Judge Orders Sweeping Improvements at California Detention Center After COVID-19 Death

Antonia Tovar spoke with Jose Ramos-Solano, her husband of nearly thirty years, for the last time on March 25. He rang from the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, a federal detention facility for immigration in Adelanto, California; he said he was headed to the commissary to purchase a few items and would call again later.

“That call never came,” Tovar recalls. “He never rang me back.”

Ramos, aged 52, collapsed unconscious in his cell and died that evening. A medical examiner’s report obtained by Reason via a public records request concluded that his death resulted from COVID-19 pneumonia.

Ramos’ family maintains that his death stemmed from medical neglect—one of numerous accusations of substandard health care and unsanitary conditions at Adelanto. The accumulation of these claims prompted a federal judge last week to order immediate improvements at the facility.

U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes, appointed by President Joe Biden, directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to ensure Adelanto detainees have access to drinkable water, adequate nutrition, and proper sanitation; to halt solitary confinement unless there are legitimate safety concerns; to craft a plan to improve medical care and disability accommodations; and to appoint two independent monitors to oversee conditions at the detention center for the duration of the case.

The injunction from Sykes followed a separate January lawsuit by detainees accusing medical neglect, contaminated food and water, mold, and retaliation against those held at Adelanto. Ramos’ death and the judge’s order spotlight a broader, dangerous issue at detention facilities nationwide: the spread of infectious diseases in environments with poor hygiene and inadequate healthcare.

In a statement to Reason, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson asserted that ICE maintains “higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons housing actual U.S. citizens.”

“Any claims of substandard conditions at the Adelanto processing facility are FALSE,” the DHS representative stated. “This is another instance of a Biden-appointed activist judge attempting to smear our ICE law enforcement.”

“This represents better healthcare than many noncitizens have ever received,” the statement continued.

Nevertheless, evidence to the contrary has routinely emerged from detention centers since the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign began last year. Just last week, a tuberculosis outbreak was reported at a detention center in Colorado, and another center in Arizona reported a measles outbreak. Internal audits and external probes by civil rights groups have documented inhumane conditions at the nation’s largest detention complex, a 5,000-bed tent camp in Texas. Suicides have risen, and one detainee died from a severe dental infection.

“Everything happening in these detention facilities is medically deficient, and it mirrors issues we also see in jails,” says Amesh Adalja, a physician at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in infectious disease emergencies.

Adalja notes that contagious diseases can spread rapidly in “congregate settings” such as jails and detention centers, and that recognizing outbreaks is often delayed. He adds that the government could take routine steps to curb disease outbreaks—such as enhanced intake screenings, expanded access to healthcare, and wastewater monitoring—if it chose to do so.

“There are many proactive things they could do. The question is whether they have the incentive to do it,” Adalja says. “And the likely answer is no. This isn’t a technology issue. It’s a policy issue.”

Jesus Arias, an attorney representing Ramos’ family and two other families of detainees who died at Adelanto, says they are “pleased that the Federal Court is ordering significant reforms at the Adelanto ICE processing center.”

ICE agents arrested Ramos-Solano on February 23 at a courthouse in Torrance, California, where Tovar says he was attending for a traffic violation.

According to an ICE press release, Ramos—an unauthorized Mexican immigrant—was convicted in 2025 of theft and possession of a controlled substance, resulting in a diversion sentence, a common outcome for low-level or first-time offenders.

Tovar was with him at the courthouse the day of his arrest. The couple, who had grown up together in Mexico, had separately crossed into the United States in the 1990s; Tovar first, then Ramos. Although they both entered the country illegally, they built a life together here over the following decades. They had been married 28 years and raised two grown children.

Later that day, Tovar and her children received a call from Ramos-Solano at Adelanto, asking them to bring insulin for his diabetes.

Ramos-Solano’s intake screening upon arrival at Adelanto flagged several chronic conditions, including diabetes and hypertension.

Civil rights and immigrant aid groups say that medical care in detention facilities nationwide is severely lacking. In January, a month before Ramos arrived, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights and two Adelanto detainees filed a class-action lawsuit alleging a range of deficiencies at the privately operated facility.

“Mold grows on bathroom and dormitory walls,” the suit alleged. “People across various dormitories contracted an infectious skin disease called a staph infection—and more than a dozen detainees were hospitalized. Another unit recently experienced a chicken-pox outbreak. Detainees are forced to clean the bathrooms themselves. The kitchens are filthy and provide insufficient—and sometimes spoiled—food. People go hungry. The limited drinking water often appears dirty and tastes odd, raising serious concerns about its potability. Rooms are kept cold, and detainees are given only a thin blanket, if one is provided. Some detainees protest the conditions and speak out, but retaliation or punishment follows.”

The lawsuit included more than two dozen sworn statements from Adelanto detainees describing unsanitary conditions, medical neglect, and other abuse.

During the month or so Ramos was held at Adelanto, he reported similar conditions to Tovar.

“He always told me the food there was bad, the clothing was washed only in cold water, and there were a lot of people crowded together,” Tovar notes. “A few days before his death, a sick person arrived who was coughing a lot. He asked me to send money so he could buy food, and to buy a sweater because it was very cold. And they were treated poorly.”

“When they experienced headaches or other symptoms, staff wouldn’t provide medications,” Tovar continues. “They had to go to the hospital to be seen, and it took a long time to be admitted.”

On the evening of March 25, Ramos-Solano began to feel unwell and removed his shirt, according to both Tovar and the account of an Adelanto nurse interviewed for the county coroner’s case.

“I’ve heard many times that he took off his shirt because he felt feverish,” Tovar explains. “People say he was sitting there, then suddenly he looked at his tablet, and my husband pulled off his shirt because he was so ill—like he was suffocating.”

What happened next is disputed. Tovar says other detainees told her guards ignored Ramos-Solano’s deteriorating condition.

“The men there saw he was ill, and one of them said, ‘Let me administer first aid because I know how,’ and none of the guards nearby would even glance his way,” Tovar recounts. “They did nothing for him.”

According to the nurse’s statement, guards were on their rounds when they “closely observed that Jose was breathing shallowly and unresponsive when they attempted to rouse him.” A code blue was activated at 5:35 p.m. A nurse arrived, and 911 was called within two minutes. The nurse testified that two separate teams of paramedics arrived: first the local fire department at 5:46 p.m., then AMR paramedics at 5:54 p.m.

Ramos was pronounced dead at a local medical facility around 6:30 p.m.

“His transport to a hospital was extraordinarily, shockingly delayed,” Arias told Al Jazeera in June. “We believe he died at the center.”

There are further inconsistencies. A forensic pathologist listed Ramos-Solano’s cause of death as “Covid-19 Pneumonia, days”—suggesting that the illness persisted for several days—with hypertension and heart disease noted as contributing conditions.

ICE records show Ramos-Solano’s last contact with a nurse occurred on March 23, two days prior to his death. He had ongoing care for blood pressure and diabetes, but there were no notes about cold symptoms or breathing problems from the nurse.

Tovar also recounts that Ramos-Solano said nothing about feeling unwell when they spoke last on March 25. She remembers asking how he was, and him answering that he was “fine.”

However it may have been, Tovar insists that none of her husband’s medical conditions warranted a death sentence.

“He was a wonderful father and husband, and he left behind two children who miss him deeply,” Tovar says. “They’re grown now, but they still miss him. His mother and siblings are hurting as well. He did have diabetes and high blood pressure, but these weren’t the kinds of illnesses that should claim a life. What happened there was medical negligence. They killed him there. We want this to stop.”

Ramos-Solano is one of four individuals who have died in Adelanto since last September. He is also among 17 Mexican nationals who have died in ICE custody during that period, a trend that has strained diplomatic ties between the United States and Mexico. In April, Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned conditions at ICE detention centers as “incompatible with human rights standards and the protection of human life.”

Alvaro M. Huerta, head of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, stated in a press release that the injunction “clarifies that the administration’s misrepresentations about conditions inside the Adelanto ICE prison crumble under the weight of the evidence.”

“Behind Adelanto’s barbed-wire fences, people have endured conditions so egregious that four lives have been lost there in the past six months alone,” Huerta remarked. “There can be no doubt those deaths were preventable. We are grateful that a federal court has

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