U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is failing to provide adequate healthcare at a new detention center in California City, according to a report from an independent monitor at the facility, where detainees complained of missing medications and months-long delays to cancer treatment. The findings appear in a report by Dr. Muthusamy Anandkumar, a court-appointed monitor of the California City Immigration Processing Center, which is about 75 miles east of Bakersfield and run by the private prison company CoreCivic. The federal government purchased the facility earlier this month but CoreCivic continues to operate it. A judge appointed the monitor in March as part of an ongoing lawsuit filed by seven detainees who allege the conditions in the California City facility are a violation of their due process rights. “The facility lacks a reliable system to consistently provide adequate health care, placing individuals at serious risk of both immediate and long-term harm,” Anandkumar wrote. “This pattern indicates broader problems in the facility’s healthcare delivery system rather than occasional lapses in care.”
The fault, Anandkumar wrote, was not with the individual healthcare workers, but rather an issue of staffing, management and oversight. At times, staff was pulled out of training to cover a shift because of staffing shortages. “As a result, staff who had not been fully trained were themselves training new staff,” Anandkumar wrote. “Given the number of patients and the seriousness of their medical and mental health needs, these substantial gaps contribute to an unsafe environment.”
