Immigrants Suing ICE Over Detention Conditions Get Their Day in Court in SF

A group of detained immigrants who say their rights are being violated at the California City immigration detention facility in the Mojave Desert will get their first day in court on Friday before a federal judge in San Francisco.

Their lawsuit alleges that conditions at the 2,560-bed immigration jail operated by a for-profit contractor are so bad that they violate the Constitution and a law meant to protect people with disabilities. It points to meager medical care, inadequate access to lawyers and an environment so punishing it’s worse than a high-security prison.

The suit comes as a record number of people are being held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention — more than 70,000 as of late January — and a growing number of them are dying. There were 32 deaths in 2025, the highest in two decades, and ICE has reported that six people have died in custody since the start of this year.

The detainees are asking U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney to order ICE to ensure that conditions improve so they comply with the Rehabilitation Act and the 1st and 5th amendments to the Constitution. They’re also asking her to make the case a class action to cover everyone held at the California City facility.

Nearly three-quarters of the roughly 1,000 people held at the detention center, 100 miles north of Los Angeles and 75 miles east of Bakersfield, have no criminal conviction. And in any case, immigration detention is a civil matter, not a sentence for a crime.

Yet Cody Harris, a partner at Keker, Van Nest & Peters, who’s part of a team representing the detainees, said people are locked in their cells facing the wall for headcounts four times a day and are not allowed contact visits where they can hug their children or other loved ones. He called it draconian and cruel.

“These are people who went out to the doctor, or went to get food at a restaurant, and they were apprehended,” Harris said. “They’ve never been in a jail, they’ve never been in a prison, and then suddenly they’re finding themselves in this remote facility with barbed wire everywhere and they’re being treated worse than the highest-security criminals.”

The suit also alleges a dire lack of medical care, even for life-threatening conditions.

In late December, Chesney intervened for two men — one with a serious heart condition, the other with symptoms of cancer — who had been waiting months for care. The judge, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, ordered ICE to ensure the men see specialists and get treatment promptly.

Harris said ICE and CoreCivic, the company that owns and operates the former prison in California City, opened it in haste last August, unprepared to handle even routine medical needs, let alone serious ones.

“Their staffing was not ready, their training was not ready, the facility itself wasn’t ready,” he said. “They set out to make this the biggest immigration detention facility in the entire state … and they just weren’t ready to do that.”

ICE and the Department of Homeland Security dispute the allegations. In court filings, they argue that the law does not require them to treat detainees better than prisoners and say the California City facility has an experienced warden who follows ICE’s detention standards.

They say plaintiffs’ complaints about health care reflect isolated lapses, not systemic problems, and that the staff now meets medical needs in a timely way. And they say they allow detainees access to legal counsel, subject to the facility’s “operational limits.”

ICE generally does not comment on pending litigation, but in this case, DHS sent KQED a statement from spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin that reads in part: “Any claims there are subprime conditions at the California City detention center are FALSE…. This type of garbage about ICE facilities is contributing to our officers facing an 8000% increase in death threats against them.”

McLaughlin has cited the 8,000% figure repeatedly in recent months, but DHS has not offered publicly verifiable data to support the claim.

McLaughlin said detainees get nutritious meals, access to phones to contact family and lawyers, and disability accommodations. She said comprehensive medical care is provided “from the moment an alien enters ICE custody.” She added: “The average illegal alien gets far more due process than most Americans.”

Meanwhile, the government is also asking that the case be moved from San Francisco to a court in the Eastern District of California, which includes Kern County, where the California City facility is located.

Lawyers for the detainees say the case should stay in San Francisco because the ICE field office that sends arrested immigrants to California City is located here, and the Eastern District has a severe shortage of judges, which could delay the case.

Last week, detainees at another California ICE facility, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, filed a similar lawsuit. That suit alleges ICE denies critical medical care, adequate nutrition and sanitation, and abuses solitary confinement at Adelanto. Two men died in ICE custody at Adelanto last fall.

Harris said, regardless of how Americans feel about immigration, he hoped they could agree that the government has a legal and moral duty to treat people in custody with human dignity.

“The federal government can’t just lock people up and treat them however it likes and throw away the key until it deports them. It has some basic obligations,” he said. “How you treat people you’re detaining says a lot about your values as a country. And right now, what’s being said is pretty ugly.”