Court-Appointed Monitor Finds ICE Failed to Provide Adequate Medical Care, in Violation of Court Order

SAN FRANCISCO – Attorneys at the Prison Law Office, Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a public report from a court-appointed monitor late last night that finds ICE is failing to comply with a preliminary injunction requiring it to provide a constitutionally adequate healthcare system at the California City Detention Facility. This marks the first time a court-appointed neutral party has investigated the full scope of the delivery of medical care at an ICE detention center. The report is based on a three-day site inspection, interviews with more than a dozen staff and 40 patients, and reviews of 141 patient medical records and thousands of pages of documents produced by ICE and CoreCivic, the private prison company operating the facility.

The report’s findings include:

• Missing or incomplete medical intake screenings for existing conditions, communicable diseases, and chronic illnesses that require immediate or constant treatment
• Delayed and denied clinical care, including gaps in emergency care, mental health care, and specialty referrals
• Failure to provide timely access to prescribed medications and to identify and support patients with disabilities
• Inadequate staffing, incomplete training, a lack of on-site management, and insufficient clinical oversight.

The external monitor concludes that access to healthcare is inadequate, making California City “an unsafe environment.” “The facility lacks a reliable system to consistently provide adequate healthcare, placing individuals at serious risk of both immediate and long-term harm,” the report states. “This pattern indicates broader problems in the facility’s health care delivery system rather than occasional lapses in care.” The report’s conclusions make clear that ICE is violating a February federal court order requiring the agency to provide adequate medical care to individuals detained at California City.

Gustavo Guevara Alarcon spent nine months at the facility and experienced the conditions there firsthand. “California City failed to provide even the most basic medical care,” he said “I watched people pass out in their cells. I watched someone wait months to see an oncologist and begin lifesaving treatment. I was frequently denied basic over-the-counter medication like ibuprofen and had requests for reasonable medical accommodations repeatedly denied. No one should be subject to this kind of treatment, and certainly not at the hands of the government.”

The California City Detention Facility is California’s largest ICE detention center and holds nearly 1,500 people. It is a remote facility, located in the Mojave Desert. Soon after its opening in Fall 2025, people detained at the facility sued the Trump administration and petitioned a federal court to require ICE to provide adequate medical care and improve overall conditions. In February of this year, a federal judge certified the case as a class action and granted a preliminary injunction to improve conditions for those detained at the facility. Among other things, the order required ICE to provide a functional healthcare system and appointed an external monitor for a four-month period to assess compliance and make a report and recommendations to the Court.

Fernando Viera Reyes is currently being held at the California City Detention Facility. He has now been diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, but it took five months for California City to get him a biopsy to diagnose his cancer, and another month before he was told the result. “For months, I couldn’t move, sleep, or even use the bathroom without being in extreme pain. It wasn’t until we filed this class action lawsuit and had a court order that staff at California City finally got me to a specialist. By the time I received my official diagnosis, the cancer had spread all over my body. If my ability to get cancer treatment is in the hands of this same staff, I’m scared I’ll be left without the healthcare I need. It feels like we’re being treated like we don’t have any value, but we’re all human beings, and we deserve life-saving treatment just like anyone else.”

Additional quotes from Plaintiffs and co-counsel are as follows:

Sokhean Keo is currently in the California City Detention Facility. “If there is no change to this system, sick people are going to die. I haven’t been able to get care for my chronic conditions because ICE refuses to work with the doctors I need to see. When I finally saw a doctor for an infection, I didn’t receive the medication they prescribed. We should be able to leave this place in one piece, not sicker than we came in.”

Alejandro Mendiola Escutia has been in the California City Detention Facility for nine months. “When I arrived at California City, they confiscated my prescribed medication and the back and knee braces that were given to me by a doctor. I had to make a makeshift knee brace using my socks just to tolerate the pain. These examples just go on and on. The cruelty we’re facing is a living nightmare. We’re not asking for anything special, just asking for basic medical care."

“ICE has shown time and time again that it is not putting any care into the health and safety of the people detained at the California City Detention Facility, even when explicitly required by the court,” said Carmen Iguina González, Deputy Director for Immigration Detention of the ACLU National Prison Project. “This report has made it abundantly clear that the facility is unfit to hold anyone in detention if it can’t meet their basic needs. We will continue our work to ensure that every single person detained at this facility receives the medical care they need.”

“This report confirms what thousands of people have experienced firsthand: in every area of health care, California City is failing,” said Tess Borden, Managing Attorney at the Prison Law Office. “The external monitor’s findings tell a nightmarish story – psychiatric patients left without follow-up, medication and culture specimens improperly stored, specialist appointments that were missed or never scheduled. But his recommendations offer a path forward, and we’ll keep fighting for the care the Constitution demands.”

“The monitor’s findings confirm that the failures at California City are hardly isolated incidents; they are systemic, ongoing, and dangerous,” Cody Harris, partner with Keker, Van Nest & Peters, said. “People detained at California City have been denied timely medical care and placed at serious risk because the facility lacks the staffing and infrastructure required to provide adequate healthcare. This conduct is especially egregious because the individuals are being held in civil detention, and the government is under court order to remedy these unconstitutional conditions.”

This report can be found online here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/report-of-the-external-monitor-on-medical-care-at-california-city-detention-facility