Men sleep in locked cells every night on bunk beds with thin cotton blankets. They walk in straight lines with hands behind their back to the razor wire-enclosed “yard.” Guards carrying handcuffs pat them down. There are head counts, lockdowns and “segregation” units.
California’s newest and largest immigration detention center looks, sounds and feels a lot like a prison. Some say it’s worse.
Behind the walls of California City Detention Facility, more than a hundred men staged hunger strikes during several days this month and refused to go back to their cells, protesting poor conditions. Men with diabetes or psychiatric conditions who arrived late last month complained they couldn’t get their medication. Others, who had never committed crimes or been in jails, found themselves locked behind metal doors in cold cells for most of the day.
Toilets backed up and sinks clogged for days. Some who talked back were placed in handcuffs and punished with isolation. Advocates say one hunger striker was taken out on a stretcher after coughing up blood the night before.
“They say it is a detention center. It is a prison with a name change,” said an asylum seeker who arrived weeks earlier from Golden State Annex in McFarland. The man, who asked to be identified as H.S., said he can’t sleep at night in the two-man cell where detainees say air constantly blows through a vent. He has no medication for an injury that he alerted them about. He misses his wife and has no idea what will happen to him.
“I’ve never been in prison. It’s very hard and day by day, it’s getting worse,” he said. “Every day is like one year.”
About 500 immigrants are being housed at the 2,560 bed facility in the struggling Mojave Desert town as they fight deportation. Although some are convicted felons who have done time, many have no criminal record.
One man at the detention center, open barely a month, tried to kill himself, officials said.
The complaints about poor conditions in the CoreCivic-run operation are echoed at other detention facilities across the country as concerns grow about the administration’s plans to expand. The Trump administration, with a $45-billion immigration detention budget, is quickly converting old prisons and jails for the job, including a section of the notorious Angola Prison, now dubbed Lockup Louisiana.
Among the facilities being eyed is one in the prison town of Leavenworth, Kan. A judge once called the former prison there owned by CoreCivic a “hell hole.” Guards were stabbed there, a man died after being beaten by fellow inmates and the facility was understaffed. But the company, which is being sued by Leavenworth, wants to bypass permitting required by the city and open the facility, as it did in California City. Other facilities being eyed or identified have troublesome pasts, according to a plan leaked to the Washington Post.
Detention nationwide crossed 61,000 people in ICE custody in August, the highest on record. The administration is budgeted to build out to 100,000 beds.
Major policy shifts mean people are likely to stay behind bars far longer than the recent past. Agents are conducting sweeps in the streets, arresting people who might otherwise have gone unnoticed. And in immigration court, undocumented people who have lived in the U.S. for decades are now routinely denied bond and forced into detention.
Detention officials and the administration say that those being held are being treated fairly.
“ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman.
“Everyone receives soap, nobody is locked in cells all day, no one, in retaliation, is put in solitary confinement,” she said. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”
That is not what half a dozen detainees recalled. Some said they spent most of their days in their cells, while guards shuffle them in and out for head counts every couple of hours. It took weeks to get a nail clipper, said one man, for their unit of dozens of men. And when one detainee asked for soap, a guard pointed to a used bar on a table that he could pick up.
“It’s worse than a prison,” said Priya Patel, an attorney with California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, who works with detainees. Several of her clients have gone through the prison system and they told her they got treated better in institutions. “One thing I hear over and over again, ‘We are treated like animals.’ ”
Guards speak harshly to detainees. And inside, she said, there’s no television, radio or books.
“They are going stir crazy.”
One detainee went on a hunger strike to protest the lack of medical care.
The man had been in Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center and during detention developed ulcers in his mouth. The guards told him if he didn’t eat, he would be put in a one-man cell. He was the next day.
By the fourth day, he said he vomited blood.
“I called guard and told him I thrown blood,” he said. It was night time and “they called a nurse and made a note, the doctor is going to come tomorrow morning and they are going to see you.”
By the next day, he had chest pain, was dizzy and nearly passed out. “They called a Code Blue.“
“They took me out of the medical cell, but they didn’t do anything right there,” he said. “I ended my hunger strike when they told me that they are going to give me proper medical care, medication.”
Another detainee, a 26-year-old man who arrived several weeks ago, went on a five-day hunger strike after guards refused him access to phones to speak with his family.
The detainee, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of retribution, said in response guards confined him in a single-person cell for days.
The man had been held for months after an immigration judge granted him a withholding of removal. The judicial finding prevents the government from returning a person to their country because of the risk of serious harm. The withholding does not guarantee residency, but prior administrations let immigrants free. Now, many are being locked up. Advocates say the shift toward detention is a pressure tactic that is widespread and intended to get people to sign deportation papers.
Inside, posters on the wall say “Do you want to return home?” with an offer of $1,000 to agree to deportation. The man said guards have threatened to send him to a third country, which the Trump administration has done.
When the strike broke out, guards responded in riot gear and placed several participants alone in confinement, advocates and detainees say. For days parts of the facility were on “lockdown.” Phone access was cut for a period of time and detainees were forced into their cells for most of the day. Advocates protested at City Hall to shut down the facility.
Brian Todd, a spokesman for the publicly traded company that owns and operates the facility, said “In the interest of safety, a temporary lockdown was initiated after individuals made the choice to refuse to follow directions.” What those directions exactly were, he didn’t explain, but said that the men eventually “chose to return to their cells.” There is no ongoing protest, but he said seven detainees were placed in what he called a restrictive housing unit for an “investigation.”
“All our facilities operate with a significant amount of oversight and accountability, including being monitored by federal officials on a daily basis, to ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for every individual,” Todd said.
He said the media and advocates often conflate “solitary confinement” with what he termed restrictive housing, where people are sometimes put under mental health observation, for medical reasons or during investigations.
“We always strive to ensure detainees are cared for in the least restrictive environment necessary to maintain the safety and security of the institution,” he said. “Individuals in restrictive housing still have full access to courts, visitation, mail, showers, meals, all medical facilities and recreation.”
Researchers with Physicians for Human Rights defined solitary confinement as being held up to 22 hours alone, which is what some of the detainees at California City facility described.
Analyzing federal data, the group found that use of solitary confinement is rising in detention as the number of people locked up has jumped. According to a report on its findings, ICE “routinely isolates people for minor infractions, transforming what should be civil administrative proceedings into punishment systems that operate without criminal conviction, due process protections, or proportional sentencing.”
When Johnathan Montes Diaz arrived from Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield earlier this month , he knew the place well. He was paroled from California City, when it was a private prison, for a crime that he didn’t want to talk about because his case is still proceeding through immigration courts.
“I had more freedom as a prisoner here than I have right now,” said Montes Diaz, who grew up in the Central Valley and came to the U.S. as a 2-year-old. “The majority of the day is being locked up.”
Families that visit must talk through a partition. There is no contact, detainees said.
As somebody who has spent years in prison, he said he can weather the deprivations. He sees others breaking down.
“There’s this guy from India. He’s never been to prison and they brought him back from solitary,” Montes Diaz said. “He was crying, he was like, ‘I don’t have anybody to talk to.’ He doesn’t have family here.”
When tropical rains battered the building earlier this month, leaks seemed to spout from everywhere, said one 40-year-old man. Detainees rushed to get trash cans and mops, but in some cells water rose.
Todd said CoreCivic promptly informed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about the situation and its maintenance staff responded “to mitigate rising water levels outside the facility while paying particular attention to remove any water that seeped into the facility.”
No detainees were required to be moved from their assigned living areas, he said.
But inside “rain water was coming in just about everywhere,” recalled the detainee, who was later put in handcuffs and held in a one-man cell for failing to quickly leave the shower when ordered. The man who wanted to be identified as G.G., is a former prisoner who was incarcerated for more than a decade on a serious crime that happened when he was a “reckless kid.”
“This facility is taking a toll on people’s mental health,” he said. “The conditions we’re being subjected to here do not compare to anything that we’ve experienced in prison or at other detention centers.”
CoreCivic, valued at $2.3 billion, operates dozens of prison and jails inside the United States and is seeing a boon under the Trump administration, its largest customer being U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We know the demand from ICE will increase,” Chief Executive Damon T. Hiniger told investors in August. Even before California City began accepting detainees, CoreCivic spent $3.5 million in maintenance and hired more than 200 people. The company is hoping the federal government will ship more detainees to the facility and sign a long-term contract.
Formerly known as Corrections Corp. of America, CoreCivic erected the prison in California City in 1998 after the city lobbied heavily for it. The state’s first privately run prison amid California’s tough-on-crime environment, it promised to bring hundreds of jobs and generate millions for California City, a sprawling town spread over 200 square miles at the edge of the Mojave Desert.
The next year, it started accepting people in custody of the U.S. Marshals and contracted with the federal government to hold immigration detainees in 2000. When the state’s prison population ballooned, California contracted with the company to send inmates there in 2013. That contract expired in 2023 amid decreases in the state’s inmate population, and the facility closed.
But the town of 15,000 people had come to rely on its jobs and steady stream of taxes.
Outside the detention walls, advocates are trying to shut it down. They come with detainee families, packing City Hall meetings and demanding officials hold the prison behemoth responsible for the conditions.
“We have been sounding the alarm for weeks about the harms that these cages bring to communities, and sadly, we are seeing much of this materialized now,” Marcela Hernandez, an organizer with the Detention Watch Network, told the City Council.
California City Mayor Marquette Hawkins said CoreCivic had attempted to pull permits, but it failed its fire inspection.
But with pressure from the White House to expand quickly, CoreCivic opened in August without permits, Hawkins said.
The city hasn’t taken a position or held a public meeting on the detention facility. Advocates say they aren’t being transparent.
Hawkins painted the company with the backing of the White House as a Goliath against the small town.
“We have no muscle to fight the federal government,” he said.
The city, where a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, has been in turmoil for years. A dozen city managers rotated through in the last two years, Hawkins said. One former council member is facing federal charges of transporting hazardous waste. The Kern County Grand Jury last year released a report on the desert town titled “A City in Trouble, a City in Ongoing Crisis.” And California City is facing a fiscal crisis, after among other things losing the state correctional facility.
Andrew Free, a researcher who studies detainee deaths and has filed a lawsuit to obtain city records, is suspicious of city claims that they are being overpowered.
“One of two things happened. The city got duped and then has basically decided not to do anything … Or they knew all along that this was going to happen.”
The post Immigrants decry conditions at former prison, ICE’s largest detention center in California appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
