Immigration and Customs Enforcement has expanded again In California’s Central Valley, a new 700-bed detention facility operated by for-profit prison company Geo Group is being activated.
Advocates say the agency began transferring immigrant detainees to the McFarland facility last week.
facility, called Central Valley AnnexThe total number of active detention centers in California increases from six to eight in early 2025. They are all run by private companies and have a total capacity of around 10,000 beds.
Both detention centers, opened since President Trump took office, were used as private prisons until California The incarcerated population fell To a level that allowed the Newsom administration to terminate those contracts.
The latest data shows an average of about 5,337 people are being held in California immigration detention facilities DetentionReports.com. This number is 72% more than the average daily population count of approximately 3,104 individuals conducted in California in April 2025.
This latest feature is part of a Cluster of detention centers in Kern CountyWhich includes the Golden State Annex in McFarland. It is unclear whether GEO received a conditional use permit or business license from the city of McFarland to begin detaining immigrants at the Central Valley Annex.
Advocates for detained immigrants said they did not have the opportunity to raise their concerns at a public hearing before ICE began using the new site.
“We don’t want another ICE detention center in California, or anywhere else for that matter,” said anti-ICE detention attorney Edwin Carmona-Cruz about the new Central Valley annex.
The Central Valley Annex is adjacent to Jio Group’s Golden State Annex, which houses an average daily population of 565 people.
As of 2020, GEO Group operates a group of private prisons in McFarland for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The writing was on the wall for Gov. Gavin Newsom to close them down as private prisons was committed to terminating those contracts.
California Democrats tried to block Geo Group from turning the sites into immigrant detention facilities in 2019 passing a law to restrict that use.
Just weeks before the law took effect, ICE signed a $1.5 billion, 15-year contract with Geo for two McFarland sites and a site in Bakersfield. In 2023, a federal court found the state law unconstitutional, ruling that it violated federal authority to enforce immigration law.
In 2020, the mayor of McFarland resigned as the city’s Planning Commission deadlocked over GEO’s proposal to convert two of its sites into immigration detention facilities. Then-Mayor Manuel Cantú Jr. told the Desert Sun the day after voting The small town relies on approximately $2 million annually paid by GEO in property taxes and utility fees to provide vital municipal services such as water, sewer and public safety.
However, the private prison company appealed, and was eventually able to move forward in 2020 with the opening of the Golden State Annex for its work with ICE.
Geo told the Planning Commission in 2020 that opening both the Golden State and Central Valley contracts would provide the city with good-paying jobs as well as $511,000 annually in mitigation payments.
California State law requires A city or county must provide 180 days’ notice and hold a public hearing before approving or permitting the reuse of an immigration detention facility.
The city clerk and city manager of McFarland, a small farming town of about 15,000, did not immediately respond to phone calls and questions from CalMatters.
Jason Sweeney, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the facility opened “under the existing intergovernmental services agreement,” which “has been in place for many years.” He said the Central Valley Annex began housing detainees within the past two weeks and the agency will add the new site to its bi-weekly reports.
California’s newest detention center
Last year, another private prison operator, CoreCivic, opened a 2,560-bed immigrant detention center on the site of another closed state prison in California City in eastern Kern County. It is the largest ICE detention center in the state. The company began detaining immigrants in late August 2025 without obtaining the necessary paperwork from the California city, which contributed to the development. Legal and community opposition.
According to Geo Group’s website, the newly activated Central Valley Annex facility is accredited by the American Correctional Association. and National Commission on Correctional Health Care. Earlier, prisoners of the US Marshals Service were kept in it.
ICE did not immediately respond to a question about whether the facility now houses both U.S. Marshals and immigration detainees.
The unprecedented increase in the number of people being held in ICE detention centers across the country is fueled by an influx of $45 billion delivered through a spending law signed by Trump last year, which he called “a big beautiful bill.” The Trump administration is aiming to detain more than 100,000 immigrant detainees on any given day as part of its massive deportation campaign. When he takes office in 2025, ICE will employ an average of about 40,000 people per day.
state monitoring of indoor conditions
Carmona-Cruz, co-executive director of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, said people being sent to the Central Valley Annex are “at risk of the same horrific abuses and inhumane conditions that people in the ICE detention center have faced for years.”
For years, detainees at the Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex facilities – others under the same contract as the Central Valley Annex – have alleged abuses and dangerous conditions, including medical neglect. Being paid only $1 per day for laborBeing held in solitary confinement after reporting sexual abuse and inadequate food.
In response to some of the previous allegations, GEO Group spokesperson Chris V. Ferreira previously told CalMatters that his company “strongly disagrees with these baseless allegations, which are part of a long-running, politically motivated and radical campaign to dismantle ICE and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facilitation contractors.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
“The people being sent there are our community members, neighbors, family members,” Carmona-Cruz said. “ICE and GEO Group are unable to meet the humanitarian needs of those they detain. ICE detention is not only unjust and unnecessary – it’s deadly. Nearly 50 people have died in ICE custody since Trump took office, and it’s only getting worse.”
Last year, the California Attorney General’s Office issued a report Raising concerns about health care inside ICE facilities. were there at that time Six detention centers are running in the state.
Fry writes for CalMatters.
