California DOJ report finds worsening conditions, overcrowding at ICE facilities

LOS ANGELES () — The number of privately-operated ICE facilities in California has increased and so has the number of people in detention.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the state has seen a sharp spike in detainee populations since its last review.

“Since our 2023 inspections, there has been a 162% surge,” he said Friday.

The findings are detailed in the California Department of Justice’s latest report, based on inspections conducted in 2025. According to the attorney general, conditions inside many of the facilities are declining by most measures.

“This has been driven in large part by the Trump administration’s aggressive and inhumane mass deportation campaign, including its refusal to release detainees on bond,” Bonta said.

The report notes that while experiences varied across facilities, investigators identified widespread issues, including inadequate medical care, delays in treatment, overcrowding and excessive use of force.

Officials said the evaluation relied on ICE’s own detention standards.

“The metrics that we used to evaluate these centers are ICE’s own self-imposed detention standards and they continue to fail to meet their own standards,” Bonta said.

As part of the review, Department of Justice staff toured facilities, examined records and interviewed both staff and 194 detained individuals across seven of California’s now eight ICE facilities.

“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. “So we want to tell Americans how their tax dollars are being spent.”

The Department of Homeland Security pushed back on the findings, effectively denying the report’s conclusions and describing its medical care as comprehensive.

Visits cited in the report were conducted in 2025 following ICE raids and an increase in federal immigration enforcement operations in Southern California.

The report also documented six deaths between September and March of this year, which Bonta said is the highest number recorded since the state began conducting reviews in 2017.