The federal purchase of two immigration detention centers, including the largest one in metro San Diego, is the latest move in a battle for jurisdiction over the centers in California — and one that could cost both taxpayers and migrants in ways not yet measured, experts say.
The purchases of the Otay Mesa and California City detention centers this month cost the Department of Homeland Security hundreds of millions of dollars more than what corporate filings show the facilities to be worth.
A DHS spokesperson said the deal was made specifically to thwart California politicians’ efforts to “outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible.”
Now, experts and advocates say they fear federal ownership will also limit state and local officials’ ability to oversee humanitarian conditions in immigration detention, and will speed up a deportation process they say already regularly violates due process rights.
The Otay Mesa detention center, which has a capacity of 1,994 detainees, has been the epicenter of local debate in San Diego over immigration enforcement for over a decade, with repeated claims of poor nutrition, overcrowding and insufficient access to medical care. A Times of San Diego investigation last month reviewed hundreds of medical records from a diabetic man inside the Otay Mesa detention center, which showed he did not receive his prescribed medications for months.
CoreCivic, the private prison company that has owned and operated the Otay Mesa site for over a decade, reported in federal securities filings at the end of 2025 that the land and buildings were worth about $160 million. Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security bought them for nearly five times that amount — $739 million.
Though CoreCivic will continue to operate Otay Mesa under contract until at least 2029, the federal government will now own the land, a trapezoidal lot at the southern edge of San Diego county, just minutes from the Otay Mesa border crossing, flanked by a prison and an Amazon warehouse.
That’s not likely to end the running controversy over conditions and oversight at the facility and others like it.
The California state Department of Justice conducts annual reviews that have been critical of the centers’ conditions, and a state law signed in 2024 gives local health officers authority to conduct surprise health inspections there.
Otay Mesa became a flashpoint for that law in March, when the county of San Diego sued the Trump administration after county supervisors said they and a health inspector were not allowed to tour the facility. A judge in the case later ordered CoreCivic to allow the inspection; a report from the health inspector has not yet been released.
About the purchase
DHS also bought CoreCivic’s California City detention center, in Kern County. That site was worth an estimated $71 million as of 2025, according to an annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. DHS bought that center for $733 million, ten times higher than its estimated value.
The money for both purchases was allocated through the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in July 2025, which injected the Department of Homeland Security with $191 billion for immigration enforcement, double the budget of the whole agency, and including about $45 billion to expand immigration detention capacity.
Questions arose immediately about the cost of the two purchases.
“I do know a little bit about values up on Otay Mesa. I’ve been there for 30-some years as a representative,” Rep. Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista, told Times of San Diego. “To me, that seems ridiculously high … I thought that if they were going to buy them, it would be two or three hundred million bucks, not over 700 million.”
“We believe [1.5 billion] is a fair valuation,” Patrick Swindle, CEO of CoreCivic, said in a statement. “We are pleased with the sales of these two mission-critical facilities for the Company’s government partner,” which reflect “our role as a long-term, flexible solutions provider to government.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told Times of San Diego in a statement that the agency purchased the detention center to combat local efforts to block such centers. “With federal ownership of these detention centers which are crucial to ICE’s detention network on the West Coast, ICE retains the detention capacity needed to arrest, detain, and remove illegal aliens,” the agency spokesperson wrote.
A state law from 2019 attempted to phase out private prisons including immigration detention centers, but an appeals court ruling later deemed that law unconstitutional.
The effort to increase detention capacity
With a stated goal of arresting 3,000 immigrants per day, the total number of people in ICE detention spiked to an all-time high of 73,000 people in January 2026.
In a leaked memo written in February 2026, published by the New Hampshire state government, ICE leadership acknowledged that an “increase in detention capacity will be a necessary downstream requirement” of their rapid arrest strategy.
The agency’s plan to assemble tens of thousands of beds for detainees involved purchasing large warehouses across the country and converting them into makeshift detention centers, where immigrants would be held for months on end. “This new model will allow ICE to create an efficient detention network by reducing the total number of contracted detention facilities in use while increasing total bed capacity, enhancing custody management, and streamlining removal operations,” the memo reads.
The memo also mentioned purchasing existing detention centers, including “the acquisition of 10 existing ‘turnkey’ facilities where ICE ERO already operates” as part of the plan, though the ten facilities were not listed by name. The total project was projected to cost $38 billion.
By June 2026, ICE backed away from these plans to convert warehouses, after several lawsuits were filed arguing that ICE did not properly evaluate the environmental costs to the communities surrounding these warehouses.
“DHS is moving swiftly to utilize existing detention space with our state and county partners,” the agency wrote in a statement to the media on June 18.
Corporate ownership
Jason Houser, former chief of staff at ICE under the Biden administration, told Times of San Diego that the $1.5 billion deal amounted to an acknowledgment to DHS contractors that “we realize that that plan’s not going to work.”
Houser described immigration enforcement as having a “revolving door” for private prison employees. David Venturella, the new acting ICE director, previously worked as an executive at the Geo Group, another private prison company that operates ICE detention facilities. At least three current executives at GeoGroup also worked previously in leadership roles at ICE.
Houser said having full control over the Otay Mesa and California City detention centers could also suit ICE’s goal of streamlining the process from arrest to detention to deportation.
At a conference in April 2026, Todd Lyons, who served as ICE director at that time, said “We need to get better at treating this like a business, like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”
Nancy Hiemstra, a professor at Stony Brook University who studies immigration detention, said the purchase is not necessarily out of character. “ICE is willing to pay above market value to make things move quickly,” she said.
An analysis by online researchers of 11 warehouses purchased by ICE in early 2026 shows the agency pays at least double, and up to ten times previous valuations of properties.
Vargas, the San Diego congressman, said he also questions President Donald Trump’s role in the deal. “Is the President benefiting? I know that he owns stock in CoreCivic,” Vargas said.
Public disclosures show CoreCivic donated $500,000 to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee and $1.77 million lobbying directly for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the same bill that would facilitate the $1.5 billion detention center purchase. The president’s financial disclosures show he purchased CoreCivic stock at least six times in 2025.
Another reason DHS offered hundreds of millions of dollars over the estimated value of the properties likely was to ease the nerves of investors, Houser said. With DHS in control of the properties, CoreCivic might be cut out of future deals to operate the detention centers.
“The company can provide no assurance that it will continue to manage these facilities in the future, or that the terms of the existing management agreements will remain the same,” CoreCivic wrote in a statement announcing the sale.
Sale could hamper oversight from state and county
Hiemstra, who wrote the 2025 book “Immigration Detention Inc.: The Big Business of Locking up Migrants” with fellow professor Deirdre Conlon, said the primary motivation for DHS to buy detention centers is not to increase efficiency but to reduce transparency. “This is about adding layers of bureaucracy, so it makes it even harder for people to gain access to the facilities and to know what’s going on.”
Because the Otay Mesa and California City detention centers will be federal government properties, state and local governments may not be able to conduct health and safety inspections, similar to federal prisons, which are not beholden to state law.
“They may, you know, come up with some ridiculous reason why we can’t go in there to do oversight, and others can’t,” Vargas said.
At the Otay Mesa facility, discourse about unsafe conditions has intensified in the past year, leading to weekly protests outside the facility in which activists play loud music and shout through bullhorns in the hopes that detainees across the fence will hear.
A 2026 report from the California Department of Justice found insufficient access to medical care for detainees with chronic illnesses at both the Otay Mesa and California City detention centers, as well as lapses in hygiene, and overcrowding leading to noncompliance with ICE’s own detention standards.
In a response to questions from Times of San Diego, the California Department of Justice said the office “remains committed to shining a light on the conditions of confinement for people held in immigration detention in California. We have and will continue to support efforts to hold facility operators and the Trump Administration accountable for these conditions and to call on the Administration to enforce its own standards and protect the health and safety of the detainees housed at their facilities. Beyond that, we’re continuing to monitor this development and have nothing further to share at this time.” The office did not address questions about whether its inspectors would be barred from facilities under federal ownership.
“All teeth are being removed in terms of existing mechanisms to protect detainees and maintain standards. Even if they say they’re following standards, well, the Trump administration just took a big knife to the existing standards,” Hiemstra said.
Responding to questions about their recent health inspection, a representative for the County of San Diego noted the ongoing lawsuit seeking access for health inspections, but did not address how the federal ownership change might affect future access to the center. “The County is committed to the health and safety of those in our region, including those at the Otay Mesa Detention Center and other local detention facilities. We appreciate a recent ruling by a federal judge recognizing San Diego County Public Health’s authority to conduct a health and safety inspection.”
Houser said he expects the agency to buy all detention centers in “sanctuary” jurisdictions.
In its statement announcing the sale, CoreCivic revealed that the company is “in discussions with ICE about the potential acquisition of additional detention facilities.” The company’s other immigration detention sites are in other states; other California centers are owned by Geo Group and Management and Training Corporation (MTC).
Hiemstra noted that without transparency through external inspections, conditions, including medical care, even food and water quality, could decline rapidly. “Things that could be managed with basic care can become deadly.”
“I don’t like the idea of having any of these facilities, period, let alone the government owning them,” Vargas said.
Vargas stressed the reality that most of the people detained in these facilities have no criminal record. “Most of these people are painters. Most of these people work as waitresses and busboys. These guys are not criminals. So we shouldn’t have these damn facilities to begin with.”
