Amid escalating medical concerns, Otay Mesa Detention Center faces a question of oversight

Grievance reports written by a 39-year-old man from Russia held for months at the Otay Mesa Detention Center show a litany of problems he tried to bring to the attention of those in charge.

He filed the reports in court while challenging his detention by immigration authorities.

He complained that there were only two working urinals, seven showers and one sink for a group of over 100 detainees at the federal site in San Diego, and that the problems persisted for months. He wrote that dirty conditions at one point led to an outbreak of eye infections.

In an interview, the man called the resulting conditions “inhumane and unsanitary.”

“You cannot live with such a condition,” he said. “Every day is a humiliation.”

The man also wrote grievance reports on behalf of other detainees, including an older man who said he had high blood pressure and needed mobility aids at Otay Mesa. inewsource is not naming either because they fear reprisal from the government.

When the facility did not help, the younger man turned to two federal offices that took complaints from immigrants in detention — offices whose teams have since been gutted under President Donald Trump’s administration amid a crackdown on immigration and a weakening of oversight.

The man’s efforts didn’t always spur improvements, but he felt like he had a place to turn.

“It was a possibility to do at least something,” he said.

Last year, the Trump administration fired nearly every employee at the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The offices investigate deaths, misconduct and medical care and allegations of civil rights violations, respectively.

The Department of Homeland Security has also tightened access to detention centers for federal elected officials and until recently did not comply with a state law allowing county inspections. 

Democratic members of Congress and the San Diego County Board of Supervisors have sued DHS in response — culminating in stronger congressional authority and a county health inspection Friday — but a group of advocates who gather outside Otay Mesa Detention Center every Sunday is still calling for additional oversight.

Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas, has an expression for how immigration detention facilities in general operate now.

“These are black holes,” she said.

This month, Trump signed a law into effect that funds DHS with an additional $70 billion through the rest of his second term in office. That comes after DHS secured $191 billion in funding from his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” last year. 

Spokespeople for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and CoreCivic, the private prison company that manages Otay Mesa, declined multiple interview requests from inewsource. They sent statements, answering some but not all of inewsource’s detailed questions. 

In an emailed response, an ICE spokesperson said that the center in San Diego and other detention centers follow national standards that “set requirements for medical care, facility conditions, and overall treatment of detainees.”

In a statement of its own, CoreCivic said the company offers a “robust” grievance process for detained immigrants, who also can make urgent or routine medical requests at any time. 

“The safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care is our top priority,” CoreCivic said.

‘This will just continue to get worse’

An inewsource investigation identified dozens of immigrants who have described deteriorating health, inadequate care or missed surgeries and procedures they’d planned before being detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, according to federal court records and interviews with 10 former detainees. 

The inadequate care they describe is happening as populations at ICE detention centers across the country swell with immigrants. About 1,170 people were being held at Otay Mesa as of April, up from about 500 in 2021.

A California Department of Justice report on detention centers in the state found the president’s mass deportation campaign has worsened conditions inside centers and “led to overcrowding and strained resources, especially around access to medical care and conditions of confinement.”

The May report found that overcrowding was a significant issue in Otay Mesa, and cited concerns about quality and quantity of food. It also noted that poor medical recordkeeping was impacting care and that immigrants “requiring higher levels of medical care or accommodations that Otay Mesa could not provide” remained in the facility’s medical housing unit for months.

There have been 50 total immigration detention deaths nationwide during Trump’s second term — about three a month — though none have died at Otay Mesa during that time. That is more than the 29 total immigrant detention deaths during former President Joe Biden’s four years in office.

In its statement, ICE said immigrants have access to “medical, dental, and mental health services as available” as well as “medical appointments and 24-hour emergency care.”

ICE said, “This is the best healthcare that many aliens have received in their entire lives.”

CoreCivic said it maintains a zero-tolerance policy for retaliation against anyone who files a grievance and that detainees have “multiple safe and discrete avenues” to raise concerns, including toll-free telephone numbers and direct access to management staff.

But medical experts say it’s hard to know exactly what is going on inside without recurring inspections, conversations with detainees and a review of complete patient medical records. 

Altaf Saadi, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School who studies the impacts of immigration detention on health, said that immigration detention centers aren’t equipped to provide the regular treatment and follow-up that chronic conditions require.

One research study surveying detained immigrants in California said about 40% reported having a chronic condition and another found one-third reported disruptions in care while detained.

A 2025 study Saadi co-authored found that more time spent in ICE detention was associated with worse health outcomes.

“Unless there is any meaningful accountability of ICE’s actions and the conditions in immigration detention,” Saadi said, “this will just continue to get worse.”

‘They said, that’s not our problem’

inewsource spoke to a second former Otay Mesa detainee from Russia with translation help from the younger Russian man who wrote the grievance reports on his behalf. 

The older man said he was hospitalized while he was at the facility for stroke-like symptoms just days after being detained in August 2024 after he crossed at a port of entry and requested asylum.

He said at the hospital, he was cuffed to his bed by one arm with an IV stuck into the other, even though half his body was paralyzed. When he was discharged, he had serious mobility problems and didn’t receive support to help him recover in detention.

“I said, ‘How am I going to sit? How am I even going to walk?’” he recalled. 

“They said, ‘That’s not our problem.’” 

The translator told inewsource that he and other detainees had to help the man stand up and walk to and from the cafeteria and that he had to write multiple grievance reports before the man was given a walker to more easily move around the facility.

Still, the older man continued to pass out regularly. He said at one point, he lost consciousness, but when bystanders tried to get him medical attention, no one came. 

Eventually, they lost hope and carried him to his bed themselves.  

ICE released him on parole in February 2025 after about six months in detention.

The younger Russian man was released this year after 17 months in detention. 

CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin said staff at the Otay Mesa Detention Center adhere to federal detention guidelines and receive oversight from the government.

“We don’t cut corners on care, staff, or training, which meets, and in many cases exceeds, our government partners’ standards,” Gustin said in a statement.

Another spokesperson said the onsite medical clinic is made up of licensed physicians, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health counselors and dentists, “all of whom contractually meet the highest standards of care, as verified by multiple audits and inspections.” 

‘We need eyes inside there’

Immigration advocates have gathered outside Otay Mesa’s fences every Sunday since November to show solidarity with the people detained inside and to voice skepticism about claims from the government that care inside is adequate. 

Jeane Wong, a prominent activist in San Diego, joined the crowd last week.

“We’re not gonna stop until they close it,” she said. 

Wong said she and others text regularly with detained immigrants who complain about the conditions inside the facility.

“We need eyes inside there,” she said.

Earlier this year, detainees threw handwritten notes wrapped around lotion bottles over the fence to Wong and others who were demonstrating outside. 

“We’re constantly sick,” one note reported by the news outlet L.A. Taco read. 

U.S. Reps. Sara Jacobs and Mike Levin have conducted several oversight inspections of Otay Mesa, including two earlier this year.

In April, they gave a week’s notice of their inspection to comply with a DHS policy. In May, after a federal judge suspended that policy, Jacobs and Levin didn’t give advance notice, but they were prevented from speaking with detained immigrants. 

That occurred under a new DHS policy, outlined in a memo dated the day of the visit, requiring prior identification and approval of the detainees they would want to interview.

In their visits, the two members of Congress found generally acceptable conditions, despite complaints they have received about the facility and its medical care. They were able to inspect the detainee pods, medical center and law library and sample food and water. 

They also talked with the medical team, which they said had a staff of 13 — including two doctors for more than 1,000 immigrants, with plans to hire a third. 

Levin said he believed the medical team was “doing the best that they can with the staff that they have and the circumstances that they find themselves in.” 

County leaders in San Diego have also been advocating for greater oversight of the facility — this time under a state law that would allow county officials to conduct health and safety inspections of immigration detention facilities.

In previous attempts, staff at the center had denied access. But this month, after the county challenged that in court, a federal judge ruled that San Diego County and its health inspectors have the right to enter the facility. 

County officials conducted the nearly eight-hour inspection on Friday. It involved Public Health Officer Sayone Thihalolipavan, Director of Environmental Health Heather Buonomo and two consultants with National Commission on Correctional Health Care, a county contractor that regularly inspects detention facilities.

A report is expected in July. 

At the demonstration outside the Otay Mesa Detention Center last week, attendees chanted, sang and held signs denouncing ICE and the immigration crackdown. Some drew pictures and wrote letters for immigrants inside. Others blasted music on large speakers — songs the detained immigrants had asked the activists in communication with them to play. 

Two children blew bubbles toward each other near the sidewalk, the chainlink fencing and razor wire surrounding the detention center in the background. Their father, Ryan Lance, said he’s been coming to the demonstrations for a few months and always brings his kids. 

“They gotta know that there’s a better world,” Lance said. “They’re gonna create it.”