In a complaint accusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of medical negligence and weaponizing healthcare access, 21 people detained at Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde ICE Processing Facility detailed allegations of being labeled as “malingerers” to limit legal representation, medical errors, untreated health conditions, and language barriers.
Filed December 16 with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the complaint sheds light on years of reported abuse and neglect at the two Kern County detention centers.
“To extract maximum profit, the GEO corporation denies basic medical care to detained people in its care, from a COVID patient running a 105-degree fever to someone with a fractured knee and hand,” said Oliver Ma, Legal Fellow at ACLU SoCal. “Braving threats of solitary confinement and physical violence, more than twenty detained people spoke up. It’s time to heed their call to shut these detention centers down, and put our community members over GEO’s profit margins.”
The federal complaint accuses ICE and the GEO Group, which operates the facilities, of systematic medical neglect and weaponizing healthcare to suppress resistance and limit access to legal representation.
Detained individuals shared harrowing stories of medical neglect, such as delayed procedures and ignored emergencies. One individual reported waiting over six months for a colonoscopy despite severe symptoms, only to be left without follow-up care or results. Another described enduring unbearable pain after a Border Patrol officer dislocated his arm during an arrest. The detainee waited two months for X-rays, five months for physical therapy, and seven months for an MRI confirming his injury.
“I’m at the mercy of people that don’t care if I live or die,” one detainee recounted in the filing. “They don’t know my name. I’m an annoyance to them. I’m a mosquito to them. The people that are supposed to help me are the ones that ignore me.”
Mental health care was also a focal point of the complaint, with allegations of degrading treatment and neglect. A detainee at Golden State recalled how a psychiatrist mocked him during a session, saying, “No one loves you. Tell the voices to care about you.”
The complaint states that when the detainee informed the psychiatrist that he planned to report the misconduct to a lawyer, the provider “simply shrugged it off.” After the detainee filed a grievance, ICE dismissed it, claiming they could not understand the complaint because it was written in Spanish.
Others reported being accused of feigning mental health symptoms to gain legal representation. Language barriers compounded these issues, with non-English speakers often unable to understand or communicate during medical visits. “About four times they spoke to me in English, and I didn’t understand more than half of what they were saying,” one Spanish-speaking detainee said.
The complaint also highlighted sanitation and safety failures, including moldy water containers, mishandling of biohazard materials, and staff refusal to wear masks during COVID-19 outbreaks. These failures contributed to preventable suffering, with detainees describing the facilities as sites of enduring harm.
The complaint comes amid mounting political and public scrutiny. This October, California Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, and U.S. Senator Alex Padilla led a letter signed by six Congress members urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to end its contracts with GEO Group, citing “disturbing and ongoing reports” of deplorable conditions at Mesa Verde and Golden State.
On December 3, California Attorney General Rob Bonta also sent a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner, describing serious failings at ICE detention centers across the state, including alarming deficiencies in medical care.
“These are people’s lives we’re talking about,” said Ana Linares Montoya, Vaccine Education and Empowerment in Detention (VEED) Coordinator for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ). “The number of people I’ve spoken to who have been forced to suffer for days, weeks, or even months without relief from serious medical issues, is just appalling, and in many cases, they end up with permanent damage to their health. People aren’t just crying out for help, they’re organizing, taking collective action, and filing complaints. It’s time for our elected officials to terminate these contracts and put an end to the injustice of immigrant detention.”
The complaint was filed by the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California on behalf of 21 complainants in ICE detention.
