By admin 
California lawmakers have tackled a host of immigration-enforcement issues during the legislative session.
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But as it draws to a close, the state Senate and Assembly has rapidly advanced bills to establish state health inspections of detention centers, prohibit the construction of new facilities and disclose emergency service calls made from within the centers.
Increased state oversight of detention centers
In Senate Bill 957, Sen. Sasha Pérez, D-Alhambra, resurrected legislation to increase state oversight of detention centers. Pérez authored the bill as a response to the Assembly Appropriations Committee’s Aug. 13 decision to halt SB 995, known as the Masuma Khan Justice Act.
The new legislation would require the California attorney general to submit an annual health and safety oversight plan for private civil detention facilities. The measure also mandates that the governor direct state agencies to cooperate on the plan’s development.
SB 957 would originally have enacted more comprehensive data privacy protections for social media users. However, Pérez used a “gut-and-amend” strategy to replace the bill’s language with entirely new legislation — a tactic often used by lawmakers to hasten a measure’s progress through the legislature.
The amended bill passed both the Senate and the Assembly on Sunday along party lines.
“We’ve had six people die within detention centers this year alone,” Pérez said. “That’s historic records for the state of California. … This is a reason for the government to respond, particularly the state government.”
The Masuma Khan Justice Act would have established a statewide system to regulate heating, ventilation, air, water and electrical systems in detention centers. It takes its name from a 65-year-old Altadena resident who was held in California City Detention Center without access to essential medication, edible food or clean drinking water.
According to testimony by Masuma Khan’s daughter, Riya Khan, those held in the facility were served moldy, insect-infested bread, drank dirty water and lived in below-freezing conditions. Often, bright LED floodlights and the sound of slamming doors kept detainees from sleeping, Riya Khan said.
“What matters is that there is going to be oversight, and even though (SB 957) delays the process a little bit…hopefully there are more people and resources that are paying attention,” Riya Khan said. “As long as it gets these corporations to actually treat human beings like human beings and provide them with safe environments, food and water, and medical care, that’s all that really matters.”
While the original legislation passed with bipartisan support in Senate and Assembly committees, some said its provisions were duplicative of existing law. Assembly Appropriations Chair Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, said the committee decided to suspend the bill’s passage because implementing its provisions would be a lengthy and expensive process.
“While SB 995 addresses a serious issue, its significant costs and lengthy implementation timeline raised concerns about whether the proposal, as written, would translate into timely, meaningful protections for the people it was intended to help,” Wicks said in a written statement to The Bee.
According to Pérez, the new legislation will address these concerns by providing state agencies with more time to enact regulations instead of mandating that oversight begin immediately. Under the new legislation, the Attorney General must complete a plan in conjunction with the California Department of Public Health by December 2027.
“I’ve talked with so many families and individuals that have been held at these detention centers, and they want to see justice,” Pérez said. “Even for those who have not suffered a death or an injury, the experience they had is so traumatizing. … They want these places to be investigated and these horrific things to be uncovered, and it’s our job to do that.”
Prohibition on new detention centers construction
SB 1367 would prohibit cities and counties from approving the construction of new detention facilities or the transformation of existing buildings into detention facilities.
According to Sen. Sabrina Cervantes, D-Riverside, the bill’s author, the legislation aims to protect against the rapid expansion of detention facilities in California. Specifically, the bill targets facilities not built for long-term human habitation, such as warehouses and industrial buildings, Cervantes said.
“At a time when immigrant families continue to face fear, separation, and incarceration, SB 1367 reflects a growing recognition that our local land use policies should not facilitate the growth of detention infrastructure, including the repurposing of warehouses to detention centers,” Cervantes said.
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Currently, almost 70,000 individuals are held in detention centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. About 10% of these detainees are located in California facilities. In an Assembly committee hearing, Cervantes said her district’s proximity to both the U.S.-Mexico border and a number of vacant warehouses in California’s inland empire makes the issue especially important to her.
“SB 1367 will safeguard California from unchecked expansion of private detention facilities, especially facilities that are ill-equipped for long-term housing,” Cervantes said to The Sacramento Bee.
California has opened two new detention centers in the last year, bringing the state’s total count to eight — California City Detention Center opened in August 2025 and the Central Valley Annex facility opened in McFarland, California, this April. The facilities’ construction has added more than 3,000 beds to the state’s total capacity for ICE detainees.
Hector Pereyra, a political director with the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice, said in an April 22 Senate committee hearing that private detention facilities are “notorious for inhumane conditions and systemic human rights violations.”
“All detention is inherently inhumane, but the expansion of private detention in facilities not designed to house humans will only exacerbate the already deadly conditions,” Pereyra said. “We cannot allow this system to grow here. California must take an affirmative step to prevent this.”
The bill passed 29-10 in the Senate and 53-19 in the Assembly along party lines Sunday.
Disclosing 911 calls made inside detention facilities
SB 423, a bill authored by Sen. Lena Gonzalez, D-Long Beach, would amend the California Public Records Act to require local agencies to disclose records of 911 and other emergency services calls made from immigration detention centers.
The measure is a response to a CalMatters investigation earlier this year, which found that there were 159 calls for service to San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center in 2025. Of these calls, 21 were related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act and seven were allegations of rape.
When CalMatters attempted to obtain phone recordings and 911 dispatch logs to further investigate the incidents, the sheriff’s department said they were “exempt from disclosure” and refused to disclose the information. Gonzalez’s legislation would reduce local agencies’ autonomy to determine if 911 records should be released by making disclosure mandatory.
“We’re hearing about the most horrendous conditions,” Gonzalez said. “We’ve got to really double down and ensure, most importantly, that journalists and reporters have the information to continue highlighting these atrocities.”
Gonzalez significantly changed SB 423 twice, using a “gut and amend” tactic to fully replace the language of the legislation. The measure would originally have established a grant program for incarcerated firefighters, and later was amended to create firefighter training programs for formerly incarcerated individuals at community colleges.
“We need detention center transparency bills to keep the focus, and this was one that (we) felt could get through,” Gonzalez said. “We made some amendments, and now we feel like it’s in a good place to actually be signed and get the accountability we truly need.”
The legislation’s broad aim is to increase transparency and accountability of privately operated, for-profit immigrant detention centers, according to Paloma Esquivel, a press education specialist with the First Amendment Coalition. The coalition joined Immigrant Defense Advocates to co-sponsor the bill.
Esquivel said, as a journalist who reported on detention centers for over 20 years in Los Angeles, she struggled to access information about the facilities and those who ran them.
“One of the things that any reporter who has worked, like I did, on what’s happening inside these privately run detention centers knows that they can be a black hole of information,” Esquivel said. “For us, this is an issue of transparency. The public has a right to know what is happening inside these facilities that are paid for with billions of dollars of taxpayer money.”
The measure passed the Assembly by a 58-16 vote Sunday and the Senate by a 30-10 vote Monday.
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