The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has bought two immigration detention centers in Southern California from private prison operator CoreCivic for $1.5 billion. The purchase includes the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County and the California City Detention Facility in Kern County.

Details of the Purchase

Under the deal, CoreCivic will continue to run day-to-day operations at the facilities under its existing contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The contracts for the California City facility run through 2027, while the Otay Mesa contracts are through 2029.

The purchase was made possible by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allowed ICE to expand detention space to fulfill President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations. According to Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs and deputy assistant secretary for media relations at DHS, the state’s sanctuary politicians have pushed legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible, making federal ownership of these detention centers crucial to ICE’s detention network on the West Coast.

Reactions to the Purchase

Many individuals and organizations oppose immigrant detention centers, citing concerns about inadequate healthcare and substandard facilities. However, Ira Mehlman, media director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, argued that these types of detention facilities are necessary for ICE to hold people pending their removal.

The purchase of the detention centers follows California’s enactment of laws to phase out privately owned detention centers and allow for local or state oversight of private facilities. One such law, Assembly Bill 32, prohibits California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from entering into or renewing contracts with private, for-profit prison operators, with a deadline to end such contracts by January 1, 2028.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.