A new immigration detention center has opened in the Central Valley — this time in McFarland — just north of Bakersfield. ICE has already begun to transfer immigrant detainees to the new site, which was formerly a state prison operated by the GEO Group.
KVCR spoke to CalMatters reporter Wendy Fry, who has the scoop on this latest story.
Wendy, tell us more about this new detention center that’s opened in the Central Valley?
So what we've confirmed is that ICE has opened its eighth detention center in California. It's a 700 bed facility in McFarland in Kern County and it's run by the for-profit prison company, GEO Group. ICE confirmed to us late last night that they opened this facility within the last two weeks, and they say that it's operating under existing contract standards that they already had in place.
What's striking about how this happened is that it happened so quietly. There was no public announcement, and as far as we can see, no real community input. And it's also, it's also part of a much larger surge. So the number of people being held currently in California in ICE detention is up 72% from just this time last year.
How were companies like GEO Group able to get permission to occupy another immigrant detention center?
This is a very important distinction that you're making. So they didn't have to build anything new. I don't think they could have built something new and concealed that from the public. This is a former California state prison that was already standing that GEO Group owned already. So what happened is when California's prison population dropped, the Newsom administration ended its contract for GEO.
But GEO had already locked in this 15-year $1.5 billion contract with ICE and they signed it just a few weeks before this new California law went into effect that was trying to block exactly this kind of conversion of these properties. But a federal court later struck that state law down, saying that it interfered with the federal authority to enforce immigration laws. So, GEO basically they had the keys, they had the contract, they had no state law standing in their way. So, they were able to open.
What does this facility tell us about the expansion of private detention center space in California and why are advocates concerned about this?
So, now California has eight ICE detention centers. They're all run by private companies, and that gives them a total combined capacity of nearly 10,000 beds. So both of the facilities that opened under the second Trump administration are both former state prisons. Private prison companies are basically repurposing the infrastructure that California was trying to move away from.
Advocates are concerned for two reasons: conditions and accountability. So detainees at GEO facilities, specifically, especially the GEO facilities at this specific close cluster in Kern County, they've alleged, medical neglect, $1 a day labor, solitary confinement for reporting abuse. I guess it's important to say here too, that ICE and GEO say the facility operates under national detention standards, then that that requires medical care and legal access and PREA standards. But, advocates are concerned because there have been all these problems already in this specific cluster. They're saying we don't have a lot of confidence in GEO to run this new facility well when it's already struggling to provide what it needs to provide to the detainees that it has in its custody right now.
Wendy Fry is an Emmy-winning multimedia investigative journalist who reports on border and immigration issues. Wendy covers the California border region and covers immigration, reparations and issues affecting San Diego-area families.
