ICE has been making headlines recently as the public questions what is actually going on in their detention centers, as reports have come out about inhumane living conditions, among other serious allegations.
Last month, the California Attorney General released the California Department of Justice’s fifth report on conditions at the detention facilities holding people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The report details the conditions at seven immigration facilities operating in California in 2025, according to Bonta:
• Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County
• Desert View Annex in San Bernardino County
• Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Imperial County
• Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County
• Golden State Annex in Kern County
• Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility in Kern County
• California City Detention Facility in Kern County
The worsening conditions, according to Bonta, are driven by President Donald Trump’s deportation “campaign” and by a policy change: not releasing people on bonds.
“This is the federal government paying for-profit, private companies to run these detention centers, and they are running these detention centers with inhumane, cruel, and unacceptable conditions,” Bonta said during a press conference on May 15.
Bonta said that since 2023, the number of detainees in ICE facilities surged from 2,303 to 6,028 as of last year.
“At multiple facilities, detainees reported overcrowding, undercooked food, inadequate clothing, and poor access to clean drinking water,” Bonta said.
Another reported area of issue was over medical care and treatment.
“In interviews, detainees reported that they were not consistently able to access requested medical appointments or receive necessary and timely medical treatment, sometimes even for emergency care,” Bonta said.
In one specific instance, Bonta said that the California City Detention Center was “inad-equately staffed” and “often diverged from national detention standards,” as “detainees reported that it was being run like a prison.”
According to Bonta, there were six deaths between September 2025 and March 2026, with four of those deaths occurring at Adelan-to and two at the Imperial Regional Detention Center.
Grisel Ruiz, an attorney with the Immi-grant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, argued that detention centers aren’t held to the same legal standard as prisons.
“They are operating unlawfully,” she told the California City Planning Commission at its meeting. “We urge the Planning Commis-sion to hold CoreCivic accountable to local municipal code and state law.”
Viera Reyes was held at a detention center in 2024, where he experienced agonizing pain
