California Attorney General Rob Bonta is demanding state detention centers make “significant improvements” to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention standards.
That’s after a new 165-page report from the Department of Justice released Monday found that all of the state’s six privately-operated immigration detention facilities are failing to meet basic requirements for mental health care, medical recordkeeping, and suicide prevention. The report also found excessive use of force, discipline against detainees, and use of solitary confinement.
The number of detainees in California is trending up, from 2,300 in 2023 to 3,100 as of April 2025. That’s up from the daily average of about 1,750 in 2021, the report found. About 75% of those detained had no documented criminal history.
AG Bonta says the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policy will drive that number up, which will only aggravate current deficiencies. Speaking during an April 30 virtual press briefing, he says this makes oversight into immigration facility conditions even more essential.
“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,” he said, “potentially exacerbating critical issues already present in these facilities by packing them with more people.”
A 2017 state law mandates the Attorney General’s office to inspect and report on California’s immigration detention facilities. It’s the fourth report to be released on conditions in facilities where noncitizens are detained in California by ICE. The findings signal that California intends to continue oversight of immigration enforcement even as the federal government rolls such oversight back. The report notes the federal Department of Homeland Security shuttered internal offices tasked with investigating civil rights complaints and detention conditions. Previous reports in 2019 and 2021 have also found mental health care services to be substandard.
For this investigation, the California Justice Department staff worked with a team of correctional and healthcare experts to examine a range of conditions of confinement. The report found that practices with negative mental health effects remain in regular use, like disproportionate use of force and solitary confinement, sometimes for months at a time. Investigators found some facilities failed to properly inform detainees about protections under a federal court settlement that requires legal representation for people with severe mental health disorders.
At the Mesa Verde facility in Bakersfield, officials failed to properly document or report the forced transfer of detainees who had participated in a peaceful hunger strike, the report said. The facility was investigated for its pat-down policy, which detainees were subjected to anytime they left their housing unit. The result was a “chilling effect” that caused detainees to stay in their rooms and miss out on medical treatment and meals. AG Bonta said that these pat-downs were of special concern and have resulted in sexual assault allegations against facility staff.
Bonta added that Congress has the power to step in with their power of the purse, saying that they can put conditions on contracts that require certain standards be met within facilities.
“Congress across the country has a role in making sure that the health, safety, and welfare of the people that are touched by the investments that they make and the funds that they appropriate, that it is at an appropriate, humane level that is current with the existing standards of practice.”
The privately-run facilities investigated in the study are Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde in Kern County, Adelanto Detention Facility and Desert View Annex in San Bernardino County, Imperial Regional Detention facility in Imperial County, and the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County.
Christopher Ferreira, a spokesperson with Geo Group, the private company who runs several of the facilities, said in a statement that “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.”
“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.”
ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
