Imperial County, California — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Regional Adult Detention Facility (RADF); Herbert Hughes Correctional Center (HHCC); Oren R. Fox Detention Facility (OFDF)

Operated byImperial County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
County publishes jail namesYes — all three facilities are named and described
Combined bed space published876 beds (HHCC 314, OFDF 274, RADF 288)
RADF address328 Applestill Rd., El Centro, CA 92243 (from the county's own death notices)
Who is heldMale and female, sentenced and non-sentenced, county and federal
Visitation contact(442) 265-2266
Rated capacity870 beds across 3 facilities

Source: Imperial County Sheriff's Office — Corrections-Jail · checked 2026-08-23

Transparency rating

5/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✗Who is in custody — not published
✓Beds and daily population
✓What it costs taxpayers
✓Deaths in custody
✓PREA audits
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✗How to post bond — not published
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Imperial County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-23. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtHerbert Hughes Correctional Center — built in the early 1960s; Regional Adult Detention Facility — built in the late 1970s, first housed people in August 1981; Oren R. Fox Detention Facility — construction began August 2016, opened September 2018
Original costOren R. Fox Detention Facility — $33 million allotted by the State of California. Cost of HHCC and RADF: Not found
Paid for byThe County applied for a state grant in 2011 for the new facility; the State of California allotted $33 million for construction of the Oren R. Fox Detention Facility. RADF's Second Chance Classroom (2017) was grant funded.
Beds876 combined published by the Sheriff's Office (HHCC 314, OFDF 274, RADF 288). State rated capacity file: 870 (RADF 276, HHCC 324, OFDF 270).

Since then

Oren R. Fox Detention Facility opened September 2018, adding 274 beds
Second Chance Classroom added at RADF in 2017 through grant funding

The Sheriff

Sheriff Fred Miramontes

Title as publishedSheriff-Coroner-Marshal
Also serves asCounty Coroner and Marshal — the office that runs the jail also runs the Coroner Divisions
Cross-checkCalifornia State Sheriffs' Association directory lists Fred Miramontes for Imperial

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Imperial County Sheriff's Office — Biography · checked 2026-08-23

The Judges

The court publishes a full department-by-department assignment list. Criminal departments are listed here because they carry the calendars where bail is set; the court does not name a single dedicated bail or arraignment department.

Superior Court of California, County of Imperial — Presiding Judge

Monica Lepe-Negrete

Superior Court of California, County of Imperial — Assistant Presiding Judge

Michael Domenzain

El Centro Courthouse — Criminal departments (arraignments and criminal calendars)

Poli Flores Jr. (Dept. 1)
Marco D. Nunez (Dept. 10)
Monica Lepe-Negrete (Dept. 11 — Criminal / Master Calendar)
Christopher J. Plourd (Dept. 12 — Criminal, mental health, collaborative courts)
William D. Lehman (Dept. 13 — Criminal / Misdemeanor)

Superior Court of California, County of Imperial — Referee

Martin Gonzalez (Dept. 6 and Winterhaven — infractions, small claims)

Still needed

The county's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-23

The County Commissioners

They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Imperial publishes all seven Penal Code 10008 elements, including the cell where each person died. It is the most complete death posting in this group.
Capacity is recorded 'yes' on published bed counts; daily population is not published.
PREA annual reports for 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 and a 2022 PREA audit report are posted on the Mandated Disclosures page.
No in-custody roster was found. The Sheriff's site links VINELink (victim notification lookup, siteId 5011), which is a name search rather than a published list. The 2015 family guide PDF still tells readers to click 'Who's In Jail' at www.icso.org; no such page exists on the current site.
The jail page says the facilities hold federal as well as county prisoners, but no contract or per-diem rate is published.
Money deposits route to Gettingout.com and phone/commissary rates are not published.
No BSCC inspection report is posted on the county's own site.
Five-member Board of Supervisors, elected by district.

What California law requires

Imperial County posts a death-in-custody page.

Posts 7 of 7

The page is here. In-custody deaths are published in an 'In-Custody Deaths' section of the Sheriff's 'Mandated Disclosures' page (URL slug /ab-481/), alongside AB 481 and PC 13652.1 reporting. Four deaths are posted — 05/08/2024, 07/13/2024, 05/02/2025 and 01/05/2026 — each with coroner's case number, county of death, agency with custodial responsibility, facility, exact location within the facility (housing module and cell), race, gender, age, date of death, custodial status, manner of death and mode of death. Two entries record manner and means as 'Pending Investigation'.

✓The agency with custodial responsibility
✓The county where the death occurred
✓The facility — and where inside it
✓Race, gender and age
✓The date of death
✓Custodial status — awaiting arraignment, awaiting trial, or incarcerated
✓Manner and means of death

California Penal Code § 10008, enacted by AB 2761 and in force since January 2023, requires the agency with custodial responsibility to post these seven items on its own website within ten days of a death in custody, and to update them within thirty days if the facts change. California is the only state in the country with this duty. Checked 2026-08-23. This records what is published, nothing more.

The record

19 people have died in the Imperial County jail since 2016.

7 by suicide

2 illness or medical

19 deaths in all, 2016 onward

Deaths where the person had not been convicted of the charge holding them15 of 19

Most recent death on the state's record2025-05-02

Deaths: Texas Justice Initiative, the cleaned copy of the Texas Attorney General’s custodial death reports — the state’s own public index carries no cause of death and has not been refreshed since August 2025. Population: Texas Commission on Jail Standards monthly report. Counted, not estimated.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Imperial County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).

How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.

The sheriff is on your ballot

The county elections office runs the polling place in Imperial County and prints the ballot the sheriff’s name is on. Links from the California Secretary of State and vote.gov.

Names verified 2026-08-23 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered