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Covid-19, mumps and chicken pox epidemics. Contaminated water, moldy food and air ducts spewing black dust.
These health threats have been documented in private immigration detention facilities in California through lawsuits, federal and state audits, and complaints filed by the detainees themselves.
But local public health officials who regularly inspect county jails and state prisons say they don’t have the authority under state law to inspect detention centers operated by private companies, including the six federal immigration detention centers. in California.
State Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) wants to close that loophole with legislation that would allow county health officials to conduct inspections at facilities if health officials deem them necessary.
Durazo said many inmates live in substandard conditions and that communicable diseases passing through these facilities could pose a risk to surrounding communities.
“Unfortunately, our inmates are treated as if they are not human beings,” he said. “We don’t want any excuses. We want state and public health officials to step in whenever necessary.”
It’s not clear how local health officials would implement changes, but public health experts say they could act as independent observers documenting violations that would otherwise remain unknown to the public.
The state Senate passed the bill, SB 1132, unanimously at the end of May. It is now under consideration in the state Assembly.
Immigration is regulated by the federal government. GEO Group, the nation’s largest private prison contractor, manages California’s federal facilities, located in four counties. Together they can accommodate up to 6,500 people awaiting deportation or immigration hearings.
While campaigning in 2020, President Joe Biden promised to end for-profit immigration detention. But more than 90% of the roughly 30,000 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on any given day remain in private facilities, according to a analysis 2023 from the American Civil Liberties Union. Members of Congress in both chambers introduced the legislation gradually eliminate private detention centerswhile other legislators, including at least two this month, have asked for substandard investigations medical and mental assistance and dead.
Lawmakers in Washington state passed a law in 2023 to mandate state oversight of private detention facilities, but the GEO Group sued and the measure is bound in court. California lawmakers have repeatedly tried to regulate such facilities, with mixed results.
In 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, signed a measure banning private prisons and detention facilities from operating in California. But a federal court later declared the law unconstitutional regarding immigration detention centers, saying they interfered with federal functions.
In 2021, state lawmakers passed a bill requiring private detention centers to comply with state and local public health orders and worker safety and health regulations. This measure was adopted at the height of the covid-19 pandemic, as the virus tore through detention facilities where people were packed into dormitories with little or no protection from airborne viruses.
For example, at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, an outbreak at the beginning of the pandemic infected more than 300 staff members and inmates.
The California Health Officers Association, which represents public health officials for the state’s 61 local health departments, supports Durazo’s legislation.
“These investigations play a crucial role in identifying and addressing health and sanitary problems in these facilities, thus mitigating the risks for inmates, staff and surrounding communities,” he said. a letter by the association’s executive director, Kat DeBurgh.
Under the measure, public health officials will determine whether the facilities are in compliance with environmental rules, such as ensuring proper ventilation, and offering basic mental and health care, emergency treatment and safely prepared food.
Unlike public correctional facilities, which local health officials inspect annually, private detention centersare are inspected as needed, to be determined by the health official.
GEO Group spokesman Christopher Ferreira and ICE spokesman Richard Beam declined to comment on the measure.
American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin said public health officials are well positioned to inspect these facilities because they understand how to make confined spaces safer for large populations.
Although they could not force detention centers to comply with their recommendations, their reports could provide valuable information for public officials, lawyers and others who want to pursue options such as litigation, he said. “When the system doesn’t work, the courts can play a very profound role,” Benjamin said.
The federal system that monitors health care and the transmission of communicable diseases in immigration detention centers is broken, said Annette Dekker, a clinical assistant professor of emergency medicine at UCLA who studies care healthcare in these facilities.
Inspections of detention centers are typically conducted by ICE employees and, until 2022, by a private auditor. In a card published in JuneDekker and other researchers showed that immigration officials and auditors conducted inspections infrequently—at least once every three years—and provided limited public information about deficiencies and how they were being addressed.
“There’s a lot of harm that happens in detention centers that we can’t document,” Dekker said.
ICE and the GEO Group have been the subject of lawsuits and hundreds of complaints alleging poor conditions in California facilities since the start of the pandemic. Some of those lawsuits are pending, but a significant portion of the complaints have been dismissed, he said a database maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The most recent trials by inmates claim crowded and unsanitary conditionsdenial of adequate mental health and medical care, medical negligenceand wrongful death by suicide.
The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health has fined the GEO Group approximately $100,000 in 2022 for failing to maintain written procedures to reduce exposure to covid. The GEO Group contested the fine.
“I experienced truly inhumane living conditions,” 28-year-old Dilmer Lovos told KFF Health News by phone from the Golden State Annex immigration detention center in McFarland, Kern County. Lovos has been held there since January while awaiting an immigration hearing.
Lovos, who was born in El Salvador and uses the pronouns they/them, has been a legal permanent resident for 15 years and was arrested by immigration officials while on parole.
In early July, Lovos and 58 other detainees from the Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield began a work and hunger strike demanding an end to poor living conditions, the solitary confinement and inadequate medical and mental health services.
Lovos described a packed dormitory room, clogged air filters, mice and cockroaches running into the kitchen, water leaking from the ceiling, and inmates with flu-like symptoms who could not access medication or a test. of covid when asked.
ICE protocols require testing of inmates with symptoms upon entry to facilities without covid hospitalizations or deaths in the previous week. In facilities with two or more hospitalizations or deaths in the previous week, all inmates are tested during intake. It is up to the medical providers of each facility to decide when a test is needed next.
After Lovos filed a complaint with the GEO Group in June, alleging medical and mental health neglect, they said they were placed in solitary confinement for 20 days without a properly functioning toilet. “I smelled urine and faeces because I wasn’t able to wash them.”
Ferreira declined to address Lovos’ allegations, but said by email that inmates receive “24-hour access to medical care,” including doctors, dentists, psychologists, and referrals to off-site specialists. .
“GEO takes exception to the unsubstantiated allegations that have been made regarding access to health care services at ICE Processing Centers contracted by GEO,” he said.
An unannounced inspection by federal immigration officials in April 2023 found that employees of the Golden State Annex did not respond within 24 hours to medical complaints, which the report said could negatively affect the health of the inmates, and did not properly store inmates’ medical records.
Lovos said no one has addressed his concerns and conditions have only worsened.
“Please come and check these places,” Lovos said in an appeal to local health officials.
This article was produced by KFF Health Newswho publishes California Healthlinean independent editorial service of the California Health Care Foundation.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF – an independent source of research, polling and journalism in health policy. Learn more about KFF.
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