U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston
FRESNO - A federal judge refused to issue a temporary restraining order blocking a federal contractor from operating a new immigration detention center, and increasing its detainee population, a request based in part on allegations leveled by pro-immigrant activists that California City violated zoning codes and state laws when approving the project.
U.S. District Judge Jennifer Thurston issued an order Nov. 7 to reject a request from the activist group Dignity Not Detention Coalition on behalf of one detainee identified only as John Doe, purportedly a client of one of the Coalition’s member organizations. The Coalition, representing organizations focused on municipal planning issues and immigrants' rights, sued the city and CoreCivic in Kern County Superior Court in September, but the complaint was removed to federal court a week later.
Thurston — who took over the case Oct. 31 after the initially assigned judge recused himself — said the facility had 746 detainees as of Oct. 25 and CoreCivic projects it to reach full capacity of 2,560 in early 2026. She said the argument for a temporary restraining order “appears to boil down to an assertion that Coalition member organizations are being injured because they had to prepare for and prosecute this lawsuit. This form of injury does not constitute irreparable harm for the purposes of injunctive relief.”
The other form of harm was an allegation that “conversion and population of the facility would frustrate the Coalition’s mission and goals by undermining the protections of (Senate Bill) 29,” according to the complaint, which Coalition members endorsed, “thereby setting a precedent that other cities or corporations could ignore the law as well.” But Thurston said addressing that concern could stem from ultimate resolution of the lawsuit and would “be disregarded for purposes of determining whether Plaintiffs have established irreparable harm sufficient to justify preliminary injunctive relief.”
Coalition members said failure to get a restraining order would mean continued deprivation of a “statutory right to open and public hearing on the city’s issuance of permits to the facility” for the “Coalition and hundreds of other organizations and individuals who have vigorously protested the facility’s illegal opening and operation.”
While Thurston acknowledged the possibility such a procedural injury could compound actual irreparable harm, she said the record otherwise doesn’t support that such harm exists. She expressed “concerns about the evidentiary value” of newspaper reports on conditions inside the California City facility and focused specifically on evidence from Doe’s allegations as a detainee starting in early September following a transfer from Golden State Annex.
“He articulates various concerns about conditions at the facility,” Thurston wrote. “In evaluating whether his declarations support a finding of irreparable harm, the court focuses on any connection between his complaints and the key relief requested, namely an injunction against further population of the facility.”
While Doe alleged detainees didn’t have access to hot showers upon arrival, he said that changed as of the weekend of Sept. 12 and doesn’t persist. He also said the tablets detainees could access for communicating with family and submitting medical requests or grievances initially operated slowly or with limited options but have functioned normally since Sept. 18. Doe said his first cell was filled with junk, but officers removed the items. Detainees didn’t have cleaning supplies until the end of September, although not enough for everyone to share.
“Doe also complains that the facility showers to not provide basic privacy because you can see the shower area from the housing unit’s tables; and the shower curtains are ‘held up by string or tied by plastic bags’ and ‘often fall down while people are showering,’ ” Thurston wrote. “The court again fails to see how these concerns rise to the level of harm that would warrant the emergency relief requested. Put another way, on this record, these concerns do not seem to relate to overpopulation but rather seem to be, if anything, reflective of CoreCivic’s failure to have all services running smoothly and supplies in place when detainees first started to arrive.”
She similarly addressed concerns about lack of access to a law library or legal resources and said Doe’s reservations about outdoor access seemed to focus on complaints of “invasive searches” as part of that process, which “is at its core an objection to the methods CoreCivic guards use to search detainees prior to scheduled outdoor recreation. It is again unclear how this relates to the relief requested here. An injunction against transferring additional detainees to the Facility will not remedy or change these search methods.”
Thurston detailed Doe’s allegations about medical care and one detainee who attempted to hang himself but called it “anecdotal information” that doesn’t demonstrate issues stemming from overcrowding or establish how a limit on facility “population would likely avoid similar situations.”
The facility failed a municipal fire inspection in July but opened anyway in late August. Although the initial report held “the facility’s safety deficiencies were so substantial at that time that the city determined it was ‘not possible’ for CoreCivic to fix them before Nov. 19,” Thurston wrote, California City now “indicates that the facility passed its final fire and building inspections.” Since Doe and the Coalition didn’t respond to the new assertions, she continued, the rebuttal is undisputed at this stage.
The Coalition also alleged the facility’s location in the Mojave Desert is problematic for potential extreme heat events. But CoreCivic insists the facility is air conditioned, Thurston said, before further noting “it will be many months before any extreme heat event is likely to impact the high desert of Eastern California. This alleged harm does not justify treating the instant motion as an emergency that cannot be noticed on the court’s regular calendar.”
Finally, Thurston noted concerns about the facility’s environmental impacts “appear to have been evaluated in 1998, with the resulting environmental document revealing that most impacts would occur during the construction phase.” She said the city conducted a new environmental review before giving permission to add 512 beds in addition to approvals for building and operating a new 2,200-bed facility on an adjacent 35-acre parcel, none of which revealed concerns sufficient “to justify emergency intervention.”
