COVID-19, mumps, chickenpox epidemics. Contaminated water, moldy food, air conditioning ducts spewing black dust.
These health threats have been documented inside California’s privately run immigrant detention facilities through lawsuits, federal and state audits, and complaints from detainees themselves.
But local public health officials, who regularly test county and state jails, say they don’t have the authority under state law to inspect detention centers run by private companies, including all six of California’s federal migrant centers.
State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) wants to close that loophole by passing a bill that would allow county health departments to test facilities if they deem it necessary.
Durazo said many detainees live in poor conditions and that any disease spreading in these facilities could pose a danger to the surrounding communities.
“Unfortunately, our inmates are being treated as if they’re not human,” she said. “We don’t want any excuses, and we want state and public health officials to step in whenever they need to.”
It’s unclear how much power local health officials will have to enforce the changes, but public health experts say they can act as independent monitors to document violations that would otherwise go unnoticed by the public.
The state Senate unanimously passed the bill, SB 1132, in late May. It is currently before the state Assembly.
Immigration is regulated by the federal government. GEO Group, the nation’s largest private prison contractor, operates federal centers in four California counties. These centers can hold up to 6,500 people awaiting deportation or immigration hearings.
President Joe Biden pledged during the 2020 campaign to end for-profit immigrant detention centers, but more than 90% of the roughly 30,000 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement each day are still held in private facilities, according to a 2023 analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have introduced bills to phase out private detention centers, and others, including at least two this month, have called for investigations into poor medical and mental health care and deaths.
Washington state lawmakers passed a law requiring state oversight of private detention facilities in 2023, but the measure is pending in court after a lawsuit by GEO Group, and California lawmakers have repeatedly tried to regulate such facilities with mixed results.
In 2019, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a bill banning private prisons and detention facilities from operating in the state, but a federal court later ruled the law unconstitutional, saying it interfered with the federal government’s ability to operate immigrant detention centers.
State lawmakers passed a bill in 2021 requiring private detention centers to comply with state and local public health orders and worker health and safety regulations. The measure was adopted in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the virus raged in detention centers where people were crammed into dormitories with little to no protection from the airborne virus.
For example, an outbreak at San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center early in the pandemic infected more than 300 staff and detainees.
The California Association of Health Officials, which represents public health officers from the state’s 61 local health departments, supports Durazo’s bill.
“These inspections play a vital role in identifying and addressing health and hygiene concerns within facilities, thereby reducing risks to detainees, staff and surrounding communities,” the letter from Cat DeBerg, the association’s executive director, said.
The measure would allow public health officials to determine whether facilities are complying with environmental rules, such as ensuring proper ventilation, providing basic mental and health care, emergency treatment and safely prepared food.
Unlike public correctional facilities, which are inspected annually by local health departments, private jails will be inspected as needed at the discretion of health departments.
GEO Group spokesman Christopher Ferreira and ICE spokesman Richard Beam declined to comment on the move.
Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said public health officials are in a good position to inspect such facilities because they understand how to make enclosed spaces safer for large groups of people.
Even if they can’t force jails to follow their recommendations, they said, their reports could provide valuable information for public officials, lawyers and others who want to pursue options such as litigation. “When the system isn’t working, the courts can play a very important role,” Benjamin said.
The federal system for monitoring health care and the spread of communicable diseases in migrant detention centers is not working, said Annette Decker, a clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied health care in these facilities.
Inspections of detention centers are typically conducted by ICE officials and, until 2022, by private auditors. In a paper published in June, Decker and other researchers showed that immigration officials and auditors conduct inspections infrequently — at least once every three years — and there is limited public information about deficiencies and how they are being addressed.
“A lot of harm happens in jails that we don’t document,” Decker said.
Since the pandemic began, ICE and GEO Group have been subject to lawsuits and hundreds of complaints alleging poor conditions in their California facilities. While some of these cases are pending, a significant percentage of the complaints have been dismissed, according to a database maintained by the ACLU.
Recent lawsuits by detainees allege overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, denial of adequate mental and medical care, medical neglect, and wrongful death through suicide.
The California Department of Occupational Safety and Health fined GEO Group about $100,000 in 2022 for failing to maintain written procedures to reduce exposure to COVID-19. GEO Group is contesting the fine.
“We’ve experienced truly inhumane living conditions,” Dilmar Lobos, 28, told KFF Health News by phone from the Golden State Annex immigration detention center in McFarland, Kern County, where she has been held since January while awaiting an immigration hearing.
Lobos, who was born in El Salvador and uses “they/them” pronouns, had been a lawful permanent resident for 15 years but was detained by immigration authorities while on parole.
In early July, Lobos and 58 other detainees at Golden State Annex and the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield launched a labor and hunger strike to demand an end to poor living conditions, solitary confinement and inadequate medical and mental health services.
Lobos said her dorm rooms were overcrowded, her air purifiers were clogged, there were rats and cockroaches running around in the kitchen, water was leaking from the ceiling and detainees with flu-like symptoms were unable to get medication or COVID-19 tests even when they requested them.
ICE regulations require facilities that have had no COVID-19 hospitalizations or deaths in the past week to test symptomatic detainees upon arrival. Facilities that have had two or more hospitalizations or deaths in the past week must test all detainees upon arrival. After that, it’s up to health care providers at each facility to decide when testing is required.
After filing a complaint against GEO Group in June alleging neglect of her medical and mental health care, Lobos said she was held in solitary confinement for 20 days without a functioning toilet: “I couldn’t flush so I smelled like my own urine and feces.”
Ferreira declined to comment on Lobos’s allegations but said in an email that detainees receive “round-the-clock medical care,” including doctors, dentists, psychologists and referrals to outside specialists.
“GEO disputes the unfounded allegations made regarding access to medical services at ICE processing centers contracted by GEO,” he said.
A surprise inspection by federal immigration authorities in April 2023 found that Golden State Annex employees failed to respond to medical complaints that could have adversely affected detainees’ health within 24 hours and did not properly maintain detainees’ medical records.
Lobos said no one is addressing their concerns and the situation is only getting worse.
“Please go and visit these places,” Lobos urged local health officials.
This story was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Healthcare Foundation.
