Adelanto approves GEO plan to expand capacity at California immigration detention center

City planners in the Mojave Desert have green-lighted an expansion of one of the country’s largest immigration detention centers, the GEO Groups’s Adelanto ICE Processing Center. The vote comes a day after the city of McFarland denied the multi-billion-dollar private prison company's proposal to expand immigration detention in California’s Central Valley. 

The Adelanto Planning Commission’s 4-1 vote Wednesday night to allow GEO to convert its 750-bed state prison, the Desert View Modified Community Correctional Facility, into an annex for the 1,940-bed federal immigration detention center revealed the company’s deep influence in the cash-strapped city.

During more than three hours of public testimony, immigrant advocates from across the state criticized the facility’s track record of delayed medical care and deaths, while GEO employees highlighted the more than 600 jobs and financial contributions the company currently provides to the city. The approximately $1 million the company pays the city in annual fiscal mitigation payments and administrative fees comprises about 10% of the city’s total revenue, according to City Manager Jessie Flores.

Explaining his vote in favor of the detention center expansion, commission chairman Keron Jones said he sided “with the people of Adelanto for their jobs.” The state corrections department is expected to end its contract with GEO for Desert View at the end of the month; the expansion plan preserves more than 150 jobs at the facility and increases entry-level wages from about $34,500 annually to nearly $60,800 annually, according to the company.

But commission vice chairman JayShawn Johnson, who opposed the proposal, charged that GEO is too entangled with City Hall. He said it appeared company officials had swayed the city manager’s decision to unilaterally end a previous contract and questioned whether GEO had been assured the expansion proposal would pass.

“This, for me, feels like my vote in favor of this modification makes me a pawn in a larger scheme, wherein which I have likely only scratched the surface,” Johnson said. “Government is supposed to be transparent — not in theory, but in action.”

Following the decision, dozens of opponents stormed out of the chambers, carrying signs with slogans reading, “no profit over human dignity” and chanting, “shame on you!” They threatened to pursue legal action, saying the commission’s vote violated a state law requiring the city to provide proper notice and access to documents before approving a permit for an immigration detention facility.

“For too long the cities of Adelanto and McFarland have operated with impunity, entering into misguided relationships with prison companies and ICE,” Christina Fialho, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, a nonprofit focused on abolishing immigration detention, said in a statement Thursday morning. “This ends now. If either city moves for final approval of these permits, we will see them in court.”

A fight over Adelanto's future

GEO’s effort to convert the Adelanto prison into an annex for the detention center is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s bid to expand immigration detention in California, even as the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature tried to ban private prisons and detention centers.

The state and federal governments have been sparring over immigration detention since Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a state law took effect phasing out private prisons and immigration detention centers in October. Democratic members of California’s congressional delegation, other state leaders and immigrant advocates have slammed ICE, alleging the federal agency dodged the law by rushing to lock in last-minute contracts worth several billion dollars for GEO and other operators of the state’s existing detention centers.

ICE and GEO inked a 15-year contract for the Adelanto detention center in late December, less than two weeks before AB 32, the private prison ban, took effect. The contract incorporated the Desert View prison.

Both GEO and the U.S. Department of Justice have sued Newsom and Attorney General Xavier Becerra over AB 32, arguing the ban is unconstitutional and interferes with the federal prison and immigration detention system.

The fight over the private prison ban is now playing out at the local level. People determined to secure seats inside the chambers lined up outside City Hall hours before the meeting. Many more listened to the standing-room-only event from outside the building.

Daniel Peñafiel, an Adelanto resident and GEO employee, began his testimony by describing his contributions to the city. He said he and his wife, also a GEO employee, volunteer at local food giveaways and at the school district, attend the city’s annual Christmas parades, and threw a Fourth of July block party.

“I’m here tonight as a father, a husband, a resident and an active community member,” he said. “I’m also here as an employee of GEO. I’m here to ask that you keep these jobs within the city.”

Longtime Adelanto resident Lorrie Lowe, who described herself as a single mom and Little League board member, said she used to work three jobs to earn the wage she gets from GEO.

“Adelanto has always been a struggling city, but it’s trying hard,” she said.

Shannon Camacho, with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, highlighted recent reports critical of conditions within the Adelanto detention center, including a 2018 report from the Department of Homeland Security's Office of the Inspector General finding "nooses" made of bed sheets and delayed medical and dental care. It said three inmates had died during the 2017 fiscal year.

"How is it that this company can make billions and billions of dollars and can get away with all of these deaths, with all of these horrible conditions, without any oversight?" she said. "It is up to local city governments and local county governments to keep them accountable, even when the federal government won't do so."

Eva Bitran, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California in the Inland Empire, argued that approval of the permit would leave the city vulnerable to litigation for failure to comply with SB 29, the state law requiring proper notice for hearings on detention center permits. At the commission's first hearing on the issue, she said, the city failed to provide the public with the permit applications and related reports, among other issues.

“To approve the permit in light of these violations would open the municipality to an extremely high risk of costly liability for failure to comply with state law,” Bitran said. “This is not the future the city of Adelanto wants: To break state law, to be held liable, to pull from the city’s coffers, all in service of cruel and inhumane business with ICE.”

“Please remember that hitching your city’s future to the dying private prison industry only ensures that the city, too, will fail,” she said.

The Planning Commission's decision stands unless the permit modification is appealed to the city council within 10 days.

Rebecca Plevin reports on immigration for The Desert Sun. Reach her at rebecca.plevin@desertsun.com. Follow her on Twitter at @rebeccaplevin.