(The Center Square) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has purchased more California properties for the purpose of using them as detention centers.
The latest transaction involves the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and Desert View Annex. The facilities are in Adelanto, a city in Southern California's San Bernardino County. They were purchased from the private prison corporation GEO Group for $950 million.
Adelanto ICE Processing Center is one name for two properties: the Adelanto West ICE Processing Center (1,280 beds) and the Adelanto East ICE Processing Center (660 beds). Desert View Annex has 704 beds.
GEO Group will continue to manage the daily operations under long-term contracts. That is the same deal that private prison operator CoreCivic got in July when it sold two Southern California immigration detention centers to the federal government for $1.5 billion.
“We are pleased with the completion of these important asset sales to the U.S. federal government, and we look forward to continuing to provide high-quality secure support services under our existing long-term contracts with ICE,” George C. Zoley, Chairman, CEO, and founder of GEO Group, said this week in a press release.
In total, DHS has purchased five properties in California this year.
The purpose of these deals is to free the sites from state oversight laws, said Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs and deputy assistant secretary for media relations. The properties now belong to the federal government and not the state.
In July, Bis told The Center Squarethat this purchasing was made possible by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allowed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand detention space to fulfill President Donald Trump's promise of mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
Unlike in states such as Florida and Oklahoma, Bis said ICE cannot rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California.
Meanwhile, special interest groups such as the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights vow to continue speaking out against detention centers.
“The U.S. wants to further cash in on the suffering and plight of hundreds of thousands of immigrants it plans to imprison as part of their inhumane crackdown,” Jorge-Mario Cabrera, CHIRLA’s director of communications, told The Center Square in an email. “These purchases are intended to keep these camps away from the public's scrutiny and oversight. We will not sit idly by while they codify brutality.”
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