San Diego County officials are facing scrutiny over how sexual-assault allegations are handled at the privately run Otay Mesa immigration detention center, after a CalMatters and Associated Press investigation reported that the county sheriff’s office did not investigate multiple reported assaults in 2025. The reporting described a 2020 memorandum of understanding between the Sheriff’s Department and CoreCivic that, in practice, assigns the warden the authority to decide whether to pursue investigations into sexual-assault allegations at the facility. The center, which houses just under 1,500 federal immigration detainees awaiting hearings, is operated for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE’s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations.
At the center of the dispute is the question of whether local law enforcement should investigate criminal allegations at a detention site run by a private prison contractor. CalMatters, which obtained the memorandum after seeking records through a California Public Records Act request, reported that Sheriff’s officials failed to investigate at least seven reported sexual assaults in 2025. A sheriff’s spokesperson told CalMatters that the agency was not investigating the cases and said additional records could not be turned over because they were part of “a law enforcement investigation.” ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment in connection with the investigation.
CoreCivic responded that its staff conduct an administrative investigation of each sex-assault allegation. In a statement after the story first published, CoreCivic said it does not conduct criminal investigations of sexual abuse allegations because it is not a law enforcement agency. CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin said, “When a matter requires law enforcement intervention, we refer it to the appropriate authorities,” and he added that all allegations are recorded in a database. Gustin said substantiated allegations can lead to disciplinary action and, where appropriate, referral for prosecution, and that immediate protective action is taken if someone is found to be at substantial risk of imminent sexual abuse.
The memorandum described by CalMatters and AP ties investigative authority to the facility itself. It said detention center Warden Christopher LaRose has authority to decide whether to investigate rape allegations at the Otay Mesa facility. San Diego Sheriff’s officials said they did not request CoreCivic’s involvement for any cases last year, according to reporting described by CalMatters. Lt. David Collins, the sheriff’s media relations director, told CalMatters that under the memorandum, “the facility’s Warden is responsible for investigating any allegation of sexual assault or abuse,” and referred further questions about incidents to CoreCivic. Collins also said that because no criminal investigations were initiated by the Sheriff’s Office, no reports were forwarded to the District Attorney’s Office for consideration of charges.
The investigation also included an analysis of calls for service involving the detention center. In 2024, the reporting said there were 142 calls to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department for the Otay Mesa facility, and 14 were identified as related to the Prison Rape Elimination Act, a federal law designed to prevent, detect and respond to sexual abuse and harassment in correctional facilities. The reporting said that in 2025 there were 159 calls for service to the facility, and 21 were related to PREA; of those, seven were allegations of rape. CalMatters obtained a digital log generated by 911 dispatchers and emergency services for 2024 and 2025 through a Public Records Act request.
When CalMatters sought more detailed records about the sexual-assault and attempted sexual-assault incidents—such as audio recordings of the 911 calls and the full dispatch log—the sheriff’s department withheld the additional material. The department said the records were “records of a law enforcement investigation,” or “any investigatory or security files compiled by a law enforcement agency” exempt from disclosure. The obtained records, the reporting said, did not indicate whether the victims were detainees or employees, and they did not indicate the perpetrators.
CoreCivic said it has “zero tolerance” for sex abuse and sexual harassment and that detainees, staff, or anyone present at a facility can report allegations in writing or through a hotline number. It also said it offers medical, mental health and emotional support services to anyone who makes an allegation. The company did not respond to questions described by CalMatters about whether it has similar memoranda of understanding with other agencies or about prior memoranda in San Diego County, according to the reporting.
Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer pressed the sheriff for answers after the story’s publication. Lawson-Remer said she planned to question Sheriff Kelly Martinez in a hearing Tuesday night on ICE transfers from county jails. She also said earlier that she did not have “much confidence at all in CoreCivic’s ability to investigate these very serious allegations.” In a separate discussion after the CalMatters story, she questioned the sheriff about the memorandum, and Martinez said his office did not have enough staff to investigate allegations of criminal misconduct at every civil and criminal detention facility in San Diego, including Otay Mesa.
According to reporting described by CalMatters and AP, Martinez said that even without an MOU, local investigators would still face the same reporting constraint because the facility would decide how allegations were routed. Lawson-Remer called the delegation of criminal investigation decisions to a private company “troubling,” and asked whether Martinez could sign an MOU requiring sheriff’s investigations of every criminal allegation. Martinez said he did not know whether his office had the staff capacity for that and suggested the county would need to create an investigative unit, according to the account of the exchange.
The dispute over Otay Mesa also intersects with other legal conflict. San Diego County is in 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 CoreCivic illegally blocked a public health inspection of the facility. The reporting said the county alleged that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially cleared county officials to enter but later reversed that decision when the inspection team arrived.
A 2022 audit described in the reporting, conducted by outside company Creative Corrections, found the facility met federal standards for preventing sexual assaults. Susan Beaty, a senior attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, said she was “horrified but not surprised to learn that numerous sexual assaults went uninvestigated at a CoreCivic facility,” and she said local and state enforcement agencies have a responsibility to use their power to protect people in detention and hold accountable both ICE and private prison companies that profit from incarcerating immigrants in California. CoreCivic’s written statements emphasized that it refers potentially criminal matters to law enforcement and that it provides protective and support services within its administrative process.