Fresno Bishop Celebrates Mass at California City ICE Center, Highlights Mental Health

Bishop Joseph V. Brennan of the Diocese of Fresno celebrated Mass inside the CoreCivic California City ICE detention facility on Feb. 16 for roughly 70 detainees, saying the visit was meant to accompany men in detention and draw attention to detainee care, mental health and access to sacraments. The facility, which local reports describe as the state’s largest ICE center, opened in August 2025 and is cited as having capacity for up to 2,560 people.

Inside the facility, media were not allowed to film the service, but local reporting and diocesan accounts said the worshippers were Spanish speakers who joined in prayer, song and confessions. Reflecting on the Mass afterward at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Parish in California City, Brennan described a moment of communal worship: “We just said, ‘Hallelujah,’ a couple of times over and over again, and they just lifted up their voices, and some of them were raising their hands,” he told Bakersfield reporters as rain fell outside the parish.

Brennan framed the visit as pastoral outreach in a charged immigration environment. “These are my people,” he said in reporting carried by CatholicCulture; he added, “I need to be there, they need that presence and I want to accompany them.” The bishop also told reporters that the visit was “my very first time getting into a detention center, for ICE,” and that detainees “are hurting” and seek someone “to literally bare their soul to.”

The Diocese of Fresno’s director of public affairs and innovation, Chandler Marquez, told EWTN that “people who are in the facility [who] want the sacrament, they want the spiritual accompaniment,” and that the “current climate has certainly motivated” Brennan’s decision to visit. Local accounts said Brennan heard confessions, sang with detainees, and prayed for peace during the service.

The Mass comes amid heightened scrutiny of the California City facility. Bakersfield outlets noted California Attorney General Rob Bonta had examined the center for alleged unsafe conditions about two months earlier, and local reports referenced concern from U.S. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and a November statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about detention conditions and limited pastoral access. Bishop Brennan acknowledged mixed impressions of conditions on site, saying, “I think they're probably good things and bad things happening in terms of the conditions. But what I saw was, like, absolute cleanliness.”

Turnto23 and Bakersfield reporting said Brennan intends this visit to be the start of further pastoral outreach across the Central Valley, with plans to return to California City and to visit other detention centers to press for regular sacramental access and attention to detainees’ mental-health needs.