going to immigrant rights groups, effectively making it unprofitable to maintain detention centers in the state.

State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, also introduced a bill to expand the State Department of Justice’s authority to conduct inspections at detention centers.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.