AMERICA FIRST: Trump DHS Buys Two Major California Detention Centers For..

The Trump administration has taken a decisive step to secure its immigration enforcement capacity in California, purchasing two of the state’s largest detention facilities outright in a deal worth nearly $1.5 billion. The move effectively sidesteps years of obstruction from Sacramento Democrats who have worked tirelessly to make it as difficult as possible for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to operate within the state’s borders.

The Department of Homeland Security finalized its purchase of the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County and the California City Detention Facility in Kern County from private prison operator CoreCivic. The deal closed on July 2, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, with the federal government paying $739.2 million for the 1,994-bed Otay Mesa facility and $732.6 million for the newly constructed 2,560-bed California City facility.

CoreCivic, based in Brentwood, Tennessee, said it expects the sale to generate approximately $1.1 billion in net proceeds after taxes and transaction costs. Company President Patrick Swindle framed the sale as a natural extension of the company’s role as what he called a “long-term, flexible solutions provider to government.” Under the terms of the agreement, CoreCivic will continue managing the day-to-day operations of both facilities under its existing contracts with ICE, meaning the practical experience and staffing already in place at both sites will remain largely intact.

Those existing management contracts, however, now exist on borrowed time in a sense, since the federal government, as the new outright owner of both properties, retains the ability to renegotiate or even decline to renew the arrangements down the road. The California City management contract runs through August 2027, while the Otay Mesa agreement extends through December 2029 with an option for an additional five-year extension, giving federal officials a long runway to determine how they ultimately want these facilities operated going forward.

This purchase represents a notable strategic shift for the Department of Homeland Security. Rather than continuing its earlier approach of purchasing raw industrial and warehouse space for conversion into detention facilities, a strategy that drew scrutiny after DHS closed 11 deals for 7.6 million square feet of warehouse space across eight states for more than $1 billion, the department opted this time to acquire two facilities that were already purpose-built and fully operational for housing detainees.

That earlier warehouse-buying spree had not gone entirely smoothly. In May, the DHS Office of Inspector General launched an audit to determine whether those warehouse acquisitions represented a cost-effective use of taxpayer funds, and reports later indicated ICE was looking to offload some of the properties it had purchased. The pivot toward acquiring existing, purpose-built detention centers like Otay Mesa and California City suggests the administration has learned from that experience and is now prioritizing facilities that can be put to immediate, effective use.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security made clear that California’s uniquely hostile political environment toward immigration enforcement played a direct role in the decision to purchase these facilities outright. “Unlike in states like Florida and Oklahoma, ICE cannot rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California,” the spokesperson told reporters. “The state’s sanctuary politicians continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible.”

The spokesperson continued, explaining the strategic value of federal ownership. “Now, with federal ownership of these detention centers, which are crucial to ICE’s detention network on the West Coast, ICE retains the detention capacity needed to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens.” In other words, when California’s legislature spent years trying to legislate private detention facilities out of existence within its borders, the federal government simply bought the buildings itself, a move that appears to sit on considerably firmer legal ground.

That legal ground traces back to California’s Assembly Bill 32, signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom back in 2019, which prohibited the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation from entering into or renewing contracts with private, for-profit prison operators. Private prison companies including CoreCivic and GEO Group have spent years fighting the law in court, arguing that states simply cannot pass legislation that directly burdens core federal government functions like immigration enforcement, and that the law is unconstitutional because it improperly encroaches on federal authority over immigration detention.

By taking direct ownership of these facilities, the federal government appears to have found a clean solution to that ongoing legal battle. According to UC Davis law professor Kevin Johnson, once the federal government itself owns a facility rather than merely contracting with a private operator, it gains a significant degree of immunity from state laws and any attempted state intrusion into how the property is managed and operated. That is precisely the kind of legal certainty ICE needs to maintain reliable detention capacity in a state whose leadership has made abundantly clear it wants no part of assisting federal immigration enforcement.

A DHS spokesperson confirmed this purchase was made possible through funding secured under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which allocated a historic $165 billion to the department and specifically expanded ICE’s capacity to build out detention space in service of the president’s promise to carry out mass deportations of illegal aliens. That is on top of the roughly $170 billion the department received in the broader 2025 federal budget for immigration enforcement and detention, including $45 billion specifically earmarked for expanding detention capacity through fiscal year 2029.

Predictably, California Democrats wasted no time criticizing the purchase. San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer characterized the deal as an expansion of what she called “Trump’s mass detention agenda,” arguing it was becoming “bigger, more permanent, and more expensive.” State Assemblymember Alex Lee vowed that California would not be deterred, saying the state would continue pursuing legislative efforts to limit tax credits for companies involved in detention operations and even impose a 50 percent tax on the revenue of companies that assist with detention center operations within the state.

Such efforts, however aggressive, may prove largely symbolic now that the facilities in question are owned outright by the federal government rather than by a private company operating under a state-regulated contract. It is a reminder that when state governments attempt to obstruct lawful federal immigration enforcement through creative legislative maneuvering, the federal government retains powerful tools of its own to ensure the law is actually enforced.