Immigration

A Man Died of COVID at This California Detention Center. A Judge Just Ordered Sweeping Improvements There.

A federal judge ordered sweeping improvements to conditions at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California. Families say their loved ones died of neglect inside.

C.J. Ciaramella | 7.20.2026 1:35 PM

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Antonia Tovar last spoke to Jose Ramos-Solano, her husband of nearly three decades, on March 25. He called her from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, a federal immigration detention center in Adelanto, California; he said he was going to the commissary to buy some things but would call her again later.

"It never came," Tovar says. "He never called me."

Ramos, 52, died that evening after falling unconscious in his cell. A medical examiner's report obtained by Reason through a public records request concluded that he died of COVID-19 pneumonia.

Ramos' family says his death was a result of medical neglect—one of dozens of allegations of inferior health care and unhygienic conditions at Adelanto. The weight of those allegations led a federal judge last Thursday to order immediate improvements to conditions at the detention center.

U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes, an appointee of President Joe Biden, ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to provide Adelanto detainees with potable water, sufficient nutrition, and adequate sanitation; to stop putting detainees in solitary confinement without valid safety concerns; to develop a plan to improve medical care and disability accommodations; and to appoint two independent monitors to report on conditions at the detention center for the remainder of the litigation.

Sykes' order was in response to a separate lawsuit filed in January by detainees alleging medical neglect, unsafe food and water, mold, and retaliation against detained people at Adelanto. Ramos' case and the judge's injunction highlight a dangerous and sometimes deadly problem at detention centers across the country: the spread of highly infectious diseases due to unhygienic conditions and substandard health care.

In a statement to Reason, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said that ICE has "higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens."

"Any claims that there are subprime conditions at Adelanto ICE processing facility are FALSE," the DHS spokesperson said. "This is another example of a Biden appointed activist judge trying to smear our ICE law enforcement."

"This is the best healthcare than many aliens have received in their entire lives," the statement continued.

Yet evidence to the contrary has continually leaked out of detention centers since the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign began last year. Just last week there was a reported tuberculosis outbreak in a Colorado detention center and a measles outbreak at another........

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