The order, issued Wednesday by U.S. District Judge James Simmons Jr. of the Southern District of California, requires the privately run detention center to permit an inspection of the 1,400-bed facility. The ruling could shape how counties across California use a new state law that gives local governments additional authority to inspect privately operated immigration detention centers.

San Diego County sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in March after two county supervisors and a health inspector were denied full access to the Otay Mesa facility, which is owned and operated by CoreCivic. The county was the first in California to attempt to use inspection powers granted under a 2024 state law.

Simmons indicated last month that the county was likely to prevail on its claim that it has authority under state law to conduct public health inspections at the facility.

In Wednesday’s order, the judge wrote that the inspection must be completed “as soon as possible” and no later than June 17, 2026. He also directed CoreCivic to provide a list of policies and procedures requested by the county.

“The county is responsible for the safety and health of anyone within its jurisdiction, including people detained in the facility,” County Counsel Damon Brown said at a news conference after a May hearing.

Otay Mesa is one of eight privately operated immigration detention centers in California. Together, those facilities hold about 5,300 people, up from roughly 3,100 shortly after President Trump took office in April 2025 and began a nationwide immigration enforcement campaign.

The judge also instructed county officials to work with the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CoreCivic to resolve details of the inspection. Those issues include who may participate, which parts of the facility may be reviewed, and how officials should obtain consent from detainees for interviews and medical record reviews.

During the court hearing, CoreCivic attorney Anne Orcutt said the Tennessee-based private prison company had filed a California Public Records Act request with San Diego County to determine whether county supervisors typically accompany health officials during public health inspections.

Speaking by Zoom, Orcutt described the county’s request to inspect the facility as unprecedented and discriminatory toward the federal government.

San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who was denied access during the attempted inspection in February, dismissed that argument as a distraction.

“That is a clear red herring,” Lawson-Remer said. “The first people who arrived were a public health official and a nurse. They were not allowed access to any of the relevant documents and were removed from the facility. The public health inspection was denied with or without our presence.”

At a March news conference announcing the lawsuit, county supervisors said reporting by CalMatters had played an important role in prompting the inspection order. Supervisor Paloma Aguirre specifically cited the case of a deaf Mongolian man who spent more than four months in custody without access to a Mongolian sign language interpreter, a situation his attorney described as total isolation.

CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin said the company’s top priority is “the safety, health and well-being of the individuals in our care.”

“We fully respect the judicial process and remain committed to working with both ICE and San Diego County to reach a mutually agreed-upon resolution to this matter,” Gustin said.

Original source: CalMatters

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They call themselves the Godmothers of the Disappeared.

The interfaith group has continued meeting long after the large demonstrations around downtown Los Angeles faded from daily view. Its members say their weekly vigil is meant to honor those taken into immigration custody, support their families and offer a quieter form of public witness amid the continuing fallout from federal immigration enforcement across Southern California.

Katharine Guerrero, one of the participants, told the group that Tongva Chicana activist Gloria Arellanes had taught her the meaning of standing in a circle — a symbol, she said, of unity rather than division. She also noted the layered history surrounding the civic center area, including its significance to the Tongva people, unmarked Indigenous graves near a nearby church, the former site of a slavery auction and the location across the freeway where 18 Chinese men and boys were lynched in 1871.

For the Godmothers, the federal building has become another site tied to state power and racial injustice, this time through the detention and deportation of immigrants.

The group describes its work as a companion to rapid-response networks, legal aid efforts and street protests organized in immigrant communities. Its members advocate for detainees to be released or returned, oppose federal tactics they say divide communities and call on immigration officers, law enforcement and military personnel to reconsider their roles.

When large protests erupted around the federal building last June, demonstrators filled nearby streets to oppose immigration arrests, raids and the deployment of military forces. Guerrero was there as a volunteer medical aide, assisting people injured by rubber bullets.

As confrontations escalated among sheriff’s deputies, police, federal agents and protesters, Guerrero said the Godmothers sought to create a different kind of space — one centered on prayer, conversation and presence.

“With godmothers, there’s a disarmament that allows for conversation,” Guerrero said. “We forget we belong to one another and in those moments, you get the opportunity to remember.”

Guerrero said she saw the vigil affect some National Guard members and military personnel stationed near federal property last summer, describing small moments of visible attention during public prayers.

“We are called to be in solidarity, even if that means the person suited up,” she said. “That’s the hard work.”

The group’s name is inspired by Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the women who gathered in Buenos Aires during the country’s military dictatorship in the late 1970s to demand answers about children and relatives who had been disappeared by security forces.

The Rev. Alexia Salvatierra said the Argentine mothers not only prayed for their missing children, but also for the soldiers serving the regime.

“They also gave flowers to the soldiers and they won,” Salvatierra said. “They changed the regime and were able to liberate their sons and daughters from prison.”

In Los Angeles, the Godmothers have paired their vigils with direct assistance. Members say they have raised about $22,000 to help more than 100 families affected by immigration detention, including families who lost primary wage earners. Some of the money has gone toward bail. Members said they have encountered mothers with children outside detention facilities, crying and unsure how they could afford legal help.

During the weekly vigil, participants walk together in song to two entrances of the federal complex where detainees are held. At one stop, near a driveway leading to an underground loading dock, Rosa Manriquez read a short biography of Rutilio Grande, the Salvadoran priest whose killing helped move Archbishop Oscar Romero to speak out against state repression. Both men were later killed by a death squad.

Manriquez then led a call-and-response prayer and a litany naming figures such as Emma Goldman, James Baldwin and Octavia Butler — people the group holds up as advocates, writers and organizers who pushed for a more just society.

Susan Garcia also spoke about a recent visit to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, the private detention facility in the Mojave Desert where many immigrants detained in Southern California are sent.

The group then continued toward a rear loading dock near the Metropolitan Detention Center, singing the Black spiritual “Down by the Riverside.” Richard Barragan offered a prayer through a microphone connected to a small rolling speaker, intended to be heard by detainees and federal personnel alike.

The Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble led the final song, “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed on Freedom).” Afterward, participants approached the black chain-link fence installed last summer and placed white daisies near the entrance.

Manriquez said the flowers are meant for detainees to see, but also as an offering to the federal agents and military members working there.

“They don’t have to do this,” she said.

For the Godmothers of the Disappeared, the ritual is both remembrance and a call to action. While the urgent work of protecting immigrant communities continues, members say the vigils are also meant to help Southern Californians imagine what comes after the raids, detentions and separations — and to begin the difficult work of building something more just.

Original source: CalMatters

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    The report focuses on immigration detainers, which are requests made by ICE asking local law enforcement agencies to notify federal officials before releasing a deportable immigrant from custody. Detainers also request that inmates be held for up to 48 additional hours so ICE agents have time to take them into federal custody.

    Data compiled for 2025 shows Riverside County transferred 158 out of 1,380 inmates with immigration detainers into ICE custody, amounting to an 11.4% transfer rate. San Bernardino County transferred 180 out of 1,674 detainees, or 10.8%. Both counties ranked above the statewide average of 8.49%, according to the analysis.

    By comparison, Los Angeles County transferred 4.6% of inmates with immigration detainers, while Orange County transferred 7.6%. Across California, 2,077 inmates out of 24,438 people flagged with immigration detainers were ultimately transferred to ICE custody during 2025.

    The findings were assembled by Keith Maben, a sophomore at Claremont McKenna College and head of the Immigration Task Force at the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights. Maben said Riverside and San Bernardino counties stood out because their transfer rates were noticeably higher than California’s average.

    “San Bernardino and Riverside County were on the higher end of enforcement data,” Maben said. “Both of them had results where about 10 to 12% of these detainees actually resulted in people going into ICE custody.”

    Maben noted that while the percentage differences may appear small on paper, the contrast becomes clearer when compared to counties such as Santa Clara County, where less than 1% of detainees with immigration detainers were transferred to ICE.

    The report also found a pattern between transfer rates and political leanings across California counties. Counties with more conservative voter bases and sheriffs tended to report higher levels of cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

    Among the counties with the highest transfer percentages were Imperial County at 33.7%, Kings County at 29.1%, Santa Barbara County at 24.9%, Tuolumne County at 24.3%, and Del Norte County at 22.2%. Riverside County ranked 12th statewide, while San Bernardino County ranked 13th.

    Maben said his research examined how sheriff’s departments interpret California’s Senate Bill 54, also known as the California Values Act, which limits cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities.

    Through public records requests, the Mgrublian Center obtained documents outlining agreements between Riverside County and federal agencies, including a 2020 memorandum with Homeland Security Investigations and a 2024 agreement with U.S. Border Patrol tied to drug smuggling investigations.

    “We found a very strong effect where California sheriffs who tended to cooperate with the federal government or have memorandums of understanding also tended to have higher enforcement data,” Maben said.

    One document highlighted in the report was Riverside County’s 2018 ICE Detainer Eligibility Worksheet, which lists 30 serious or violent felonies that may justify notifying ICE before an inmate’s release.

    Immigrant rights advocates say the numbers are troubling, though not unexpected. Eddie Torres, policy director for the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, pointed to the presence of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and the nearby Desert View Annex as a possible reason the Inland Empire sees higher transfer rates.

    “When you have a detention center near you, it makes sense you’d have a higher rate of transfers because it makes logistical sense,” Torres said.

    The Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice is part of the Shut Down Adelanto Coalition, a group of organizations pushing to close the Adelanto detention facilities operated by GEO Group. Torres said advocates came close to shutting the facilities down in 2023 before federal officials renewed the contract for another five years.

    The discussion around immigration transfers has also become tied to California’s broader political debate over immigration enforcement. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is currently running for governor, has publicly advocated for stronger cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration agencies. His campaign platform calls for ending policies such as SB 54 and allowing local law enforcement to work more closely with federal immigration officials in criminal cases involving undocumented immigrants.

    In response to questions about the report, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Lt. Deirdre Vickers said the department follows California law and does not exercise discretion beyond the legal requirements outlined in SB 54.

    “The Riverside Sheriff’s Office complies with the law,” Vickers said in a written statement. “First, the Sheriff’s Office receives a request for transfers from ICE. The Sheriff’s Office then determines the inmates who meet the requirements under SB 54. Of those inmates, ICE determines which inmates are transferred into their custody.”

    The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department disputed portions of the data used in the report. Department officials said they received 1,423 ICE notifications in 2025 rather than the 1,674 cited in the analysis, and said only 47 inmates were transferred to ICE custody instead of 180.

    Maben acknowledged that some of the data may be imperfect because it was reconstructed through federal public records requests and not reported directly by ICE.

    “I think it’s important to take this data with a grain of salt,” Maben said. “It tells us something, but it’s not going to inform the whole story.”

    ICE also questioned the accuracy of the Deportation Data Project, which supplied much of the information used in the analysis. In a statement, the agency said its internal systems do not support the project’s numbers and that ICE could not verify the completeness or accuracy of the outside data.

    San Bernardino County Sheriff Shannon Dicus argued that restrictions created by SB 54 have shifted immigration enforcement away from county jails and into public spaces. Dicus said allowing transfers to occur inside secure jail facilities would reduce risks to both officers and the public.

    “Those in-custody transfers provided a more predictable, secure, and efficient process for law enforcement and reduced risk to the public,” Dicus said in a written statement. “Current law prohibits that level of coordination.”

    Los Angeles County officials said their department requires a federal judicial warrant signed by a judge before an inmate can be transferred to ICE custody, in accordance with county policy and California law. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes also stated publicly that ICE ultimately decides whether to pick up inmates with detainers after their jail commitments end.

    Meanwhile, immigrant rights advocates believe immigration enforcement activity will continue increasing throughout 2026 as the federal government expands detention operations nationwide. Torres said advocacy groups are increasingly concerned about what they describe as more tactical immigration enforcement operations occurring in courthouses and other public settings.

    Maben’s full report for the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

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Advocates say the agency began transferring immigrant detainees to the McFarland facility last week.

The facility, called Central Valley Annex, brings the total number of active detention centers in California to eight, up from six at the beginning of 2025. They are all operated by private companies and they have a total capacity of nearly 10,000 beds. 

Both of the detention centers that opened since President Donald Trump took office had been used as private prisons until California’s incarcerated population fell to a level that allowed the Newsom administration to end those contracts.

The latest figures show an average of about 5,337 people are being held in California immigration detention facilities, according to DetentionReports.com. That number is up 72% from the average daily population of about 3,104 individuals being held in California in April 2025. 

This newest facility is part of a cluster of detention centers in Kern County, which includes the Golden State Annex in McFarland. It is unclear if GEO obtained conditional use permits or business licenses from the city of McFarland to start detaining immigrants at Central Valley Annex.

Advocates for detained immigrants said they did not have an opportunity to raise their concerns at public hearings before ICE began using the new site.

“We don’t want another ICE detention center in California, or anywhere else for that matter,” said anti-ICE detention advocate Edwin Carmona-Cruz about the new Central Valley Annex.  

The Central Valley Annex is adjacent to Geo Group’s Golden State Annex, which is holding an average daily population of 565 people.

Until 2020, GEO Group operated a cluster of private prisons in McFarland for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The writing was on the wall for their closure as private prisons because Gov. Gavin Newsom had committed to ending those contracts. 

California Democrats in 2019 tried to stop GEO Group from turning the sites into immigrant detention facilities by passing a law to prohibit that use. 

ICE signed a 15-year contract worth $1.5 billion with GEO for two McFarland sites and one in Bakersfield just weeks before the law went into effect. In 2023, a federal court found the state law unconstitutional, ruling it infringed on federal authority to enforce immigration law. 

In 2020, the McFarland mayor resigned because the city’s planning commission deadlocked on GEO’s proposal to convert two of its sites there into immigration detention facilities. Then-Mayor Manuel Cantu Jr. told the Desert Sun the day after the vote that the small city relies on the approximately $2 million annually that GEO pays in property taxes and utility fees to provide vital municipal services like water, sewer and public safety. 

The private prison company appealed, though, and eventually was able to move forward in 2020 with opening Golden State Annex for its work with ICE. 

GEO told the planning commission in 2020 that opening both the Golden State and Central Valley annexes would bring the town $511,000 annually in mitigation payments, along with well-paying jobs. 

California state law requires a city or county to provide a 180-day notice and hold public hearings before approving or allowing the reuse of a facility for immigration detention.

The city clerk and city manager of McFarland, a small agricultural town with a population of about 15,000, did not immediately respond to phone calls and questions from CalMatters. 

Jason Sweeney, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the facility opened “under an existing intergovernmental services agreement” that “has been in place for several years.” He said the Central Valley Annex began housing detainees within the last two weeks and that the agency would add the new site to its bi-weekly reports.

California’s newest detention centers

Last year, CoreCivic, another private prison operator, opened a 2,560-bed immigrant detention center in California City, in eastern Kern County, on the site of another shuttered state prison. It’s the largest ICE detention center in the state. The company began detaining immigrants there in late August 2025 without acquiring necessary paperwork from California City, contributing to legal and community opposition. 

According to GEO Group’s website, the newly activated Central Valley Annex facility is accredited by the American Correctional Association and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. It previously housed detainees from the U.S. Marshals Service. 

ICE did not immediately respond to a question about whether the facility is now holding both U.S. Marshal and immigrant detainees. 

The unprecedented growth in people being held in ICE detention centers nationwide has been fueled by an influx of $45 billion delivered through the spending law Trump signed last year that he referred to as the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Trump administration is aiming to hold more than 100,000 immigrant detainees on any given day as part of his massive deportation campaign. When he took office in 2025, ICE was holding an average of about 40,000 people per day. 

State oversight of conditions inside

Carmona-Cruz, the co-executive director of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, said people being sent to Central Valley Annex “are at risk of the same terrible abuses and inhumane conditions that people in the ICE detention center next door have faced for years.” 

For years, detainees at the Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex facilities — the others under the same contract as Central Valley Annex — have alleged abuse and dangerous conditions, including medical neglect, being paid only $1 a day for labor, being held in solitary confinement after reporting sexual abuse and inadequate food. 

In response to some of those previous allegations, Chris V. Ferreira, the spokesman for GEO Group, has previously told CalMatters that his company “strongly disagrees with these baseless allegations, which are part of a long-standing, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contractors.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. 

“The people being sent there are our community members, neighbors, family members,” Carmona-Cruz  said. “ICE and GEO Group are incapable of meeting the human needs of the people they detain. ICE detention is not only unjust and unnecessary — it is deadly. Nearly 50 people have died in ICE detention since Trump took office again, and it’s only getting worse.” 

Last year,  the California Attorney General’s Office released a report raising concerns about health care inside ICE facilities. At that time, there were only six detention centers operating in the state. 

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The ban on employment would apply to those who are actively involved in arresting and deporting people between Jan. 20, 2025, and Jan. 20, 2029 — the duration of President Donald Trump‘s second term — and would disqualify them from future employment as a police officer, peace officer, public school teacher or civil servant, among other jobs.

“I am introducing a bill today that draws a moral line here in California. We’re calling it like we see it, like we feel it, and respectfully, the GTFO ICE Bill — in other words, Get the Feds Out,” said Assemblymember Mark González, D-Los Angeles, apparently playing off another acronym that normally involves an expletive.

The official text of the proposed bill was not yet available on Friday, Feb. 6, but González, who is co-introducing the legislation with Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Hollister, said people who engage in permissible law enforcement activities as outlined under California’s sanctuary state law, known as Senate Bill 54, would be exempt from his proposed employment ban. (An example of an exemption would be if a law enforcement agent arrested a violent, convicted offender.)

The intent of the bill, he said, is to bar future public employment for agents who are on the ground and actively rounding up and arresting people as part of Trump’s mass deportation program.

“The message is very simple: If you choose to terrorize communities instead of serving them, California will not reward you with a public paycheck,” González said during a news conference.

González said details of the bill are still being worked out and hasn’t decided whether the restriction on future public employment in California should be a lifetime ban.

The news conference was held outside the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. The location was no accident.

It was there in 1942 that Japanese Americans were ordered to report and be transported to internment camps during World War II.

It was also there that federal agents carried out an immigration enforcement operation last August as Gov. Gavin Newsom led a kickoff rally in support of Proposition 50, the congressional redistricting measure which voters ultimately passed.

State Sen. María Elena Durazo, D-Los Angeles, who is considering signing on as a co-author of the proposed legislation, said since Trump returned to office, “immigration enforcement has transformed into something unrecognizable — militarized authoritarian force that operates without warrants, without accountability, without any sense of humanity.”

Similar legislation was introduced last month by Assemblymember Anamarie Ávila Farías, a Democrat from the Bay Area.

Her bill would disqualify someone from becoming a peace officer or working in school settings — as a teacher, principal, superintendent or other administrative positions, for example — if they worked for ICE between Sept. 1, 2025, and Jan. 20, 2029, or for corrections departments in Alabama or Georgia between Jan. 1, 2020, and Jan. 1, 2026.

Democrats in the Legislature are pushing a number of immigration-related bills this year.

The Senate recently advanced legislation that would make it easier for people to sue federal immigration officials if their civil rights are violated.

Sen. Tony Strickland — who, along with the rest of his GOP colleagues, voted against S.B. 747, the No Kings Act passed last month to make it easier to sue federal officials — criticized the effort at the time of the vote as “a little bit more about politics and a little less about policy.”

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Since Tuesday, Jan. 27, student-led walkouts to rally against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity were reported in cities including Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana and Ontario.

About 200 students from Poly High School in Riverside walked out of classes Thursday, Jan. 29. Students were seen moving along Central and Victoria avenues outside the campus, holding signs and collectively chanting “ICE out.”

“Stop pretending your racism is patriotism,” one student’s sign read.

Riverside Unified School District spokesperson Andrew Shortall said students returned to class shortly after 11 a.m.

While students take to the streets to voice their opinions, backers of Trump’s immigration policy say the deportations are needed to remove violent criminals who pose a threat to others and to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.

In Rancho Cucamonga, videos posted to TikTok showed students from Etiwanda, Alta Loma and Rancho Cucamonga high schools protesting on the corner of Foothill and Day Creek boulevards on Tuesday, Jan. 27. Some waved flags, another had a cardboard cutout of Trump.

“Three rival schools protested together,” the TikTok post said.

More protests are planned for Friday, Jan. 30, during a “nationwide shutdown” urging activists not to show up for classes, work, and calling for an end to funding immigration enforcement. Protests have erupted in Minneapolis and nationwide, with many calling for for an end to ICE tactics after the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti.

An action guide put together by Somali and Black student organizations in Minneapolis encourages students to walk out Friday “to protest ICE terror in our communities.”

“While Congress is debating giving ICE even more money, it’s time to take our movement to the next level. ICE has kidnapped our neighbors and classmates; they do not make our communities more safe. We demand ICE out for good,” the guide states. “Students are always at the heart of movements for justice across the world.”

A letter from officials in the Coachella Valley Unified School District encourages parents to speak with their children “about making thoughtful and responsible choices during the school day.”

It was unclear if other Inland school districts had sent similar messages to parents and community members.

The post Inland Empire students walk out to protest ICE operations across U.S. appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

2. Ask if You’re Free to Leave
If an officer says yes, walk away calmly. If they say no, you have the right to remain silent.

3. You Do Not Have to Answer Questions
You are not required to share your immigration status. You can say:
👉 “I am exercising my right to remain silent.”

4. Do Not Show False Documents
Never present fake papers. It can make your case worse.

5. Ask for a Warrant
If ICE comes to your home, you do not have to open the door unless they show a judicial warrant signed by a judge (not just an ICE form).

6. You Have the Right to an Attorney
You can ask to speak to a lawyer before answering questions. You do not have to sign anything without legal advice.

7. Document the Encounter
If safe, write down the officer’s name, badge number, and details of the stop.

Resources for Inland Empire Residents

• ACLU of Southern California: aclusocal.org
• Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice: (951) 394-2238
• Know Your Rights cards (printable in English & Spanish) available online.

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