Beyond the Border brings you human stories about the U.S. immigration system through original reporting from journalist Kate Morrissey and curated highlights from reporters across the country. The newsletter is supported by Capital & Main.
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement took José into its custody at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego in January, he told medical staff at the facility that he had colon cancer.
Since then, his symptoms have worsened, he said, and he has begged them for treatment — to no avail.
“They have ignored me,” José said in Spanish. “They’ve ignored all the times I’ve been bleeding.”
Beyond the Border is not fully identifying José or his relatives due to retaliation concerns.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment from Beyond the Border in time for publication.
Brian Todd, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the private prison company that owns and operates the facility, said that José is being regularly monitored by facility staff.
“All known medical issues are being addressed, including an upcoming appointment,” Todd said. “We are committed to providing care consistent with evidence-based medical guidelines and continue to assess and address patient needs in collaboration with our health care partners.”
His case is among eight that a community group that maintains contact with ICE detainees raised in a recent complaint sent to the agency and CoreCivic, raising concerns about inadequate medical treatment and inhumane care. SOLACE San Diego also raised concerns about a diabetic man who isn’t receiving his needed medications and a man who uses a wheelchair after back surgery but isn’t receiving proper accommodations, among others.
This is not the first time that detainees at Otay Mesa Detention Center have complained about inadequate medical care, particularly since ICE transferred the medical unit to CoreCivic staffing.
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform released a report in 2020 that found that widespread failure to provide necessary medical care contributed to ICE detainee deaths. In 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report in which medical experts found that 95% of ICE detainee deaths over a five-year period were preventable or possibly preventable.
At least six people have died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump took office, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
José is worried that he could be next.
José said he came to the United States from Guatemala in 2003. He and his wife met roughly 18 years ago in Los Angeles while dancing at a bar that plays Central American music, his wife said. She liked that he was respectful. They married in 2014.
He worked in construction, and the couple loved to go out dancing together, she said.
At one point, he tried to request asylum and adjust his status, after his ex-wife in Guatemala found a new partner who was a known sicario and corrupt police officer, he said. The partner threatened José, saying that if he ever came back, he would become one more body disappeared by the man.
According to court records, an immigration judge dismissed José’s case in 2023, likely as part of the Biden administration’s immigration enforcement priorities. The closure meant that the government was no longer trying to deport José even though he didn’t have permission to be in the U.S.
In April 2024, José learned that he had colon cancer.
About a month later, on May 23, Border Patrol agents arrested José near Tecate, California, after he picked up a Guatemalan man who didn’t have permission to be in the U.S. and who had asked for a ride to Los Angeles, according to a complaint filed in federal criminal court.
“I just saved the life of a person,” José said. “They said what I did was bad, that I shouldn’t have rescued the person.”
According to court records, José took a plea deal, pleading guilty to one count of “transportation of certain aliens,” a felony. A judge sentenced him to time served, waived his fine and put him on an order of supervision for a year.
José said that his cancer went untreated for the nearly eight months that he was in federal criminal custody at Otay Mesa Detention Center, which also holds detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service.
The Marshals Service said that the Privacy Act restricts its ability to discuss someone’s medical history.
After José’s release from criminal custody, officials sent him to a Customs and Border Protection processing center near the Brown Field Municipal Airport in south San Diego, he said. He stayed there for more than two weeks while his wife struggled to locate him, according to the couple. He said he felt like he’d been kidnapped.
On Jan. 27, ICE officers sent him back to Otay Mesa Detention Center, this time on the immigration side of the facility.
“When I saw CoreCivic, the same place again — it can’t be,” he said.
On Jan. 28, in his intake medical screening with a nurse, he reported several “current medical complaints” including colon cancer, depression and high blood pressure, according to a copy of his medical records sent to Beyond the Border. The nurse recommended that he see a doctor within 24 hours.
The following day, he saw a facility doctor who wrote in the visit notes that José “does not have any current symptoms or medical issues of concern.”
The doctor added hemorrhoids to José’s list of diagnoses. It is not clear why the doctor’s note does not reflect the nurse’s note from the day before.
José went to the facility’s medical unit several times over the following months complaining of blood in his stool and other issues related to his colon cancer, according to his medical records.
A medical note dated April 17 indicates that staff were waiting for José to get copies of his medical records from the hospital he went to in Los Angeles.
On April 22, a physician’s assistant requested a colonoscopy for José. That still hasn’t happened, José said Friday.
Meanwhile, his symptoms are getting worse, he said. He said his pain has spread from his colon to his stomach and chest, and he has lost so much blood that a recent test showed that he is anemic.
“The pain doesn’t go away anymore. It’s permanent,” he said. “I get dizzy.”
About a week ago, the documents from his medical team in Los Angeles finally arrived. He said officials finally seem to believe he has cancer, but he still hasn’t received any treatment.
“Sometimes I think, and I talk to God, and I ask why, with everything that I’m going through,” he said.
His wife said she, too, is worried that José will die in custody.
“I will fight until I’m told that I can’t anymore because we can’t do any more,” his wife said in Spanish.
Arrests at ICE Check-Ins
Advocates began raising alarms last week that in addition to making arrests at immigration courts, ICE officers are also now detaining people who come to their offices for check-in appointments. In San Francisco, that included mothers with children as young as 3, said Priya Patel, an attorney with California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.
Patel said that officers held three families made up of mothers and children overnight at the ICE office building, where they slept on the floor of their cells. ICE later sent at least one family to South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, which the Biden administration had shuttered but Trump reopened earlier this year.
ICE arrests in Los Angeles, including at check-ins, led to community protests and a rapid escalation in response from the White House over the weekend. L.A. Taco has images of an immigration enforcement vehicle knocking down a protester who stood in the street to block it from leaving with workers detained at Ambiance Apparel.
Over objections from Gov. Gavin Newsom, Trump deployed the California National Guard to Los Angeles. That appears to have intensified protests, according to the Associated Press. Newsom said on X that the state of California is now suing the administration over its use of the guard.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on X that U.S. Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton are on “high alert,” suggesting that he might send active duty troops to police civilians. U.S. law generally blocks military troops from participating in civilian law enforcement.
According to a statement from U.S. Northern Command, the federal government has taken 2,000 California National Guard troops under its command, and 300 are already deployed in Los Angeles. A second statement from the command on Monday said that the government is sending 700 Marines to Los Angeles from Twentynine Palms, California.
Tina Vásquez, a journalist who has covered immigration for years and is now features editor at Prism, wrote a piece rallying behind her beloved city.
Other Stories to Watch
Community members in the San Diego neighborhood of South Park protested ICE arrests happening at an Italian restaurant. Officials used flash bangs to try to move the crowd. In the days since, San Diegans have held multiple rallies to denounce the agency’s tactics.
Trump issued a new travel ban, blocking entry of people from 12 countries — Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. He also placed restrictions on the entry of people from seven more countries — Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
For Daylight San Diego, I recently attended a cultural event for San Diego’s Hazara community. The Hazara are an ethnic minority from Afghanistan, and many of the people who helped U.S. troops in their country — and have since had to flee the Taliban — are part of this minority group that has faced extensive persecution.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the use of U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as an immigration detention site.
In one of the lawsuits over the Trump administration sending Venezuelan men to El Salvador’s prisons, Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the federal government to give the men the opportunity to make habeas corpus petitions to challenge their incarceration. The judge began his order by quoting from a scene from Franz Kafka’s The Trial.
The Trump administration knew that the majority of those Venezuelan men whom it sent to Salvadoran prisons did not have criminal records prior to removing them from the U.S., according to an investigation by the Texas Tribune and ProPublica.
A Guatemalan man whom the Trump administration wrongly deported to Mexico was allowed to reenter the U.S., the Washington Post reported.
An Ethiopian woman who was tortured by her government may end up deported to Ethiopia anyway because of Trump administration changes blocking migrants’ access to protection screenings, The California Newsroom reported.
The Washington Post told the story of a 2-year-old girl who was born in the U.S. and deported with her family to Brazil, where she had to enter the country as a tourist and has not been able to gain residency.
The Detroit Metro Times wrote about an 18-year-old who is facing deportation after a traffic stop on the way to a high school field trip.
The Wall Street Journal investigated the businesses profiting from Trump’s increased immigration enforcement.
Adam Isacson at the Washington Office on Latin America published an analysis of conditions for LGBTQ+ migrants.
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