When the federal government owns the detention facility land itself, the state's oversight protections become all the more fragile.
Precedent: when the state won, then the rules changed entirely
California's efforts to oversee private immigrant detention facilities are not new. Back in March 2026, San Diego County authorities sued CoreCivic and the federal government, arguing that the company blocked medical staff from conducting full inspections of the Otay Mesa facility under a state law enacted in 2024. A federal judge subsequently ordered access, a rare victory for local oversight advocates. But that victory rested on the premise that CoreCivic remained a private company doing business with the government. Now that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) itself owns the land outright, the "federal supremacy" argument that CoreCivic and GEO Group once made in court will have far firmer ground — because the property is no longer privately held, but federally owned on paper.
Who is affected and how
Otay Mesa sits at the edge of San Diego, home to a long-established Vietnamese community, while California City lies roughly 100 miles north of Los Angeles. Otay Mesa was valued at 739.2 million USD for 1,994 beds, while California City was priced at 732.6 million USD for 2,560 beds — a total of more than 4,500 detention spaces changing hands in a single signing. For Vietnamese families with relatives in custody — whether newly arrived immigrants with unstable documentation, or first-generation refugees with prior records awaiting deportation orders stalled for years — the risk does not lie in the facility changing hands, but in independent oversight mechanisms potentially narrowing when the landlord is the federal government itself.
The motive behind a larger strategy
This transaction is just one piece of a broader strategy. According to Yahoo Finance, the purchase of facilities like Otay Mesa and California City fits within an initiative ICE calls "Detention Restructuring," designed to reduce reliance on the two largest private prison contractors — CoreCivic and GEO Group — while still expanding total detention bed capacity. Notably, publicly available financial records show that President Donald Trump holds shares in multiple companies that do business with the government, including CoreCivic and GEO Group. This detail does not prove wrongdoing in the specific California transaction, but raises legitimate questions about conflicts of interest when an administration is simultaneously expanding the immigration detention budget and purchasing assets from companies in which the head of government has financial interests.
What to watch next
CoreCore acknowledged in filings to securities regulators that there is no guarantee the company will retain operating contracts for these two facilities long-term after current agreements expire — August 2027 for California City, December 2029 for Otay Mesa. Meanwhile, the legal battle over California City's building permits remains unresolved, and the California Attorney General along with immigrant rights legal groups are lobbying the local planning commission to deny the permit for this facility. If the permit is blocked, DHS having just spent over 732 million USD acquiring an asset with legal risks hanging over it will be a story worth following.
What readers can do
Families with relatives detained at Otay Mesa or California City should proactively contact nonprofit immigration legal organizations in San Diego and Kern County to update themselves on visitation rights, since ICE has previously refused even local elected officials access to these facilities — showing that access is not guaranteed, even to those with authority. Communities should also monitor public hearings of the California City planning commission, one of the few remaining channels where public voices, including Vietnamese Americans with no direct involvement, can still apply real pressure.
Read original reporting at the source links below.