Nathan Reynoso 
26 May 2026
By Lina Olberding, Crude Accountability Researcher
On November 17, 2025, a woman, married to a US citizen, was detained by ICE in the middle of a green card interview with the General Services Agency in San Diego, California. ICE officers claimed the woman had overstayed her 2024 visa. According to the woman, her lawyer explained that this overstay was not a legal violation considering her marriage status to a US citizen and her current progress in receiving a green card. During her arrest, ICE officers referred to her and several other individuals as “bodies”, seemingly indicating an effort to dehumanize the detained. She was taken to a holding facility for 16 hours, and was only allowed to call her spouse after three hours of detention and after her spouse preloaded the woman’s account with money. The cell in which she was held within this facility contained 7 detainees and was equipped with only two steel benches and two floor mats.
At 2:45 AM, the woman was moved to Otay Mesa, an ICE detention facility in San Diego, California, via van. She was kept in this van for two hours with no access to a restroom, food, or water. The woman was then moved into a temporary holding cell without food, blankets, or floor mats. The cell only contained a phone, a disabled sink, and a toilet. When she asked for water, she was reportedly advised by ICE officers to drink from the toilet. She, reportedly, was provided no toilet paper for the very same toilet she was instructed to drink from. According to the woman, the officers at the facility wore winter coats inside, potentially indicating the facility lacked proper heating, while detainees were only offered t-shirts. She was held in this temporary holding cell for twelve hours. The phone in the temporary cell did not work. Only after six hours of detention and pleading with ICE officers was she able to make a phone call, using an agent’s cell phone, to inform her spouse of her transfer.
From this temporary holding cell, the woman was moved to a larger pod of nine detainees. Only eight beds were provided in this pod, forcing the woman to sleep on the floor. Her pod shared toilets with several other pods; a total of 160 people for ten toilets (a ratio of sixteen people per toilet).
The woman entered detention with an underlying health condition: type 1 diabetes. According to her testimony, she requires both long-term and short-term injections to maintain her blood sugar levels. The former are required for general maintenance, and the latter are required with each meal. Due to her underlying condition, her diet must also be curated in order to maintain normal blood sugar levels. The woman alleges that facility staff ignored these medical necessities, refusing to provide long-term injections and offering only a carbohydrate-heavy diet, consisting of pasta, rice, cake, and bread. She alleges few vegetables were provided. She alleges this medical neglect continued for three days while she was in the pod. During this time, she could not eat, and she began to fall ill. On the fourth day at the facility, she was allowed to see a doctor who indicated that her blood sugar levels were over 500. She was then misdiagnosed with type 2 diabetes and was given a large dose of insulin. She informed the doctor that such a large dose could be dangerous for her, but was ignored and sent back to her pod without medical supervision.
The same day following her visit to the doctor, the woman was moved to solitary medical confinement. For five days, she remained in a cell smaller than a parking spot with only a toilet and a floor mat available to her. After two days in solitary medical confinement, she was granted access to a new doctor who provided her with the correct dosages of insulin she required. During her five-day isolation, she was permitted only one shower. The woman alleges that guards routinely denied her access to showers, allegedly stating “maybe later” and “we only allow people to shower at 5 am.” During her five-day isolation, she was also not permitted to call her husband or her attorney. Instead, she was only permitted access to a tablet to text her husband at 33 cents per message, which only became available to her after five hours of isolated detention.
The night before her release, the woman’s blood sugar allegedly spiked to 334. According to the woman, the nurse attending her initially refused to provide her insulin. She alleges that only after two hours of begging did the nurse contact a doctor, who instructed the nurse to provide the woman with an insulin injection. Additionally, the woman reportedly battled infections after her detention, and was allegedly never provided antibiotics or antibacterials while in detention, even when facing cases of tinea pedis, vulvovaginal candidiasis, and bacterial vaginosis, potentially due to the medical neglect, lack of medical supervision, and lack of hygiene as described above. She reportedly lost ten pounds in the span of eight days in detention.
According to the woman, she was not the only detainee to experience this potential medical neglect. While with other detainees in the ten-person pod, one of her podmates reportedly received heart medication for their heart condition only after two weeks of detention. She reported witnessing a podmate experiencing symptoms of psychosis, including committing self-harm, biting their own fingers, and pulling out their own hair. She also reported hearing other detainees, while in solitary medical confinement, screaming that they were in pain and needed medication. According to her, many never received medication.
The woman also alleges that ICE committed theft, stealing her credit card. According to her, she had her card when she was detained, and it was confiscated by ICE along with her other personal items. After her release, she alleges there were charges made to the card during her detention, including purchases of Starbucks and Visa gift cards.
On November 25, 2025, the woman was granted bail and was able to leave the ICE facility. For two months after her release, she was tracked by ICE via an ankle monitor. After those two months, her case was dismissed by a judge who ruled that ICE had no jurisdiction to detain her, given that she had a pending green card application.