A state report card on federal detention

Assembly Bill 103, passed in 2017, requires the California Department of Justice to inspect and publicly report on every civil immigration detention facility operating in the state. The mandate runs through 1 July 2027. The document released on 14 May 2026 is the fifth such report, following reviews published in 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2025.

For this round, Cal DOJ inspected all seven facilities active in 2025, supported by a medical expert and an immigration-detention expert. Staff toured each site, reviewed rosters, logs, policies and detainee records, and interviewed facility staff plus 194 detained people. The headline finding is blunt: conditions largely worsened as a federal mass-deportation campaign drove overcrowding and strained resources, and the facilities are failing to meet ICE’s own detention standards.

A population that nearly tripled

Between the 2023 and 2025 site visits, the detained population statewide grew roughly 162%, from 2,303 to 6,028. Cal DOJ attributes the jump in part to the federal government’s refusal to release detainees on bond, layered onto an aggressive detention and deportation campaign. The growth was not evenly distributed: some facilities saw modest increases while others multiplied many times over.

Most are low-security, with no criminal history

The federal government has framed the campaign as targeting “criminals.” The roster data does not bear that out. Synthesizing the facilities’ own classification systems, Cal DOJ found that 62% of detainees were classified “Low” security, and a further 5% “Medium Low.” The report states plainly that most detained people had no criminal history.

The 6,028 people came from more than 120 countries. The borderlands shape is visible in the data: Mexico alone accounted for 1,225 detainees, more than the next two countries combined.

Six deaths in seven months

Between September 2025 and March 2026, six detained people died in California’s ICE facilities. It is the highest count since Cal DOJ began conducting AB 103 reviews in 2017. Four deaths occurred at Adelanto, reportedly linked to substandard medical care; two occurred at Imperial, reported as a seizure and a heart condition.

The deaths sit on top of a structural problem in care delivery. Since 3 October 2025, ICE reportedly stopped paying third-party medical providers after terminating its claims-processing arrangement, a disruption the report says has degraded access to outside specialty care across California facilities.

Eight categories of failure

Cal DOJ identified violations of ICE’s own detention standards at all seven active facilities. Experiences varied site to site, but the report groups the breakdowns into eight recurring areas.

What law these conditions break

Cal DOJ measures conditions against ICE’s own detention standards and US constitutional minimums. Mapped onto international human rights instruments, the same findings implicate at least nine recognized rights. A note on force: the United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture (CAT), so those obligations are binding; the ICESCR was signed but never ratified; the UDHR is a declaration; the Nelson Mandela Rules are authoritative UN standards. The strongest legal claims rest on the ICCPR and CAT.

Two findings deserve emphasis as the clearest violations of binding standards. Prolonged solitary confinement at Golden State (100 to 200-plus days) and Imperial (over 200 days, including for people receiving mental-health care) exceeds by an order of magnitude the 15-day threshold at which the Nelson Mandela Rules classify solitary as prolonged and prohibited. And the six deaths place the right to life itself in question.

How long people stay

Because the federal government has restricted bond, people are held longer. Average length of detention varied widely by facility, from roughly a month at Mesa Verde to more than four months at Imperial. Individual maximums were far higher: one Adelanto roster recorded a stay of 1,939 days.

Eight facilities, three private operators

Every immigration detention facility in California is privately run, by GEO Group, CoreCivic, or Management & Training Corporation. California City opened in August 2025. While Cal DOJ was finalizing this report, an eighth facility, Central Valley Annex, began receiving ICE detainees in April 2026; it is not reviewed here. Reports suggest the federal government is eyeing further sites.

Otay Mesa’s 2025 count exceeded its contracted ICE capacity (shown in red); detainees reported cots, or “boats,” added to housing bays during surges. California City’s contractual guaranteed-minimum beds are not public.

The reporting mandate, and the fight to keep it

The reports exist only because of state law, and that law is set to expire. AB 103’s mandate sunsets on 1 July 2027. Senate Bill 1399, sponsored by AG Bonta and authored by Senator María Elena Durazo, would remove the sunset so the reviews continue. A separate bill, SB 941 (Senator Steve Padilla), targets the commissary price markups that force detainees to spend heavily simply to eat.

• AB 103 (2017) — mandates Cal DOJ inspections of immigration detention through 1 July 2027.
• SB 1399 (Durazo) — would strike the sunset clause so reviews continue past 2027.
• SB 941 (Padilla) — would bar excessive markups on goods sold inside detention facilities.
• Amicus briefs — California has co-led six multi-state briefs opposing the federal no-bond policy, and filed a brief in March opposing conditions at Adelanto.

Cal DOJ will hold a public community briefing on the report’s findings on 9 June 2026, 1:00–2:00 PM PT.