California investigators are documenting serious problems inside an expanding ICE detention system while federal inspections are producing fewer reported deficiencies and almost no failing grades. The question is what happens when the oversight systems disagree.
California’s immigration detention system has expanded rapidly.
At the seven facilities the California Department of Justice inspected in 2025, the detainee population had grown from 2,303 in 2023 to 6,028 in 2025, an increase of about 162%.
California investigators found problems involving medical care, staffing, intake and conditions of confinement. Six people died in California ICE facilities between September 2025 and March 2026, the highest number since the state began reviewing the facilities in 2017. California Department of Justice report on ICE detention conditions
Yet the federal inspection system responsible for evaluating those facilities has been producing fewer reported deficiencies and very few failing grades.
That creates a basic accountability question:
Who is checking whether ICE detention facilities are safe and what happens when the people doing the checking reach different conclusions?
California’s fifth report on ICE detention conditions found that the rapid increase in detainees had strained resources, particularly medical care.
Investigators found problems with medical and mental-health screenings, access to treatment, staffing, intake procedures and other conditions at facilities across the state. California DOJ findings on detention conditions
Adelanto illustrates the scale of the expansion.
The facility’s population increased from 7 detainees in 2023 to 1,570 by July 2025, according to California DOJ. Four of the six deaths documented in the state’s reporting period occurred at Adelanto.
The state’s report found inadequate medical and detention staffing, inconsistent medical, dental and mental-health screenings, and failures to provide necessary and timely medical treatment, including emergency care.
California is able to conduct this independent review because state law requires the Department of Justice to inspect immigration detention facilities and report on their conditions.
That makes the state a useful test of what is happening inside the broader federal detention system.
ICE has its own inspection system through the Office of Detention Oversight, or ODO.
The Project On Government Oversight analyzed 500 initial ODO inspection reports from fiscal years 2022 through 2026, covering 175 facilities. POGO found that federal inspection ratings have increasingly shifted toward the highest categories even as deaths in ICE custody have risen.
In 2025, ICE reported 33 deaths in custody, the highest annual total in more than two decades. As of August 11, ICE had reported 23 deaths in 2026. POGO’s analysis of ICE detention inspections and deaths
The numbers do not establish that inspection ratings caused those deaths.
But they raise a legitimate accountability question: what are federal inspections measuring when their results can differ so sharply from findings by independent investigators?
The inspection grade matters
Federal inspections are not simply paperwork.
Congress established a mechanism under which a facility that fails two consecutive inspections can face loss of federal funding and termination.
That matters because a system designed to impose consequences cannot reach its strongest enforcement mechanism if facilities rarely receive failing grades.
The Government Accountability Office raised a broader concern in its review of federal detention inspections. GAO found that DHS and ICE had not established clear performance goals and measures for determining whether their inspection programs were effective.
In other words, the question is not only whether facilities are inspected.
It is whether the inspection system can reliably identify problems and measure whether conditions actually improve.
Adelanto shows the oversight gap
Adelanto provides the clearest California example.
An ODO inspection conducted shortly before the September 2025 death of Ismael Ayala-Uribe found no medical-care violations and gave the facility a “Good” rating, according to POGO.
A California DOJ inspection of Adelanto that same year reached very different conclusions, finding inadequate staffing and failures involving medical screenings and timely treatment.
A third oversight mechanism eventually became involved.
In July 2026, a federal judge ordered sweeping changes at Adelanto involving drinking water, food, sanitation, medical care and disability accommodations, with independent monitoring of compliance.
That sequence is important.
Oversight did exist. But different oversight systems produced different findings — and the federal court ultimately imposed requirements that the inspection process itself had not produced.
The human cost is not just a number
Four people died at Adelanto between August 2025 and March 2026, according to POGO and California DOJ records.
One was Ayala-Uribe, a 39-year-old former DACA recipient who had been detained at the facility.
According to a San Bernardino County coroner’s report obtained by POGO, Ayala-Uribe reported fever, chills and rectal bleeding while detained. His family told investigators that the facility did not provide medical attention and that he received only Tylenol. He later died from complications of an abscess.
The circumstances do not, by themselves, establish that inadequate detention care caused his death.
But the case demonstrates why independent records matter when official inspection findings and other evidence tell different stories.
Parriva has previously looked into the broader pattern of deaths and medical-care concerns in ICE detention in its reporting on detention deaths and ICE oversight.
California can document the problem. It cannot control ICE.
California’s inspection authority gives the state an important role, but it does not give California control over federal immigration detention.
The state can inspect facilities covered by its law, document conditions and publicly report its findings.
It cannot, by itself, order ICE to end detention at a facility or change federal detention policy.
Other mechanisms have different powers.
California DOJ can investigate. Federal inspectors can grade facilities. Courts can issue binding orders. Congress can conduct oversight. Independent monitors can document compliance.
The question is how those pieces work together when their findings conflict.
That question is becoming more important as California’s detention population grows.
So who is actually checking ICE detention?
The answer is not that there is no oversight.
There are multiple layers of it.
The problem documented by the available evidence is that those systems do not always produce the same picture.
California investigators found serious problems at every facility they inspected in 2025. Federal inspections, meanwhile, have produced increasingly favorable ratings, and dedicated ICE facilities have rarely, if ever in the recent period examined by POGO received the failing grades that can trigger the strongest consequences.
That does not prove that every federal inspection is inaccurate, that every detention death was preventable, or that one agency is responsible for every problem.
It does establish a significant accountability question:
If California investigators, federal inspectors and courts can reach different conclusions about the same detention system, which mechanism has the authority and the information to make dangerous conditions change?
For California, that question is no longer theoretical.
The state’s detention population has surged. Six people died in its facilities during the latest reporting period. State investigators documented failures across the facilities they inspected.
And the federal inspection system responsible for evaluating those facilities is producing a markedly different picture.
That gap between what the inspection system reports and what other investigators are finding is where the accountability story begins.
