Detainees held at California City Detention Facility, in the Mojave Desert, filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security to challenge the alleged inhumane conditions of confinement.

The plaintiffs in the 71-page class-action lawsuit have accused ICE, DHS and government officials of civil rights violations of their right to due process of law, right to consult counsel, and other abuses prohibited by the First and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. 

According to the lawsuit, there are also alleged violations of The Rehabilitation Act, which “requires entities that receive federal funding, such as ICE and California City Detention Facility, not to discriminate against people with disabilities.”

“In their haste to warehouse hundreds of men and women in this isolated facility, Defendants have failed to provide for the basic human needs of the people for whose lives and well-being they are legally responsible,” according to the lawsuit.

The complaint filed late last year describes how detainees are forced to live in “small concrete cells” with inadequate clothing, poor nourishment, and not enough water. There are also claims of people who have been denied “basic medical care,” spaces for the disabled, and “access to their lawyers and their loved ones.”

Prison Law Office filed suit in the United States District Court (Northern District of California). The Plaintiffs are also represented by counsel from Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP; the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice; and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation National Prison Project.

In 2014, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation rented then-California City Correctional Facility “…as a means to reduce its state prison population,” San Quentin News reported. At the time, the private prison was owned by Corrections Corporation of America, which subsequently changed its name to CoreCivic.

“It’s a very restrictive program,” Patrick Callahan said about California City. He was a state prisoner who transferred to San Quentin from the private prison, which was operated by CDCR correctional officers. “It’s a glorified county jail, run by the state.”

To reopen California City, in April 2025 ICE signed a contract with CoreCivic, a for-profit prison company, according to the lawsuit.

“This contract, worth $130 million annually, contemplates holding up to 2,560 immigrants in the facility, making California City the largest detention facility in the state,” the lawsuit states. “The facility is decrepit. Sewage bubbles up from the shower drains, and insects crawl up and down the walls of the cells. People are locked in concrete cells the size of a parking space for hours on end, and officers threaten them with violence and solitary confinement.” 

According to the lawsuit, other complaints involve cold temperatures described as “frigid,” for detainees who cannot afford expensively priced clothing at the commissary.

“Friends and family members who travel to the Mojave Desert to see their loved ones must do so across heavy glass; people detained at California City cannot touch or hug their children,” the suit alleges. “The facility sharply limits access to lawyers, leaving people bewildered and largely incommunicado.”

The Plaintiffs are seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, among other remedies to contest their conditions of confinement.