Nigel Duara, Cal Matters

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San Diego County Sheriff’s officials failed to investigate at least seven reported sexual assaults at the privately run Otay Mesa immigration detention center in 2025, and records show the agency has ceded control of the cases to civilian administrators employed by the nation’s largest for-profit prison contractor.

Under a 2020 memorandum of understanding between the sheriff’s department and CoreCivic, detention center Warden Christopher LaRose has authority to decide whether to investigate rape allegations at the facility, which currently houses just under 1,500 federal immigration detainees, most of whom are in custody awaiting hearings and have not been convicted of a crime.

CalMatters obtained the memorandum after seeking additional information about the alleged rapes and four attempted sexual assaults through a California Public Records Act request. While a sheriff’s spokesperson said the agency was not investigating those cases, he said he was unable to turn over additional records because they were part of “a law enforcement investigation.”

CoreCivic representatives did not respond to repeated requests for comment on this story.

The company manages the detention center under a contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations. ICE officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Seven privately run immigrant detention centers operate in California, with CoreCivic holding contracts for two of them. It could not immediately be determined if other detention centers have similar agreements with local law enforcement agencies.

“We’re horrified but not surprised to learn that numerous sexual assaults went uninvestigated at a CoreCivic facility,” said Susan Beaty, senior attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice advocacy group.

“Local and state enforcement agencies have a responsibility to use their power to protect the rights of Californians in detention, and hold accountable both ICE and private prison companies that profit to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars to incarcerate immigrants in our state.”

On its website, CoreCivic states it has a “zero tolerance” policy against all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment. “CoreCivic has outlined an aggressive plan specifying the efforts we undertake to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to all allegations of conduct that falls into either category,” the company states.

A 2022 audit conducted by the outside company Creative Corrections found the facility met all federal standards for preventing sexual assaults.

San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair Terra Lawson-Remer said she plans to question San Diego County Sheriff Kelly Martinez at a hearing Tuesday night on ICE transfers from county jails.

“I do not have much confidence at all in CoreCivic’s ability to investigate these very serious allegations,” she said earlier this month.

San Diego County is in the midst of a separate legal battle with CoreCivic over the Otay Mesa Detention Center. In a lawsuit filed this month, the county alleges the Trump administration and Tennessee-based CoreCivic illegally blocked a public health inspection of the Otay Mesa Detention Center. According to the lawsuit, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially cleared county officials to enter the facility but reversed that decision when the inspection team arrived.

Overall, there were 142 calls for service to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department for the Otay Mesa Detention Center in 2024. Fourteen 14 were identified as related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a 2003 federal law designed to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse and harassment in correctional facilities.

Last year, there were 159 calls for service to the Otay Mesa facility. Twenty-one calls were related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and of those, seven were allegations of rape.

CalMatters used a Public Records Act request to obtain a digital log generated by 911 dispatchers and emergency services for 2024 and 2025.

CalMatters attempted to obtain additional records about the sexual assault and attempted sexual assault incidents, such as the audio recordings of the 911 calls and the full dispatch log, but the sheriff’s department refused to release them stating the records were “records of a law enforcement investigation, or any investigatory or security files compiled by a law enforcement agency are exempt from disclosure.”

The records CalMatters obtained gave no indication whether the victims were detainees or employees. Similarly, the records gave no indication about the perpetrators.

The department’s memorandum of understanding with CoreCivic was signed and dated by former San Diego Sheriff Bill Gore in 2020.

“Under the Memorandum of Understanding…the facility’s Warden is responsible for investigating any allegation of sexual assault or abuse,” said Lt. David Collins, the media relations director for the sheriff’s department. Collins referred further questions about the incidents to CoreCivic.

He said CoreCivic “did not request our involvement” for any cases last year.

“Because no criminal investigations were initiated by the Sheriff’s Office, no reports were forwarded to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of charges,” he said.

If deputies had investigated, the MOU would require them to forward their findings to CoreCivic.

“Upon completion/closure of an investigation, Investigating Agency will forward a copy of the investigation report to the Facility for retention as part of Facility’s record-keeping requirements,” the MOU states.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

By Nigel Duara, CalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

A series of immigration raids across California in 2025 had one thing in common: Most of the federal agents detaining people wore masks over their faces.

In January, the state of California and its largest county will ban law enforcement officers from covering their faces, with a few exceptions, putting local and state police at odds with masked immigration agents.

The state law gives law enforcement officers a choice: If they cover their faces, they lose the ability to assert “qualified immunity,” the doctrine that protects officers from individual liability for their actions. That means they can be sued for assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest or malicious prosecution, and the law adds a clause that says the minimum penalty for committing those offenses while wearing a mask is $10,000.

Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, a Los Angeles Democrat who co-authored the law, said it was necessary to rein in anonymous federal agents.

“We initially were under the understanding that, oh, they're only targeting folks who were not citizens,” Gonzalez said, “And then actually over time you learn they don't give a s--- who you are, they're attacking you no matter what, with no due process.”

The Trump administration has sued to block the bill, and more than a century of federal court precedent is on its side. An 1890 Supreme Court case provides that a state cannot prosecute a federal law enforcement officer acting in the course of their duties.

The Trump administration said in its brief to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California that forcing agents to reveal their identities would put the agents at risk.

During Immigration and Customs Enforcement “actions, individuals can be heard threatening to doxx and find out who officers and their family members are and where they live,” the administration’s lawyers said in the Nov. 17 brief. “There are even public websites that seek and publish personal information about ICE and other federal officers to harass and threaten them and their families.”

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, said the issue may not be as cut-and-dried as one or two Supreme Court cases. He pointed to a 2001 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that allowed the case of a federal sniper who killed a woman during the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho, standoff to go to trial.

“It basically says that a federal officer can be criminally prosecuted for unreasonable actions,” Chemerinsky said. “Federal officers, by virtue of being federal officers, do not get immunity from all state civil and criminal laws.”

Brian Marvel, president of an organization that represents California police unions, said the law will make life harder for local cops and county sheriffs’ deputies. The organizations that represent police chiefs, sheriffs, agents in the Attorney General’s office and California Highway Patrol officers opposed the law, too.

“I think that the state has put us in a tenuous position with this battle they’re having with the Trump administration,” said Marvel of the Peace Officers Research Association of California. “We don’t want to be in the middle of this fight. But unfortunately, (with) the desire for higher name recognition and elections in 2026, they decided to create things that are much more political and not geared toward legitimate public safety issues.”

Marvel said another drawback of the law is giving “a false sense of hope to the immigrant community in California” that the law will force federal agents to leave the state.

Los Angeles County supervisors have also approved a local mask ban on law enforcement for unincorporated areas of the county, a measure that will go into effect in mid-January, unless a court decision comes sooner.

Gonzalez noted that masks have played a significant role in recent California history. First,, during the pandemic California temporarily made masks mandatory in public and at work. Then, a couple of years later, a rush of smash-and-grab robberies were harder to solve because the suspects all wore masks. Now, California finds itself in its third back-and-forth over face coverings.

The law provides exemptions for N-95 or medical-grade masks to prevent infection transmission, and permits undercover operatives to wear a mask.

“This is specifically aimed to federal agents because we gotta combat these kidnappings somehow,” Gonzalez said, “and this was our way in.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story was originally published by CalMatters, nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

The California Justice Department announced today that it has found no cause to file charges against a Los Angeles police officer who, while aiming at a suspect, shot and killed a 14-year-old girl hiding in a department store fitting room.

Fourteen-year-old Valentina Orellana Peralta was picking out a quinceanera dress with her mother just before Christmas in 2021. She was shot and killed by a bullet that ricocheted off the floor.

The suspect, Daniel Abisai Elena Lopez, 24, was also killed in the shooting.

Los Angeles Police Department Officer William Jones will not face charges under the Justice Department’s two-year-old program to investigate fatal police shootings of unarmed people.

The Justice Department program has closed eight police shooting cases since July 2021. It has not recommended charges against officers in any of them. There are 46 cases still open, the oldest one dating to August 2021.

“The evidence shows that Officer Jones likely believed he was acting in self-defense or defense of others,” the Justice Department concluded in its analysis. “This killing appears to have been unintended and unforeseeable.”

Multiple officers told Jones to “slow down” as he advanced through the department store, according to the Justice Department and body-worn camera footage provided by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Los Angeles officer Jordan Head had a 40-millimeter bean bag gun, but before he could aim it at the suspect, Jones fired his AR-15 three times.

Head “did not discharge the 40-millimeter launcher because, before he could aim, rounds were fired, and the suspect fell to the ground and was no longer an immediate threat,” according to the Justice Department analysis of the shooting.

Officer Michael Mazur, who assumed command of the scene on arrival, told Jones to “slow down” multiple times, and at some point later told Head “It’s f—– up. We tried to slow it down.”

Mazur later explained his comment as referring to “an emotional release of (a) very violent crime scene.”

The Dec. 23, 2021, shooting began with a 911 call about a man striking people with a metal bike lock at a Burlington Coat Factory store. Store surveillance footage showed Lopez bringing his bicycle into the store and assaulting at least three women with the U-shaped lock.

He left the store and returned 90 seconds later, where he found a woman pushing a shopping cart. The footage from body cameras worn by the officers shows him striking her multiple times as she attempts to crawl away; then he drags her toward the dressing rooms.

At least 10 Los Angeles Police officers can be seen on the footage walking toward Lopez. According to body camera footage, Jones saw the woman lying on the floor, her face covered in blood. Another officer can be heard yelling for Jones to “slow down” and “hold up, hold up Jones.”

“She’s bleeding,” Jones said, then looked up, saw Lopez and fired three times.

“My heart goes out especially to the family of Valentina Orellana Peralta,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta, “who tragically lost her life and whose only involvement in this incident was by being at the wrong place at the wrong time.”