Concern is rising that, despite being granted the authority to do so, some California counites are failing to inspect federal ICE facilities located in their jurisdictions. ICE has had six detention centers in California, all of them privately-owned. These facilities are becoming increasingly overcrowded as the current presidential administration has pushed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to meet a goal of 3,000 arrests per day.
The California City Detention Facility in Kern County, California is the largest immigration detention center in the state, with a stated capacity of 2,560 beds. It’s part of the current presidential administration’s push for a massive expansion of ICE detention nationally. The reopened prison in California City, a small town 100 miles north of Los Angeles, would significantly increase ICE’s ability to hold immigrants for deportation in the state.
For most of the past year, ICE has held roughly 5,700 people a day on average across its six other California facilities, an 84% increase since the spring. On April 16, there were 3,100 people detained in the state, according to the California Attorney General’s latest report.
Immigrant rights advocates claim CoreCivic, the Tennessee-based private prison company that owns and operates the facility, is operating without proper permits and in defiance of a state law that requires 180 days’ public notice and two public meetings before a local government can issue a permit allowing a private company to run an immigration jail.
Grisel Ruiz, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, said CoreCivic still needs a city business license and a conditional use permit, arguing that an immigration detention center differs significantly from a long-term prison. “They are operating unlawfully,” Ruiz told the California City Planning Commission at its meeting in September. “We urge the Planning Commission to hold CoreCivic accountable to local municipal code and state law.”
In a July 29 letter to CoreCivic describing the deficiencies, City Manager Christopher Lopez wrote that the building is unsafe and violates the fire code because its construction prevents radio signals from transmitting from key areas, including the location of the fire alarm control panel, mechanics shop, IT server rooms and some inmate cells.
ICE is currently detaining more than 61,000 people nationwide, up from 39,000 at the start of the year. Immigration detention is not a criminal sentence — it is civil detention while people await deportation or fight their cases in immigration court. Advocates argue that ICE detention is cruel and unnecessary. Despite the increased rates in detention, local jurisdictions are not completing health and safety inspection, despite the tools granted them to do so from the California state government.
According to a Cal Matters investigation, three of the four California counties empowered to inspect federal immigration detention facilities have not done so, and the fourth has conducted only basic reviews of food this year. Inspections serve to identify and address violations of living standards, prevent abuses and neglect, protect detainee rights, and hold the facilities accountable for maintaining proper living conditions, safety, and health standards.
Read more at “California gave counties power to inspect ICE detention centers. They’re not using it” at the Cal Matters website. Cal Matters is a nonpartisan and nonprofit news organization bringing Californians stories that probe, explain and explore solutions to quality of life issues while holding our leaders accountable.
