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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.”
Capital & Main’s 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.
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