Sens. Padilla, Schiff tour Kern County ICE facility. ‘I’m leaving here even more concerned’
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- Sen. Padilla and Sen. Schiff toured the California City ICE facility amid complaints
- Facility, run by CoreCivic for ICE, now holds thousands transferred from Fresno
- Senators briefed by officials as ICE custody numbers surpass 70,000 nationwide
Two U.S. senators conducted an oversight visit Tuesday at California’s largest immigration detention facility, a remote Kern County complex that has increasingly housed immigrants transferred from Fresno and other Central Valley communities.
Sen. Alex Padilla and Sen. Adam Schiff toured the California City Immigration Processing Center, a privately run facility operated by CoreCivic, amid mounting criticism over conditions inside.
“It was important for us to come out here for a couple of reasons. Today marks the first anniversary of the second Trump administration, and if there are two takeaways from his first year, one is the economic chaos and uncertainty that so many working families are feeling, and the second clearly is the cruelty of a mass deportation agenda which has included a lot of indiscriminate detentions, arrests, deportations, many without due process,” Padilla said.
The prison-turned-detention center came under the control of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last year and now holds thousands of people in civil immigration custody. The Fresno Bee has reported that detainees have raised concerns about overcrowding, sanitation, limited access to medical care, and extended isolation. State officials and immigration advocates have also questioned ICE’s reliance on the facility, citing its conditions and lack of easy access to legal counsel in the Central Valley.
The senators said there are currently 1,400 people held in the facility. It has capacity for 2,500 people, so more are expected to enter.
“A lot of the concerns we heard were about very valid healthcare issues not being addressed. The staff here acknowledged there have been gaps,” Schiff said.
The visit comes as congressional Democrats weigh potential restrictions on funding for immigration enforcement and as the number of people held in ICE custody nationwide has surpassed 70,000, according to recent estimates.
Padilla, who serves as the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, and Schiff were briefed by facility officials during a morning tour of the grounds.
During the press conference held outside the facility, both senators spoke about what they saw and expressed their worries about conditions.
“I’m leaving here even more concerned than I was when I arrived,” Padilla said. “If the administration is true to their word, the population here is only going to grow, so the need to address nutrition, medical attention, mental healthcare is only going to grow.”
Senator Schiff also expressed that more oversight is needed for the facility.
“In terms of getting the standards enforced to make sure they’re being upheld that requires oversight, and it should be more than the two of us coming out to the detention facility without the power of the subpoena,” Schiff said. “Congress should hold hearings about the conditions in these detention facilities.”
Schiff added that when it comes to deaths that have occurred at detention centers in the country, more oversight is needed.
“We should be fully investigating the deaths that were reported to find out were these preventable, what were the circumstances. There really out to be fearless oversight.”
Federal authorities have confirmed that people detained through immigration enforcement in California, including in the Fresno area, are routinely transferred to the site.
Padilla also spoke about people from other parts of California and the country being detained at the facility.
“I met a number of detainees here from elsewhere in the country, other regions in the country, so access to their counsel prior and certainly to their family members is only exacerbated, to that effect” Padilla said. “So that’s the problem that we have, why are people from other states being sent here? We also hear people from California being sent to other states.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2026 at 5:29 PM.
