California Town Lets Private ICE Detention Centers Police Themselves by Robin Urevich

[justaprogressive]

Two years ago, immigration attorney Mario Valenzuela visited a client at the Golden State Annex, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center operated by the private prison giant The GEO Group Inc. in the small agricultural town of McFarland in California’s San Joaquin Valley.

Valenzuela’s client had a black eye and bruises on his body, he said. The client told Valenzuela that he’d been surrounded and beaten by seven or eight fellow detainees in the detention center’s recreation yard and was taken to a hospital emergency room. His client, who didn’t authorize his attorney to give his name, wanted to report the assault to the police, Valenzuela said.

But Valenzuela told Capital & Main that when he contacted the McFarland Police Department on his client’s behalf, a department supervisor told him the department didn’t respond to calls for service at the detention center.

The lack of response was no oversight. According to McFarland police officials and records, the department does not respond to calls at Golden State Annex or at a second ICE facility in the city, Central Valley Annex, which is also operated by The GEO Group.

https://prospect.org/2026/06/16/california-town-lets-private-ice-detention-centers-police-themselves/