Immigrant detention facilities across the country — including several in California — are earning glowing marks for health and safety under the Trump administration, even as deaths inside those same facilities have climbed to their highest level in more than two decades, according to a new investigation released this week.
The nonpartisan watchdog group Project on Government Oversight examined internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement inspection records and found that the number of detention centers earning the agency’s top rating of “superior” has tripled since 2024. That improvement in scores, the report notes, came at the same time ICE loosened its own detention standards and cut back on the frequency of inspections.
The findings stand in sharp contrast to a steady stream of complaints coming out of detention facilities in recent years — accounts of contaminated drinking water, poorly trained medical staff, and long delays in treating both urgent and chronic health conditions. Those concerns have been raised not just by detainees and advocacy groups, but by disability rights organizations, a federal judge and California’s own Department of Justice.
Nowhere is the disconnect more stark than at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County, which has recorded four deaths since August 2025 — more than any other detention facility in the nation during that period, according to the watchdog group’s data.
Nationally, 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE custody since 2004, according to tracking by The Guardian, even as the population held in detention has swelled to record levels. Federal data show at least 65,000 people were in ICE custody as of July 11.
The inspection scores come from ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight, which is also responsible for flagging “deficiencies,” or violations of federal detention standards. Those violations carry real consequences on paper — a facility that fails inspection twice in a row can lose its federal funding. Yet investigators found that outcome rarely happens.
“Despite this provision — or perhaps because of it — detention facilities rarely received failing grades from inspectors between fiscal years 2022 and 2026,” the report’s authors wrote.
The numbers tell a striking story: even as the detained population has grown dramatically, the number of documented violations at ICE facilities fell by 68% between 2022 and 2025, the analysis found.
The Project on Government Oversight, which bills itself as an independent investigative nonprofit, said ICE did not respond to repeated requests for comment before the report’s release Thursday. CalMatters has also reached out to ICE for comment.
Companies that operate many of these facilities under federal contract, including GEO Group and CoreCivic, have frequently pointed to their compliance with federal detention standards when responding to specific complaints raised by journalists and advocates — the same standards now under scrutiny in the new report.
Original source: CalMatters
