Many detainees arrested at routine immigration appointments, say Padilla and Schiff

Overcrowded cells, moldy food and lack of medical care are some of the issues plaguing a California detention center amid the recent onslaught of immigration raids by the Trump administration, according to Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, who on Tuesday toured the facility in Kern County.

About 1,450 people are currently being held at the California City Immigration Processing Center, according to officials. Schiff and Padilla expect more to be brought to the facility as the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement across the country.

The Kern County facility has the capacity to hold 2,500 people, but it already appears short-staffed and lacking proper medical supplies, like insulin for people with diabetes, the Democratic senators said after their congressional oversight tour.

The majority of the detainees they met at the facility do not have a prior criminal records and were detained at their immigration appointments.

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The senators toured the facility and met with staff for roughly six hours Tuesday. They left the tour concerned about the conditions at the facility.

“A lot of the concerns we heard were about very valid healthcare issues not being addressed. The staff here acknowledged there’s been gaps,” Schiff said.

Some of the detainees said they became ill after eating moldy food and drinking water while in custody.

“I’m leaving here even more concerned than I was when I arrived,” Padilla said. “If the administration is true to their word, the population here is only going to grow. So the need to address nutrition, medical attention, mental healthcare is only going to grow.

Detainees from across Southern California are being held at California City Immigration Processing Center in Kern County.

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Marina Peña

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The LA Local

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Some of the men and women being held at the facility were detained in Los Angeles County, but others were taken from other parts of the country.

“That is absolutely a concern, not just for people from within the state of California to travel long distances, unable to see a family member, but I met a number of detainees here from elsewhere in the country,” Padilla said. “So access to their counsel prior and certainly to their family members is only exacerbated, to that effect.” 

Padilla asked, “Why are people from other states being sent here? We also hear people from California being sent to other states.”

Last year, 32 people died while in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to reporting from The Guardian. Some died in detention facilities, field offices and others died after they were transferred to hospitals for medical treatment.

At least six people have died while in ICE custody this year, according to Padilla and Schiff.

“In terms of getting the standards enforced to make sure they’re being upheld, that requires oversight, and it should be more than the two of us coming out to the detention facility without the power of the subpoena,” Schiff said. “Congress should hold hearings about the conditions in these detention facilities.”

The California City Immigration Processing Center in Kern County is roughly 100 miles north of Los Angeles and operated by private-prison contractor CoreCivic. 

CoreCivic and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Tuesday’s tour. The California City facility has not been inspected by the federal government since it started to receive detainees in August.

Padilla, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee, and Schiff toured the facility as masked agents continue to carry out an unrelenting wave of immigration sweeps across the country. The senators spoke to reporters outside the remote detention center, one year after President Donald Trump was sworn into office for his second term.

“Today marks the first anniversary of the second Trump administration, and if there’s two takeaways from his first year,” Padilla said, “one is the economic chaos and uncertainty that so many working families are feeling, and the second clearly is the cruelty of a mass deportation agenda, which has included a lot of indiscriminate detentions, arrests, deportations, many without due process.

”The facility is the largest detention center in California. Up until March 2024, the facility served as both a state and federal prison, but was taken over by ICE last year.

A CoreCivic officer stood guard near the facility parking lot throughout the morning. A gaggle of news reporters waited outside the facility’s barbed wire fence for the tour to be complete. The oversight visit comes as some Democrats in Congress consider various restrictions on funding for ICE operations and two weeks after federal agents shot and killed Renee Good in  Minneapolis during an immigration operation. The latest estimates show that more than 73,000 people are being held in ICE custody .