The RecordExhibit 132
Nearly $3.2 billion to buy ICE detention centers from private prison companies
Criticized means: Legal, or a policy choice, but widely condemned.
On Oct. 5, 2026, the private prison company GEO Group said it had sold its immigration detention complex in Adelanto, California, to the Department of Homeland Security for $950 million. The Los Angeles Times put federal spending on such purchases since July at nearly $3.2 billion, most of them in California.
What happened
The sale covers the Adelanto ICE Processing Center and the Desert View Annex, 2,644 beds in all. GEO keeps running them under its existing contract with ICE, which can run through 2034. It expects to keep about $705 million after taxes and expenses, and its board raised its share buyback authorization by $750 million, Commercial Observer reported.
The earlier purchases were from GEO's competitor CoreCivic: in July, the Otay Mesa Detention Center for $739.2 million and the California City Detention Facility for $732.6 million, and in August, facilities in Kansas and Minnesota for $734 million. The purchases were made possible by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which put $45 billion into immigration detention.
GEO says it is in talks to sell multiple other facilities, and its chief executive told shareholders in August that ICE was considering buying more than 10. California has passed laws to increase oversight of immigration detention, among them new measures that let the state attorney general bring civil actions over detainees' constitutional rights and require the facilities to disclose records such as 911 calls.
A former senior ICE official, Claire Trickler-McNulty, told CalMatters that federal ownership protects the sites from state and local laws, and Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council told Time that it limits what state and local inspectors can learn about conditions. Four people have died at Adelanto since last year, the Los Angeles Times reported, and ICE's own review of one death found repeated failures by medical staff.
Where it stands
No court has ruled on the purchases, and we found no lawsuit challenging them. Rep. Norma Torres, a California Democrat, said taxpayers are paying $950 million for aging facilities and will keep paying GEO to run them while ICE moves to limit oversight of unsafe conditions.
On Sept. 24, 2026, the Government Accountability Office reported that ICE had pursued its detention expansion without a comprehensive strategic plan and called for urgent planning to avoid further waste. CBS News reported that the review covered the CoreCivic purchases and noted that ICE had forecast their costs only three years ahead. GAO did not say any law was broken.
Separately, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center has been under a federal court order since July 2026, when U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes granted a preliminary injunction in a class action by detainees. She found that conditions there likely violated the Fifth Amendment and ordered clean drinking water, adequate food, sanitation and medical care. That ruling is preliminary and is about conditions at the facility, not about the sale; the reports we opened do not say whether the government appealed it.
The administration's side
A Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE is 'ensuring we have resources to carry out President Trump's mission.' The department said California's laws increasing oversight of immigration facilities make federal ownership critical to keeping detention capacity on the West Coast.
After the July purchases, an ICE spokesman said the agency cannot rely on state and county partners for detention space in California, and that the state's politicians keep pushing laws to ban private prisons or make them financially infeasible. The Center Square reported that Lauren Bis, the department's acting assistant secretary for public affairs, said the purpose of the deals is to free the sites from state oversight laws.
On the GAO report, the department agreed to write a strategic plan and said the costs GAO cited were 'appropriate and necessary'. In the Adelanto case, the government argued that responsibility for conditions lies with GEO, its contractor.
Sources
Permanent link: https://unredactedrecord.com/e/detentionbuys/