Associate Alina Vulic recently authored an article in the Daily Journal: “The cost of doing business: Death in custody and private contractor liability.”
The piece examines what families and plaintiffs’ attorneys can do when immigrants die inside privately operated immigration detention facilities. With 31 people dying in ICE detention in 2025, the highest annual total in more than two decades, the question of corporate accountability has never been more urgent.
Vulic outlines several legal routes available to California plaintiffs’ attorneys. Assembly Bill 3228 anchors private contractor liability to the standards promised in their contracts, giving detainees and their families a direct path to court when those standards are violated. Wrongful death and survival actions under California law reach the companies that actually staff, run and provide medical services in these facilities. The Tom Bane Civil Rights Act offers an additional avenue where detention staff conduct becomes coercive or intentionally rights-violating.
Vulic also examines Senate Bill 747, currently pending in the Assembly, which if enacted would create a state-law damages remedy for deprivations of constitutional rights by government officers, complementing the private contractor liability framework already in place.
To read the full article, click here. (Subscription required.)