feature image photo by PATRICK T. FALLON / Contributor via Getty Images

There’s an illegal detention center operating out of a small desert town in California called California City. There might be one in your state too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d never heard about it. CoreCivic, the second largest private prison company in the US, runs 82 prisons, 16 of which are Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. ICE is CoreCivic’s largest client. As of this month, the company has reopened a former correctional facility that Governor Gavin Newsom shut down two years ago (as part of an effort to reduce California’s reliance on private prisons). The once-closed prison is now a CoreCivic immigration detention center which disregards California Senate Bill 29. Under that bill, local governments are not allowed to issue building permits to private federal immigrant centers without a 180-day public notice period and at least two public hearings.

There have been zero public hearings with CoreCivic in California City.

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California City’s population is less than 15,000. It is home to two airports: the aerospace testing site known as the Mojave Air and Space Port and the California City Municipal Airport. The re-opening of the prison means there are 2,560 beds to fill to make operating the place cost-effective.

On September 4, KQED confirmed that the center, which would be the largest in California, was receiving detainees without a business license and without passing fire department and building safety checks. CoreCivic admitted they had started taking in detainees but would not say when intake had begun. Lawyers heard that their clients were in California City at the end of August, according to KQED. On Monday, The Fresno Bee reported that the center is in fact open without the proper permits and that conditions inside have been called “chaos” by detainees, activist groups, and lawyers. (This entire article is well-worth a read.)

The facility also failed a fire department inspection in July, KQED reported. CoreCivic’s spokesman Ryan Gustin told the reporter there that all problems at the center have been addressed and CoreCivic has resubmitted their permit application. Yet, they are still open and taking in prisoners without one. Gustin implied there wasn’t time to follow Senate Bill 29 because the company was responding “to an immediate need from the federal government for safe, humane and appropriate housing and care for these individuals.”

On September 9, myself and two fellow activists drove two hours outside Los Angeles to attend what ended up being a five-hour city council meeting in California City.

Along with other activists and a roomful of concerned citizens, we each stood at a podium, and one after another, and asked the city council to force the ICE facility to stop operating given the failed permit inspections and their lack of a business license. Close it down like you would close any other business that was without the proper permits and licenses. What makes this any different?

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During public comment at the California City city council meeting, two different mothers call in over Zoom begging in Spanish (translated by relatives) for help or information about their sons. One knows her son is being held in the facility, having been transferred there without notice, she explains. She didn’t find out where he was for three days. Then, she was able to speak to him about the un-livable conditions in the center.

“They are only allowed to leave their cells for 10 minutes,” she says, voice breaking. “My son says there is no clean water.” This is validated by KQED’s interview with Jonathan Montes Diaz, a 33-year-old California man who was once in prison at the facility, and said when a water line ruptured in April of 2023, prisoners had to use plastic bags to relieve themselves. (The prison’s spokesperson confirmed the loss of water, but not the aspect about the plastic bags.)

The woman on Zoom pleads, beyond distraught: “Por favor. Por favor.”

A little girl calls in and begs for information about her father. She’s called before, activists tell me. When her time is up, the mayor replies with the standard “thank you,” and the council moves on to the next caller.

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It was all hard to listen to. The girl’s voice had made me lightheaded. For a few minutes mid-public comment, I walked around the building to get some fresh air. I looked up at the desert stars. My hands were shaking. It is strange to be at all the city council meetings I’ve been to in the last four months both in Cal City and LA and still feel the detachment from the council members. They hardly ever visibly react to the pleas of their constituents.

At that meeting, I learned California City is in serious debt. Mayor Marquette Hawkins’ stated reason for allowing the center open is to bring in revenue and jobs to a drowning town. Fellow LA-based activist Catie warned the council that when a big company comes into a small town and becomes the residents’ main source of income, that company owns the town. Even if the center does provide jobs, it means that the people of Cal City will be completely beholden to a private corporation. CoreCivic could hold everyone’s jobs hostage and have free reign. No oversight. No accountability.

All of us at the meeting have our own reasons for fighting this and wanting to convince California City that letting the detention center stand is a huge mistake, both financially and morally.

I personally believe California City, vulnerable with a small population and desperate because of debt, is being stripped for parts by a private prison company known for forced labor. CoreCivic has been sued for it. These residents are being sold the lie that allowing this facility in will save them from their debts. I believe this is not true. The city will bear the brunt of electric and water usage. They are opening themselves to more lawsuits they can’t afford. Detainees will get sick or injured without the center passing proper inspections, and California City’s emergency services will be overrun. Inviting ICE in will allow people to be swept off the streets, especially after the Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing racial profiling. No one in town will be safe. CoreCivic will eat California City alive while working overtime to indiscriminately fill 2,560 beds.

By the end of the exhausting five hours, one of the city council members Michael Hurles at least said he now felt the city needed to ask more questions about the center. Whether he’s sincere or not remains to be seen.

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I’m not an expert. I’m not writing this as someone who has studied local government or can cite all the rules and statutes. I’m an outsider who has decided to back up activists from the area who know better than me. Maybe there truly is nothing anyone on any city council in the whole country can do — beyond slogans and platitudes — to fight ICE and the federal government from invading. Maybe there are ways to fight and they don’t want to do it. Maybe they see fighting as overstepping — go outside their jurisdiction or roles. At the city council, activists named a few grants and programs that could ease Cal City’s debt so that they don’t have to rely on a detention center. They told the members if they needed help with any part of it, the activists were here to guide them. I didn’t see any indication the members were interested in that.

Everything I’ve heard at city councils in multiple California cities leads me to think they don’t see or hear the fire alarms of fascism whirring as closely as I do. Maybe they do hear them and their cost-benefit analysis says they benefit. Mayor Hawkins keeps throwing his hands up or passing the buck. But who cares about procedure right now? When one side is breaking the rules, our side has to think outside the box and maybe, God forbid, break decorum ourselves. Why aren’t our politicians using their bodies? Why aren’t they lining up as a group and standing with activists outside the facility? I don’t get it.

I write this as an offering to you, the readers. My biggest, most unique asset in this fight is that I have the privilege of avenues to gather and report this information.

This private prison company can not continue to operate an illegal detention center in California City. There are around 500 or so detainees currently held there in inhumane conditions. CoreCivic cannot do the same in your state or in your city — Laredo, Texas or San Diego, California, or Eloy, Arizona or Lumpkin, Georgia. Look for any that are close to you. At least try to get on Zoom or show up to a local city council meeting and call it out on the record. CoreCivic can not come into these towns, open its gaping maw and move in darkness to swallow people whole.

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