California City, CA – Late yesterday evening, the California City Planning Commission allowed for-profit prison corporation CoreCivic to continue operating its abuse-ridden ICE detention center in the city, ignoring the voices of dozens of community members, faith leaders, and legal experts, as well as California’s own Attorney General. Community groups immediately vowed to continue the fight to shut down the detention center, now the largest in California, and to continue to challenge ICE and CoreCivic’s growing lawlessness and abuses of power. The Dignity not Detention coalition will soon file an appeal of the decision directly with the City Council.
The decision to approve CoreCivic’s Site Plan Review application came one day after CoreCivic announced it had sold the California City detention center, as well as another ICE detention center it owns in Otay Mesa, for an estimated profit of $1.1 billion dollars. The for-profit behemoth is likely to continue running both detention centers.
“What happened last night should alarm every person across the country who cares about transparency, accountability, and democracy,” said Grisel Ruiz, Staff Attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “A large corporation which is profiting from the abduction and abuse of our immigrant neighbors flagrantly broke the rules, but a handful of local officials refused to hold them accountable. Now that same corporation is profiting even further from the questionable sale of its own property. We are angry, but we are more determined than ever to win justice. We are exploring every option at our disposal and we continue to demand this detention center be shut down.”
“ICE is not here for our safety, they are here to enrich themselves and private prison companies like CoreCivic,” said Brady Tillett, an asylum seeker from Belize who has been detained at California City for nearly nine months and who recently penned an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times. “I have seen how ICE and CoreCivic have cut corners here to make more money, and this will only continue. The ill treatment of human beings is not right. But these officials don’t care about it. I am not surprised by this decision, as I have seen that it’s just a big money-making machine. I read what the Mayor said about California and ICE being ‘two elephants fighting’ and his town being only the grass between them. He and California City are not simply the grass – they are one of the elephants. He and the city are the ones who allowed them to illegally open the facility in the first place. California City Detention Facility should be closed for good. The U.S. likes to talk about human rights issues in places like my home country of Belize, but they should really investigate the many human rights abuses occurring right here in California City, like medical abuse.”
CoreCivic opened the California City detention center last year without seeking proper permits, violating state and local law, and only sought approval from city officials months later by seeking a low-level permit instead of a conditional use permit, a maneuver which limited public scrutiny as severe abuses at the facility worsened. California City had approved a business license and site plan review application in February, but The Dignity not Detention coalition quickly filed an appeal, leading to yesterday’s hearing. The state’s Attorney General had also urged local officials to reject CoreCivic’s applications given that its operations violate the city’s own laws.
The detention center’s operations also pose serious practical challenges for local residents, threatening to impact local water, sewer and road systems. Meanwhile, CoreCivic has also faced numerous allegations of employee mistreatment. Job training in high paying jobs is available to cities that move away from ICE detention under the state’s HEAL program.
The life-threatening medical neglect, inadequate food and water, and other severe violations at the detention center have become emblematic of the systematic abuse inherent to ICE’s detention system as a whole, where violations are rampant whether facilities are run by for profit corporations or government agencies. Abuses documented in California City have raised alarm from California’s U.S. Senators and Congressmembers.