District Court Grants Preliminary Order Prohibiting Abhorrent Conditions at California City Detention Facility

SAN FRANCISCO — The U.S. District Court of Northern California granted a preliminary injunction to improve some conditions for people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the California City Detention Facility, California’s largest immigration detention center.

Notably, the order requires ICE to provide basic components of a functional healthcare system – things like access to emergency services, specialists, and prescribed medications – and orders ICE to provide access to a court-appointed monitor to ensure compliance with these provisions.

The order also requires ICE to provide attorney access, including contact attorney visits, as well as appropriate clothing and blankets for the frigid temperatures detained people report experiencing. It grants provisional class certification, protecting the more than 1,000 people currently held at the facility, and reserves the remainder of the relief Plaintiffs requested for a further court order.

The California City Detention Facility has continued to come under scrutiny in recent weeks. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and Representative Ro Khanna conducted oversight visits at the facility in January 2026, where they met with detained people who described experiencing inhumane treatment and inadequate medical care at the facility.

Quotes from co-counsel are as follows:

“Today’s ruling is an important win for immigrants’ rights and rightly affirms that ICE’s conduct at the California City Detention Facility is inhumane, dangerous, and a direct violation of the Constitution,” said Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU. “We’ll continue to fight to hold the Trump administration accountable and end ICE’s unconstitutional detention practices at the California City Detention Facility.”

“The government wanted to grind the wheels of justice to a halt and continue its horrifying medical neglect and denial of fundamental needs like warm clothes and blankets to the more than one thousand souls languishing at this facility,” said Steven Ragland, Keker, Van Nest & Peters partner representing the plaintiffs. “We are incredibly grateful that the Court appreciated the immediate, irreparable harm individuals at California City face and ordered meaningful relief.”

“The situation at California City Detention Facility is nothing short of an emergency. This court order is an important step toward forcing ICE to meet the basic human needs of the thousand people it has locked inside this Mojave Desert facility,” said Margot Mendelson, executive director of the Prison Law Office.

“We are grateful to the people inside CCDF for trusting us to fight for them and to the community that has been supporting them,” shared Priya Patel, a Supervising Attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. “But it shouldn’t have taken so much just to get ICE to give the people it cages blankets and basic medical care, and we hope the Court grants additional, much-needed relief very soon.”

The order is available here: https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2025/11/72-Order-Granting-in-Part-Plaintiffs-Motions-for-PI-and-Class-Cert.pdf

This press release is available here: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/district-court-grants-preliminary-order-prohibiting-abhorrent-conditions-at-california-city-detention-facility