Six Die in California Immigration Detention Centers Amid 162% Population Increase

Six people died in California immigration detention centers over the past year, the highest death toll since the state began conducting inspections seven years ago, according to a 175-page report released Friday by the California Department of Justice.

The deaths come as the Trump administration mass deportation campaign drove up the population inside California detention centers by more than 150%. At the time of the investigators’ visits, 6,028 people were held in immigration detention in California.

That figure represented a 162% increase from the 2,300 held during inspections in 2023. In 2024, there were zero deaths in California detention centers, according to both the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Attorney General’s office. Four of the deaths occurred at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County.

Two people died at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico. In all four Adelanto cases, families of the deceased allege the facility failed to provide adequate medical care. The Department of Homeland Security called the allegations in the lawsuit about conditions inside Adelanto false.

“ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies to ensure that ICE facilities comply with performance-based national detention standards,” a then-spokesperson for DHS said when the lawsuit was filed. Nationally, 18 people have died in ICE facilities this year. Since the start of the Trump administration, 48 people have died in detention.

9 per 100,000 people, nearly seven times higher than fiscal year 2023 levels. State inspectors interviewed 194 detainees from more than 120 countries between July and November 2025. Last year, inspectors focused on lapses in mental health care across the six facilities operating in California in the early months of the second Trump administration.

This year, state investigators examined how the dramatic surge in detainee populations strained conditions and access to medical care at all facilities operating across California. At a new detention center that opened in a former state prison in California City last year, investigators described crisis-level medical staffing that contributed to delays in care.

At the time of inspection, the California City center had only one physician for nearly 1,000 detainees.

Several detainees cried as they relayed the conditions of their confinement there to state investigators. California has the third highest ICE detainee population, behind Texas and Louisiana. The state is home to two of the seven largest ICE facilities nationwide.

Detainees in California were mostly from Mexico, India, Guatemala, El Salvador, China, Russia, Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, and Honduras. Since January 2025, the federal government has defunded legal programs to inform people of their rights, shut down Department of Homeland Security civil rights oversight offices, and stopped protections for transgender detainees.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement stopped including congressionally mandated data on transgender people in its biweekly statistical reports in February 2025.

ICE also removed from its website a policy memo that committed the agency to creating a safe environment for transgender people. Loba, a transgender woman from El Salvador, was detained at California City for six months in 2025. She experienced traumatizing sexual harassment and intimidation from guards while being housed in the male dorms at California City.

Loba decided to sign her voluntary departure paperwork to return to El Salvador because of the harassment and lack of support. “That is absolutely the reason,” Loba said. “I have been fighting my immigration case for two years, and then after not being around my community and the lack of support for the LGBTQ+ community inside detention centers, and then being a victim of harassment, it was really intimidating.

At Adelanto, a person reported that guards deployed pepper spray in a confined room holding about 50 people. Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego is the only facility in California that has a policy of strip-searching detainees after every visit with someone who is not a lawyer. Women described the searches as humiliating and denigrating, sometimes while menstruating.

ICE opened the Central Valley Annex detention center in McFarland; it began receiving detainees in April 2026. All of the detention centers are managed by private companies under contracts with the federal government.

California tried to ban private for-profit detention centers in 2019.