California ICE detention doubles in one year. One center surges from 3 to 1,800
Roughly 6,400 people are held each day in California’s immigration detention centers — more than double the average from a year ago.
The surge coincides with the escalation of federal immigration enforcement across the state and country under President Donald Trump. It also comes as advocates continue to criticize the conditions inside facilities and the federal administration’s push to increase detainee numbers.
“The more people who are in ICE detention means the more human rights abuses that we’re seeing,” said Alex Mensing, communications director for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.
California has nearly 8,500 beds across seven U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, all of which are operated by private companies and located in the southern half of the state. As of late January, 6,412 of those beds were filled on average, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, also known as TRAC.
That represents a significant increase from the same period last year, when the detention facilities were housing roughly 3,000 people per day. The increases in detainees follow an upswing in arrests and deportations across the state.
California ranks third among all states in the total number of detainees. As of last month, Texas had more than 18,000 people detained and Louisiana had about 8,200.
Some of the Golden State’s growth can also be attributed to the California City Immigration Processing Center, the state’s newest and largest detention facility. The center, which is located in a remote desert about 70 miles east of Bakersfield, has a capacity for more than 2,500 people.
From a handful of detainees to more than 1,000
The facility opened in the fall and reported only 19 detainees in mid-September. By November, the number had jumped to more than 700. Roughly 1,030 detainees were staying in the facility as of last month.
Other facilities experienced similar increases.
ICE reported a daily average of three detainees at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in San Bernardino County in January 2025. Last month, the daily average was roughly 1,800.
At the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County, the daily average of detainees has been above the ICE contractual capacity of 1,358 every month since July.
Detentions have spiked nationally and surpassed a record 70,000 last month. About 74% of those have no criminal conviction, according to TRAC.
These increases are tied to worsening conditions for detainees, Mensing said. Among the highest issues currently are diminishing medical care, decreasing food portions and lack of legal access.
“There are many, many problems inside ICE detention,” Mensing said.
Concerns raised about conditions in ICE detention centers
The Fresno Bee previously reported that detainees have raised concerns about overcrowding, sanitation and extended isolation at the California City center. CoreCivic, the private company that operates the facility, and Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin have denied the accusations of unsanitary conditions and mistreatment of detainees.
In December, after a state inspection at that facility, Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security citing “grave concerns“ about the quality of medical care and living conditions. His office had said in an earlier report from 2025 that all the state’s detention centers needed to make “significant improvements” to comply with ICE standards.
Last month, U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, both Democrats representing California, echoed such concerns after visiting the California City facility.
“I’m leaving here even more concerned than I was when I arrived,” Padilla said on Jan. 25. “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.”
State lawmakers have attempted to mitigate some of these issues in recent years. In 2024, California passed Senate Bill 1132, which requires annual local inspections of the health and sanitary conditions at the facilities.
Last week, state Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Merced, introduced a bill to require private companies to secure a public health license to operate immigration detention centers in the state. Licensing would be tied to compliance of health and safety standards required under federal contracts.
“These are not federal facilities, but private facilities that should be abiding by the clear standards that they agreed to in their contract,” Caballero said in a written statement on Friday. “California as a state has both the right and the moral responsibility to ensure that health standards are maintained in all detention facilities.”
This story was originally published February 6, 2026 at 3:04 PM with the headline "California ICE detention doubles in one year. One center surges from 3 to 1,800."
