SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve conditions at the California City Detention Facility, California’s largest immigration detention center, granting a preliminary injunction that requires the agency to address what advocates describe as inhumane treatment of detained people.
In response to conditions at the facility, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California “granted a preliminary injunction to improve some conditions” for detained people. As a result, ICE is required to “provide basic components of a functional healthcare system — things like access to emergency services, specialists, and prescribed medications — and [is mandated] to provide access to a court-appointed monitor to ensure compliance with these provisions,” according to an ACLU press release.
The preliminary injunction protects more than 1,000 people currently detained at the facility, granting provisional class certification and “[reserving] the remainder of the relief Plaintiffs requested for a further court order.” The ACLU press release further adds that “the order also requires ICE to provide attorney access, including contact attorney visits, as well as appropriate clothing and blankets for the frigid temperatures detained people report experiencing.”
The living conditions at the California City Detention Facility are dire. According to Margaret Attridge of Courthouse News Service, “the plaintiffs describe being housed in small, concrete cells without the necessary clothing, food or water. They further say the defendants are violating detainees’ constitutional rights by denying them basic medical care, disability accommodations and access to lawyers.” Such conditions are the reason why the plaintiffs, seven individuals presently detained at the facility, “filed a class action against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security in November,” according to Attridge.
The facility’s history and the context within which it currently operates are also noteworthy. Before being converted into an ICE detention center in September 2025, it “operated as a federal and state correctional facility.” Moreover, the facility, which is “owned and operated by CoreCivic, a private, for-profit prison company, is located around 100 miles from Los Angeles in the middle of the Mojave Desert,” according to Attridge.
During the legal proceedings, “the plaintiffs argued that transferring the case outside of the Northern District of California would cause further delays and jeopardize detainees’ health.” However, the judge ultimately sided with the government’s argument that “the case should be litigated in the Eastern District of California” while sympathizing “with the plaintiff’s claims of immediate, irreparable harm if the case [were to be] delayed any further,” according to Attridge. In the end, the judge decided to “postpone officially issuing the order until she could address some of the plaintiffs’ concerns, including appointing a monitor to ensure detainees have proper medical care,” leading her to grant the plaintiffs provisional class status.
This legal development comes amid heightened political scrutiny. As the public has increasingly called for oversight, the California City Detention Facility has “come under scrutiny” with “Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and Representative Ro Khanna [conducting] oversight visits at the facility in January 2026,” according to the ACLU press release. During these “oversight visits,” they “met with detained people who described experiencing inhumane treatment and inadequate medical care at the facility.”
According to Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU, “Today’s ruling is an important win for immigrants’ rights and rightly affirms that ICE’s conduct at the California City Detention Facility is inhumane, dangerous, and a direct violation of the Constitution.” He added, “We’ll continue to fight to hold the Trump administration accountable and end ICE’s unconstitutional detention practices at the California City Detention Facility.”
Priya Patel, a supervising attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, stated, “We are grateful to the people inside CCDF for trusting us to fight for them and to the community that has been supporting them.” However, Patel added, “it shouldn’t have taken so much just to get ICE to give the people it cages blankets and basic medical care, and we hope the Court grants additional, much-needed relief very soon.”
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