S1: Welcome in San Diego , it's Jade Hindman. On this episode , we're talking about new reporting from the KPBS newsroom following allegations of overcrowding inside the Otay Mesa detention facility. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. Nationwide immigration detention facilities are vastly overcrowded. And that includes the Otay Mesa Detention Center right here in San Diego. Centers like these are a key part of President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign , which pushes Ice to meet arrest quotas of 3000 people a day. Joining me to talk about his latest reporting on this is Gustavo Solis. He's an investigative reporter for KPBS. Gustavo , welcome.
S2: Hello , Jade.
S1: So , what can you tell me about Otay Mesa detention facility. I mean , you know , it looks like a prison , but that's not technically the case.
S2: Uh , it is what is called civil detention , which , like you said , it's not a prison. It's not a jail. The men and women being housed there are not being housed because they were convicted or are accused of convicting a criminal crime. Now , yes , there are some people there who have previous convictions , but they're not there for those convictions. Right. They already served their time for those convictions. The people there are , uh , they're there for immigration situations. They want to clear up their immigration status or they're fighting a deportation. So I wanted to make that clear in the framing of that. The feature. Right. This is not for criminal offenses. This is for immigration offenses. Immigration court is not a criminal court. Immigration court is what they call an administrative civil court. Hmm.
S1: Hmm.
S3: Well , walk me through some.
S1: Of the conditions that are being reported within Otay Mesa Detention Facility.
S2: Well , overcrowding was the big one. That's kind of the umbrella of the piece. Uh , the piece , uh , came from a report from Syracuse University that looked at overcrowding conditions across the immigration detention system , including the Otay Mesa detention facility. So with that stem , a slew of issues ranging from uncomfortable care in their , uh , poor sleeping conditions to more serious things like medical neglect , medical care , people getting really sick and hospitalized over there. Uh , and also access to attorneys has been a big thing.
S1:
S2: One of the attorneys I spoke with , uh , Sidney Johnson , mentioned that they referred to people there , uh , by the last four digits of their a number , their alien number. Uh , so you're not a name. You're a number she also mentioned. Some of the guards refer to them as bodies. For example , I'm transferring the body to legal. So this attorney just called it. You know , it's dehumanizing. It's not a good way to think of people. So whenever she goes to the detention center , she makes it a point to say the person's name. Whenever they bring up a body or alien number , that type of language.
S3: So are they just trained to.
S1: Um , to do that ? The folks working in these detention facilities.
S2: I think it's part of the culture , part of the work culture and the Otay Mesa Detention Center. It is owned and operated by CoreCivic , a private detention company that has a lot of experience in private federal detention. So they do take you know , we talked about the architecture , right ? The barbed wire walls , the tall fences , multiple security screenings inside , uh , to the policies inside. Inmates have to Undergo strip searches after they talk to somebody , after they talk to their attorneys , and even the language and training that the guards used is very much mirrored after the criminal justice system.
S1: And there's , you know , also the issue of sleeping in severely overcrowded rooms.
S2: So she had just spent a couple of hours in there talking to folks. She had three clients in there currently one women , two men. And she talked to a couple of them. She said , for for the woman , she's in a room of four others , uh , two sets of bunk beds. The men. Same exact size room instead of four people. There are 13 people in there. Uh , so that would be four sets of bunk beds. So eight. Get a bunk bed. The rest are sleeping on the floor , not directly on the floor. They put out a little mat for them , but in terms of what sleeping looks like , she told us that those at the bottom , those on the floor are starting to get a little bit sick because that's where the AC vents are. So you're just getting hit with that cold air constantly. And those at the top , they're having a hard time sleeping because the lights are never off in those rooms. So you're just , you know , a few feet away from a large fluorescent light. It's not going to be comfortable. There's no windows in there. You're not sure what time it is. Or and I should note one restroom and one sink. So 13 men in a small space , one open restroom in one sink. Wow.
S1: Wow.
S2: I did not hear back from Pacific. I did hear back from ice. Ice rejected any notion that there's overcrowding. Ice rejected any notion that conditions are subpar , but they did not provide really enough any evidence to back it up. I do know Ice has they go through third party to do these audits. You know , these inspections of every center. They haven't published any online since 2022. I did a story a couple of years ago about the Otay Mesa Detention Center. There was a lawsuit there from a former nurse. And I asked the Biden administration , hey , have you done any inspections ? They haven't been posted since 2022. No response. And with the Trump administration similarly , no response. Hmm.
S1: Hmm. Well , how does the situation at the Otay Mesa facility fit into a trend ? And the trend , I should say , that we're seeing nationally. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. Like I mentioned , this story is really the product or began with this report that came out of Syracuse University , uh , looking at overcrowding conditions , really the term they use is over capacity under over contractual capacity. And the numbers were there's something like 100 , 180 detention centers across the country. More than 80 of them had shown signs of overcrowding. In Otay Mesa , it was only about 100 people , more than what they were contractually than their contractual capacity , I should say , and some. There were other centers where it was a 2 or 300 over. Now , that's not to say the space doesn't have it for 3 or 400 over. It just means. I signed a I signed a contract with a facility to house a certain number of people , and they're going over that number. Some facilities may be able to accommodate that. Others may not. That's part of a problem with lack of transparency in some of these spaces. It's very hard to get a clear number of just what the physical capacity is , but we are seeing it across the system. And I should note that even though the report was released at the beginning of this month , in July , it goes to May. So it's looking at a couple of months back before the big beautiful Bill was signed that's going to funnel billions of dollars into this Uh , enforcement. And also after the June push to get more arrests in the system. So if anything , I think if we have this similar conversation at the end of August , we'll see more severe overcrowding conditions throughout the system.
S1: Well , you spoke to to several lawyers for this story.
S2: One woman said two of her clients have been hospitalized. One of them , she didn't even find out until she went there for a visit. She went there to check in to a consultation with the client and they said , oh , sorry , they're not here. They were taken to the hospital. Uh , and it's a variety of issues , right ? Some people go there with pre-existing conditions. Uh , one man was pre-diabetic. Another person had hypertension. And then just think about what the right the conditions we've talked about before. Right. Lack of sleep , not great nutrition. The stress of being incarcerated , even though was technically not incarceration. That stress has physical manifestations , and if you already have high blood pressure hypertension , it's only going to exacerbate that. So some of the hospitalizations that the lawyers mentioned were almost deferred or neglected medical care. You would ask for medicine. You get a Tylenol a couple of months later , it gets to the point where you don't need medicine. It escalates to something more severe , and then you need to get taken to the emergency room. So it was that kind of issue.
S1: Even for someone with like hypertension.
S2: There was I they did tell me about one gentleman. He was able to get out , but he had , uh , prediabetes able to manage it on the outside with healthy diet of fruits and vegetables. He couldn't get access to fruits and vegetables in the detention center. They offered him a choice to go on insulin , which , you know , if you go on insulin , you can't go back. So he was very reluctant. He didn't want to do that. Thankfully , he was able to get out before it got to that level , but it took a lot of work and advocacy on his lawyers behalf to avoid going down that route. Wow.
S1: Wow. Well , you mentioned a lack of transparency earlier , and I imagine it's really hard for lawyers to get in touch with their clients.
S2: Uh , over the phone. I spoke to Michael Garcia. Michael Garcia is the head of San Diego County's free , uh , immigrant defense legal program. The county allocates $5 million to provide free legal representation to folks in Otay Mesa. So he oversees a panel of attorneys and hears from all of them constantly about what's going on , what's working , what's not working. Access to attorneys is one of the the features being impacted by by this overcrowding. They're finding it that it's very difficult to schedule a phone call unless you want it to be after 7 p.m. or on a weekend , you're going to have to wait a week or two to talk to your client if you want to physically go there , you can do it on that same day , but you may have to wait 1 or 2 hours , 1 or 2 hours without access to your phone , without access to your laptop. You're just sitting there. People bring books. But think about that. You're a lawyer , right ? Billable hours. Two hours of your time. That means two hours of your time that you're not working on other cases. You're not representing any other clients. So you can only do that so long before the timing impacts the rest of your workload.
S1: Well , so looking forward a bit , I mean , what does accountability look like in the situation ? Is there anything that could happen to improve these conditions.
S2: Even the outlook doesn't look very positive. I know there's been some cases in , um , other cities where members of Congress mostly , if not exclusively Democrats , have tried to go to detention centers to do inspections. That's something that historically they've been able to do. As a member of Congress , you can go unannounced and see what the facilities are like. I haven't heard of that happening here in San Diego. If anyone has , please let me know. If any local members of Congress have done inspections , please let me know and tell us what you found. But outside of that , like I said , the inspections , if they've done them , they haven't made them public in the last couple of years. Um , CoreCivic did not respond to questions for this story. They had responded in the past , but not for this one. So the idea that we can go there with our cameras and see what's going on. No , I think stories like these ones talking directly to the lawyers right now , I'm trying to , um , schedule interviews with folks , uh , with with immigrants who have been released from there to just tell me about what their experiences on the inside have been. And there are groups , uh , Detention Watch and other advocacy groups who try to go there , speak to people there , provide just emotional support through phone calls and things like that , who have a little bit of a window inside. But well , like I said , I mean , especially Oti , which falls in the line of private detention center. The fact that it's private means it's very hard to get , you know , a public records request like you would from a federal facility. Those basic transparency avenues are just not available to us in some of these private facilities.
S1: Well , your reporting is so important in that it helps us all understand what people inside these facilities are experiencing. I've been speaking with Gustavo Solis. He's the KPBS investigative border reporter. Gustavo , we will continue to follow your reporting. And thank you so much.
S2: Thank you. Dade.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
