State Sen. Lena Gonzalez is pushing a new transparency fight straight into California’s private immigration lockups, introducing a bill this week that would force local agencies to release audio and video of emergency calls coming from those facilities. The timing is not subtle, arriving as state inspectors, advocates and families sound alarms over overcrowding, delayed medical care and a recent string of deaths at sites including Adelanto and Imperial.
What the bill would require
Gonzalez’s SB 423 would amend the California Public Records Act so that recordings and related records of 911 calls and other calls for service originating from private detention facilities must be released on request. The measure would still allow redactions to protect victims and to withhold material that could jeopardize an active investigation. As outlined by Sen. Lena Gonzalez, the bill is aimed at giving families, lawyers, and journalists the same access to real-time emergency records that already exists when calls route through local dispatch.
State inspections found care gaps and deaths
The California Department of Justice reported that a May inspection of seven ICE-contracted facilities uncovered inadequate medical care, treatment delays, overcrowding, small food portions, and excessive use of force by staff. According to the California Department of Justice, those problems were linked to a surge in detainee populations, and CalMatters reports that six people died at Adelanto and Imperial between September 2025 and March 2026.
Reporters were blocked from getting the 911 audio
When local journalists tried to obtain 911 recordings tied to incidents at Otay Mesa and other facilities, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department refused to hand over the audio, citing a law-enforcement exemption in the Public Records Act. That move is exactly the kind of roadblock Gonzalez and her supporters say SB 423 is meant to address, according to the Long Beach Post.
Numbers behind the urgency
Advocates point to a sharp population spike. TRAC Reports shows California’s average daily detained population climbing from roughly 3,100 people in April 2025 to about 5,300 in April 2026. State filings and reviews also note that several open contracts and new sites have expanded California’s private detention footprint to roughly eight facilities with space for nearly 10,000 people, adding pressure on medical and intake systems, according to the California Department of Justice.
Why recordings matter
Emergency recordings can capture details in the heat of the moment that later become crucial in investigations and lawsuits. “These are in-the-moment recordings of what is happening at the detention facility,” Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, told the Long Beach Post, noting that dispatchers frequently ask questions that reveal how serious and immediate a situation really is.
Legal carve-outs built into the bill
SB 423 includes carve-outs to protect victim privacy and to allow agencies to withhold recordings when releasing them would interfere with an active investigation, but it would narrow the law-enforcement exemption sheriffs previously used to keep the audio secret. The bill language and its procedural history are publicly available on legislative tracking sites, which show SB 423 has been amended and advanced through early committee steps, and the full text can be reviewed on bill tracking pages.
What’s next
The proposal now moves into additional committee hearings in Sacramento, with supporters pushing for more transparency and critics raising concerns about privacy and investigative work. If the bill passes the Legislature and is signed into law, local agencies would have to release emergency-call recordings connected to private immigration detention centers, a shift that backers argue could finally shed light on what is happening inside those facilities.
