McFARLAND, California — U.S. Senator Alex Padilla and Representative Jim Costa were denied entry to the Golden State Annex immigration detention facility in McFarland, Kern County, during an unannounced congressional oversight visit, Padilla's office said in a statement headed from McFarland. The two California Democrats said they had gone to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility to exercise Congress's oversight role and to ask basic questions about conditions, medical care and the treatment of the people detained inside, as the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement across the Central Valley and throughout California.

Source: Senator Alex Padilla, U.S. Senate

The facility is operated for ICE by the GEO Group, a for-profit private prison company. According to Padilla's office, the lawmakers were turned away because officials at the annex said ICE agents were not present on site to allow them into the facility. Padilla said the pair had wanted to make sure detainees have adequate access to basic needs such as food, clean water and medical care. The Fresno Bee reported the same account — that the congressman and the senator were turned away from the Central Valley ICE facility — in its coverage carried in the November 3 daily immigration news roundup of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Source: The Fresno Bee, via AILA Daily Immigration News Clips, Nov. 3, 2026

This was Padilla's fifth unannounced oversight visit to an ICE facility in the past month and his seventh in California this year, his office said. Padilla is the ranking member — the senior Democrat — on the Senate Judiciary Immigration Subcommittee. His earlier oversight stops this year have included facilities in California City, Otay Mesa, San Francisco International Airport, downtown Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Diego, according to his office.

"More than 60 people have now died in ICE custody"

"More than 60 people have now died in ICE custody since Donald Trump returned to office. That is a staggering and unacceptable loss of life, and the Trump Administration continues to refuse to answer basic questions about the conditions inside its detention facilities," Padilla said. "Today I visited the Golden Annex in McFarland to demand answers and accountability. My office continues to receive alarming reports about conditions inside these facilities and agency officials won't even answer basic questions about whether they're respecting due process rights and protecting the fundamental human rights of those in their custody. Their refusal to grant us access to the detention facility raises serious questions about what they're trying to hide. Families deserve answers. The American people deserve transparency. And this Administration must be held accountable for its cruel and inhumane mass deportation agenda. I will keep showing up, demanding answers, and fighting to ensure the law is followed and people's rights are protected." The figure of more than 60 deaths is Padilla's statement; ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had not published a detailed public response to the McFarland visit in the reports reviewed for this story.

Costa, who represents California's 21st congressional district in the Central Valley, said: "Today's visit with Senator Padilla to the Golden State Annex detention facility once again demonstrated ICE's lack of accountability and transparency. As members of Congress, we have a constitutional right to conduct oversight of these facilities and ask basic questions about the conditions, medical care, and treatment of detainees. Instead, we were denied access to basic information and given the runaround. As my district and communities across our state continue to be impacted by ICE activity, I remain committed to working alongside my colleagues to hold ICE accountable and demand transparency."

Background: a 700-bed private detention site on Highway 99

The Golden State Annex stands at 611 Frontage Road in McFarland, a small farming city in Kern County on the Highway 99 corridor that carries much of the Central Valley's farm and trucking traffic between Bakersfield and Fresno. GEO Group's own filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission list the Golden State Annex as a 700-bed, company-owned ICE detention facility in McFarland, and GEO's 2024 annual report says the contracts for the Golden State Annex and three other California ICE facilities were renewed in the fourth quarter of 2024 for five-year terms running through December 2029. The annex sits in a cluster of Central Valley detention sites that also includes GEO's Mesa Verde facility in Bakersfield and the neighbouring Central Valley Annex in McFarland.

Source: The GEO Group, Form 10-K filed with the U.S. SEC

Conditions at the McFarland and Bakersfield facilities have been disputed for years. In February 2023, people detained at the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield and the Golden State Annex in McFarland filed a federal class-action lawsuit through civil-rights groups alleging that ICE and GEO Group retaliated against them — including with threats of solitary confinement and bans on family visits — for taking part in a hunger strike demanding release and better conditions; those claims were allegations in a lawsuit, not court findings. Last month, Padilla's office said, he also demanded answers from DHS over increased immigration enforcement and resident detentions in Mendota, in Fresno County, and he has urged DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin to recall ICE officers hired during the 2025 surge and, in September, called on DHS to halt immigration enforcement activity near schools and educational institutions in San Diego County.

Why this matters in the Central Valley — and to Punjabi families

The Central Valley is one of California's largest immigrant communities and one of its largest Punjabi diaspora regions, stretching from Bakersfield and Fresno through Stockton, Modesto and Yuba City. Farm work, food processing and long-haul trucking on Highway 99 and Interstate 5 employ many immigrant and Punjabi families across Kern and Fresno counties, and people detained after arrests in valley towns are routinely held at facilities such as McFarland and Bakersfield, far from families and lawyers in Fresno, Sacramento or the Bay Area. That distance is why oversight visits — and refusals of access — draw close attention from valley communities: when a facility will not admit two members of Congress, families say it becomes harder still to learn how a detained relative is being fed, treated or medically cared for. Those community concerns are the context for the lawmakers' statements above; this story does not treat them as findings about conditions inside the annex on the day of the visit, which the lawmakers were not able to inspect.

What happens next

Padilla said he will keep making unannounced visits and demanding records, and his office released photos and video of the McFarland stop. No court date arises from the visit itself, and neither ICE nor DHS had issued a detailed public reply to the lawmakers' account in the reports reviewed by publication time — the only explanation recorded is the one the lawmakers say they were given at the gate: that no ICE agents were on site to let them in. The wider fight is likely to continue in Congress, where Padilla and Senate Judiciary colleagues have repeatedly pressed DHS over deaths in custody — in June, Padilla and Senator Dick Durbin wrote to Secretary Mullin and the acting ICE director demanding the administration halt detention expansion until deficiencies were corrected, citing what was then the 50th reported death in ICE custody under this administration. Readers in the Central Valley with a relative detained at McFarland should note that the visit changed nothing about individual cases: detainees' court hearings, bond requests and legal-aid contacts continue through the normal immigration-court process.