California warns ICE: Immigration detention centers across state need ‘significant improvements’

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta issued a stark warning Tuesday to immigration detention centers across the state, notifying them they need to make “significant improvements” to comply with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention standards.

Bonta sounded the alarm as the California Department of Justice released a 165-page report that found all of the state’s six privately-operated immigration detention facilities are falling short in providing mental health care for detainees. The report documents deficiencies in medical recordkeeping, suicide prevention strategies and use of force against detainees with mental health conditions.

As President Trump ramps up his deportation agenda and escalates his showdown with Democratic-led states and cities over immigration enforcement, Bonta signaled that California would not let up scrutinizing facility conditions for detained immigrants.

“California’s facility reviews remain especially critical, in light of efforts by the Trump Administration to both eliminate oversight of conditions at immigration detention facilities and increase its inhumane campaign of mass immigration enforcement, potentially exacerbating critical issues already present in these facilities by packing them with more people,” Bonta said in a statement.

GEO Group, a private company that operates four of California’s immigration detention facilities, disputed the report’s findings.

“GEO strongly disagrees with these baseless allegations, which are part of a long-standing, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contractors,” a GEO Group spokesperson said in a statement.

“This report by the California Attorney General is an unfortunate example of a politicized campaign by open borders politicians to interfere with the federal government’s efforts to arrest, detain, and deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens in accordance with established federal law.”

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The report is the agency’s fourth review of California’s privately-operated immigration detention facilities since legislators passed a 2017 law, Assembly Bill 103, requiring the state Department of Justice investigate conditions at detention centers through 2027. Previous reports have also found mental health care services to be inadequate.

But the report released Monday, which focuses on mental health, comes at a critical moment with the Trump administration promising to carry out the largest deportation program in U.S. history and reducing federal oversight of conditions at such facilities.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security shuttered its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which were tasked with reviewing detention conditions and responding to complaints of civil rights violations.

At the same time, California facilities are holding more people than they were two years ago, the report noted. More than 3,100 individuals were held in California facilities on April 16, the report notes, up from the 2,303 held on a single day in 2023. Only one in four detainees were identified as having a criminal record.

“Future increases in population levels at detention facilities will have implications for the facilities’ ability to provide for health care and other detainee needs,” the report said.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement it did not have “reasonable time to adequately review” the report’s finding, but “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously.”

“Routine inspections are one component of ICE’s multi-layered inspections and oversight process that ensures transparency in how facilities meet the threshold of care outlined in contracts with facilities, as well as ICE’s national detention standards,” the spokesperson added. “In general, inspection teams provide report findings to agency leadership, in part, to assist in developing and initiating corrective action plans when discrepancies are identified.”

The spokesperson added that ICE encourages reporting detention facility complaints to its detention reporting and information line — (888) 351-4024 — a toll-free service with trained operators and language assistance.

Talia Inlender, deputy director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, said the report raised “a huge red flag” and she was disappointed to see facilities fail on basic issues such as recordkeeping.

“It really highlights the importance of California’s role in providing this oversight as, unfortunately, federal oversight is being significantly diminished at the moment,” Inlender said. “If these problems are already existing at the existing capacity that we have now, it should be a big red flag that we’re going to have — if we don’t already — an extreme humanitarian crisis on our hands.”

For its investigation, the California Justice Department staff worked with a team of correctional and healthcare experts to examine a range of conditions of confinement — including use of force, discipline, access to healthcare and due process — in the state’s immigration detention facilities.

The report found that recordkeeping and the maintenance of medical records at all six facilities were deficient, noting that the poor recordkeeping was “especially concerning given the critical nature of the records and the high degree of confidentiality these records require.”

At Adelanto and Desert View Annex, files showed healthcare providers entered conflicting diagnoses and prescriptions that did not correspond to the diagnosis, the report said. At Golden State Annex, medical providers documented inconsistent — and sometimes conflicting — psychiatric diagnoses.

Every facility also fell short in suicide prevention and intervention strategies, the report said, with standard suicide risk assessments not consistently administered at Imperial, Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde.

Detainees also faced delays in securing adequate medical care at most facilities. At Desert View, staff were lax in managing infectious diseases, the report said, while at Mesa Verde, detainees experienced prolonged wait times for critical off-site care.

Investigators found that individuals with mental health diagnoses experienced disproportionate use of force. Staff at several facilities did not adequately review health records and consider mental health conditions — as required by ICE’s standards of care — before engaging in calculated use-of-force incidents.

Facilities generally did not conduct mental health reviews, required by ICE’s detention standards, before placing detainees in solitary confinement, the report said. Some individuals spent more than a year in isolation — a situation which the report said presents heightened risk to those with underlying mental health conditions.

The report singled out Mesa Verde facility’s pat-down search policy as a particular cause for concern. Detainees who were subjected to pat-downs anytime they left their housing unit, the report said, described the searches as invasive and inappropriate and said it discouraged them from obtaining medical and mental health services and meals.

Investigators also raised concerns with due process, flagging reports that detainees could not meaningfully participate in court hearings because staff had not given them prescribed medication or other needed treatment.

A spokesperson for GEO said that its support services include “around-the-clock access to medical care, in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, dietician-approved meals and specialty diets, and recreational amenities.” Its services are monitored by ICE and other groups within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure strict compliance with ICE detention standards.

Detainees at locations where GEO provides healthcare services are provided with “robust access to teams of medical professionals,” the spokesperson said, and can access off-site medical specialists, imaging facilities, emergency medical services, and local community hospitals when needed.

“Healthcare staffing at GEO’s ICE processing center is more than double that of many states’ correctional facilities,” the spokesperson said.

Inlender said she hoped the report would be a call to action for the state to protect immigrants in detention centers. But she also noted that California has a 2020 law, AB 3228, spearheaded by Bonta during his time in the Assembly, that allows people to sue private detention operators in state court for failing to comply with the standards of care outlined in the facility’s contract.

“It is, of course, an uphill battle and it’s a lot to ask of individuals who are already in a very vulnerable position to come out and have to bring these suits,” Inlender said. “But I do think it is a very important tool for accountability and I hope that it will be used.”