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WASHINGTON — Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking more and more steps to avoid oversight by local and state authorities of immigration detention centers amid growing complaints alleging unsanitary and unsafe conditions at the facilities.
The efforts to sidestep laws in California and elsewhere take many forms. In some instances, contracts have been changed to declare that the centers are simply not subject to certain local or state laws.
In other instances, ICE has purchased facilities owned and operated by private companies. Though the companies continue to run the centers holding thousands of detainees, federal ownership could aid their defense in the event of legal action.
George Zoley, the chief executive of GEO Group, which contracts with ICE to run detention centers in California and across the country, said as much to company shareholders this year. In an earnings call in May, he said that ownership bolsters the facilities’ protection from “unwarranted litigation” around medical care and other detention conditions.
A settlement announced this week now affirms that private immigrant detention facilities are subject to California’s workplace safety and health requirements.
The federal ownership strategy has become particularly crucial, he said, “as some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities.”
Local oversight has taken on greater significance since the Trump administration hollowed out federal offices that were charged with investigating civil rights and safety issues at detention centers and began restricting visits by members of Congress. A recent analysis by the Project on Government Oversight found detention center inspections under the second Trump administration have increasingly resulted in “superior” grades.
Eunice Cho, a former American Civil Liberties Union attorney and an expert in immigration detention, called ICE’s efforts a “naked strategy” to evade local scrutiny of detention centers.
“This is a huge sea change in the way that immigration detention is expanding and hardening in the United States,” she said, adding that “this was every advocate’s nightmare scenario.”
In California, state leaders once attempted to shut down privately run detention centers and, after losing, resorted instead to proposing other oversight measures. California is home to eight ICE detention centers with a combined capacity of nearly 9,000 people.
State laws allow monitoring and investigation of the facilities by the California Department of Justice and local health authorities.
A 2021 law allows people to sue for damages when private detention center operators fail to follow the care standards laid out in their contracts. Starting in January, another law will require independent medical investigations into deaths in law enforcement custody, including in immigrant detention facilities.
Several bills are being considered by the California Legislature that would further regulate detention centers. Among them are bills that would authorize the California attorney general to bring civil action and impose fines to protect detainees’ constitutional rights and require the disclosure of public records, such as 911 calls from the facilities.