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Regular reports out of immigrant detention facilities, some as recent as last month, indicate a pattern of complaints: bad water, untrained staff and slow response times to acute and chronic medical conditions.
Despite those complaints — echoed by disability rights groups, a federal judge and the California Justice Department — Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities have received high marks on their own internal scorecards.
An analysis by the Project on Government Oversight found that, under the Trump administration, the number of ICE detention facilities with the agency’s highest inspection grade, “superior,” has tripled since 2024. That coincided, the analysis found, with weakened detention standards and fewer inspections.
Those “superior” ratings have coincided with a rise in deaths in immigration detention custody; 2025 was the deadliest year in ICE custody since 2004.
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Four people have died at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center since August 2025, according to the Project on Government Oversight, the most of any facility in the country during that span.
The ratings come from ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight, which also grades the facilities for “deficiencies,” or violations of ICE detention standards. Those failures are important: If a facility fails twice in a row, it can lose federal funding.
“Despite this provision — or perhaps because of it — detention facilities rarely received failing grades from inspectors between fiscal years 2022 and 2026,” the Project on Government Oversight investigators wrote.
ICE detention facilities are holding a record number of people, at least 65,000 on July 11. But even with that skyrocketing custody population, ICE has also found fewer violations among its facilities.
The analysis found that the number of violations at ICE facilities dropped by 68% between 2022 and 2025.
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The Project on Government Oversight, which describes itself as a nonpartisan investigative nonprofit, said in its report that ICE did not respond to multiple interview attempts. The nonprofit released its findings Tuesday morning, and CalMatters is seeking comment from ICE.
When news media organizations reach out to for-profit prison companies that run these detention centers like GEO Group and CoreCivic about complaints, they often point to these federal detention standards as counterpoint to specific allegations.
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