Federal judge signals San Diego County will get to inspect Otay Mesa Detention Center

A federal judge indicated Wednesday he would order officials in charge of Otay Mesa Detention Center to give San Diego County inspectors access to the facility where over 1,000 people are typically detained on any given day — but first the two sides who have been in a standoff for months need to work out the details of who will be let in and what exactly they can inspect. 

The county Board of Supervisors sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the heads of both organizations and CoreCivic, the for-profit company that runs the Otay Mesa Detention Center, to be allowed to inspect the facility, which is receiving more attention amid a national crackdown on illegal immigration. 

U.S. District Judge James Simmons Jr. said the county likely has the authority to enforce a state health inspection over the federal government’s objections. He also found that it was in the public interest to allow one, and that irreparable harm could occur should the county not be able to conduct the inspection. 

While Simmons rejected the federal government’s central legal arguments against granting access to the facility, the judge stopped short of issuing a final order at a hearing on the county’s motion for a preliminary injunction. Instead, he ordered the parties to spend three weeks negotiating the inspection’s scope and to submit a supplemental briefing by May 27.

“The county is responsible for the safety and the health of anyone who is within this jurisdiction, which include those detained in the facility,” County Counsel Damon Brown said at a press conference after the hearing. “If there are health hazards that remain in the facility, not only is that a danger to those who are in the facility, it’s a danger to those who work in the facility, who visit the facility, and poses a potential threat to the larger public, the 3.3 million residents in the city, should any of those diseases or conditions manifest outside of the walls of the detention facility.”

County Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer and Paloma Aguirre were turned away from inspecting the detention center although the county health inspector was briefly given access to medical bays and the kitchen in February. 

For a time, earlier attempts by federal elected officials to tour the facility were also being blocked, but members of San Diego’s congressional delegation were able to get inside in April. They were unable to speak with detainees or review medical records, however. 

San Diego County is the first county in the state to try to enforce a 2024 state law that gives county public health officers the authority to inspect privately run immigration detention facilities. Brown, county counsel since January, said four counties in the state host such facilities.

In court, Anne Orcutt, an attorney for CoreCivic, characterized the county requests as unprecedented and said the company maintains more than 400 policies spanning thousands of pages — including more than 70 medical policies — that the county sought to access. 

Orcutt argued that the public health officer and county supervisors have not typically attended past inspections at other county facilities, and that the inspection team should be limited to subject-matter experts.

Simmons left four questions for the parties to negotiate:

• Who can serve on the county’s inspection team?
• Which CoreCivic policies can inspectors review?
• What procedures will govern interviews with detainees?
• What privacy waivers, if any, will be required?

Lawyers for the county, the facility and DHS also disagreed on how interviews with detainees and the inspections of medical records would be managed.

CoreCivic lawyers said that during inspections by the California Department of Justice, signup sheets are posted in detention housing for  people interested in speaking to with inspectors and that detainees must sign privacy waivers for their medical records to be examined.

County attorneys said that this might be acceptable but that it could lead to biased choices about who inspectors were able to speak with.

After the hearing, Brown said the inspection is unlikely to happen before the judge issues a final order. That is not expected before the May 27 supplemental briefing deadline.

San Diego County’s efforts could lead to similar inspections elsewhere. Brown said the county’s position is that the 2024 statute allows every county in the state to conduct similar inspections.

“It’s only because of the obstruction that we faced by CoreCivic and DHS that we’re here today trying to get a court to allow us to enforce the authority that we believe the statute provides,” he said.