Families Drive 300 Miles to California City ICE Center—and Still Cannot Hug Loved Ones

A 300-mile trip that ends at a glass wall

CALIFORNIA CITY, Calif. — Families are challenging a blanket rule that prevents people held at California's largest immigration detention center from having any physical contact with visitors, even when relatives travel hundreds of miles to reach the remote eastern Kern County facility.

The Guardian reported Friday that Teresa Reyes drove roughly 300 miles to see her son Guillermo on his 32nd birthday in May. She could speak with him by telephone through a glass partition, but could not hug him, hand him a gift or share food with him.

The California City Immigration Processing Center currently holds roughly 1,600 people, according to The Guardian. Its stated capacity is 2,560. CoreCivic operates the facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Read the source: The Guardian: Families challenge California City contact-visit ban ↗

The ban applies to everyone held there

The facility has barred contact visits since it began receiving ICE detainees in August 2025, The Guardian reported. Families instead communicate through phones while separated by glass, regardless of an individual detainee's conduct or assessed security risk.

People at the center are in civil immigration custody. Detention does not itself establish a criminal conviction, and a pending immigration case does not prove that a person committed a crime.

ICE's 2025 National Detention Standards encourage contact visits but allow visitation practices to depend on a facility's population and physical conditions. The standards do not create an unlimited right to physical contact, but they also do not by themselves explain why every person at California City is subject to the same prohibition.

Read the source: California Department of Justice: Immigration Detention in California, May 2026 ↗

California reviewers questioned the blanket restriction

The Guardian reported that after a spring audit, the California Department of Justice said California City's prohibition appeared inconsistent with a CoreCivic policy supplied to state reviewers. That policy called for opportunities for physical contact and contemplated restrictions for security risks.

A state photograph of the visitation area showed picnic tables in a room once used for contact visits when the complex operated as a state prison. Current visitors are directed to windows and telephones at the edge of the room, according to the report.

California's finding is an oversight assessment, not a court judgment. No source reviewed for this story establishes that a judge has ordered the facility to begin contact visits or that the policy has changed.

Read the source: California Attorney General: Initial California City inspection findings ↗

CoreCivic cites contraband and security concerns

CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin told The Guardian that facility leaders and government partners consider non-contact visitation the most appropriate approach because of security concerns, including the risk of contraband entering the center.

The company also said detention facilities have authority under applicable standards to set visitation rules based on design, operations, staffing and security. ICE did not respond to The Guardian's questions for the September 4 report.

Those explanations state the operator's rationale. They do not answer why individualized screening, supervised visits or targeted restrictions could not be used instead of a facility-wide ban, and the publicly available sources do not document a comparative contraband analysis for California City.

Read the source: ICE: 2025 National Detention Standards ↗

Detainees and relatives organize Hugs Beyond Bars

People held at the center began organizing demand letters in April and later worked with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and other supporters to launch the Hugs Beyond Bars campaign, according to The Guardian and the campaign's public website.

The campaign asks the facility to permit in-person contact under reasonable supervision. Supporters have also appealed to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla's office, but The Guardian reported that CoreCivic and the California City warden had not responded to the demands as of Friday.

The campaign's claims and requested remedy represent its advocacy position. A fair evaluation also requires publishing the operator's security explanation and tracking whether ICE, CoreCivic or a court supplies evidence that materially changes the record.

Read the source: ICE: California City Detention Facility visitor information ↗

Why this is a Kern County accountability story

California City is not a distant abstraction for Kern County. It is a large local institution where state inspectors have previously reported staffing, medical-care, recordkeeping and living-condition problems, and where families now say a uniform visitation policy deepens isolation.

The most important unanswered questions are practical: whether the blanket rule will be reconsidered, what risk assessment supports it, how many families have stopped visiting because contact is prohibited and whether supervised alternatives have been evaluated.

What’s the Scoop With Broach will update this report if ICE or CoreCivic changes the visitation policy, releases additional evidence supporting the restriction or responds to the campaign's demands.

Read the source: Hugs Beyond Bars: Contact-visit campaign ↗

About the image

The accompanying image is an authentic May 2014 file photograph by Anthony Albright showing the exterior perimeter of the California City detention complex. It was taken years before the facility began its current ICE operation and does not depict a present-day visit, detainee, family member or campaign event.

The photograph is available through Wikimedia Commons under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. It is used as documentary location context and does not imply endorsement by the photographer, Wikimedia Commons, ICE or CoreCivic.

Read the source: Wikimedia Commons: California City facility photograph and license ↗