In April 2024, José went to the emergency room with rectal bleeding. Doctors recommended an immediate colonoscopy to rule out cancer. He never got one — not for 16 months.

José is a Guatemalan immigrant who spent more than 20 years building his life in Los Angeles. After his arrest and transfer to ICE custody in January 2025, he was held at Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, run by the private prison company CoreCivic. For over a year, he submitted medical requests, waited, and kept bleeding — with no one following through on what the ER had recommended from the start.

When journalists and attorneys finally intervened, José received the colonoscopy and surgery he had been waiting for. A polyp was found and removed. But even after his operation, he says staff denied him the medications his surgeon prescribed and refused to provide the high-fiber diet required for his recovery.

"Sometimes I think they want to kill me here," he told Capital & Main.

José's case is not a clerical error or a one-time oversight. It is the result of a system where detainees have no power to demand the care they are legally owed — and where a private company faces no real consequences for failing to provide it. Federal law requires ICE to ensure adequate medical care for everyone in its custody. That standard is not being met at Otay Mesa.

Sign this petition to demand that ICE and CoreCivic immediately ensure detainees at Otay Mesa receive timely, medically necessary care — including follow-through on ER referrals, prescribed medications, and post-surgical recovery support.