Federal authorities plan to open the largest immigration detention center in California at a former state prison in a Kern County desert town about an hour southeast of Bakersfield.

It’s not immediately clear when the privately-owned 2,560-bed jail could reopen as an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. The Kern County facility is located in California City, an Antelope Valley town of 15,000, and previously operated as a state prison until its closure in 2024.

The private prison has already installed a new sign with the name, “California City Immigration Processing Center,” the Bakersfield Californian reported.

“We haven’t started any negotiations yet,” California City Mayor Marquette Hawkins told The Bee in a phone interview. Private prison operator CoreCivic’s hiring and recruiting efforts started a few months ago, Hawkins said.

“CoreCivic continues to explore opportunities with our government partners for which the California City Immigration Processing Center could be a viable solution,” Ryan Gustin, senior director of public affairs for CoreCivic, said in a statement.

Gustin said CoreCivic has begun “some preliminary activation activities” as it negotiates a longer-term contract with ICE but directed questions on when the facility could open to ICE.

ICE did not respond to requests for comment on the California City Immigration Processing Center.

In April, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded a $10 million contract to the Tennessee-based CoreCivic Inc. to establish the detention facility at the site of the former California City Correctional Facility, according to federal contract records.

California has six privately operated immigration detention centers. Two of these — Golden State Annex in McFarland and Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield — are also located in Kern County and run by The Geo Group, another private prison operator.

A seventh facility under contract but not in use by ICE is also located in Kern County. The Central Valley Annex in McFarland is currently used by the U.S. Marshals Service. Records obtained by American Civil Liberties Union found that The GEO Group submitted a proposal to use the McFarland facility to expand its available detention space in Kern County.

Last month, President Donald Trump’s administration directed ICE to increase its daily arrests of 3,000 people per day in en effort to reach the president’s promise of record-level deportations, according to a report in Reuters.

Should the California City facility open, it would increase the total number of immigration detention beds in California by 36%, bringing the count of available beds to 9,700, the Los Angeles Times reported.

‘We’re seeing history repeat itself’

Grisel Ruiz, a senior managing attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said the proposed detention center will mean more community arrests and more family separations.

The nonprofit organization conducted a study that found that found immigrants are more likely to be arrested and detained by ICE in counties with more detention beds. In communities with more that 850 ICE detention beds, there was a 6.4 times higher likelihood of arrest, researchers found.

“This guarantees that the violent ICE arrests we’re seeing in Los Angeles will come full force to communities in California City, Kern County and beyond,” Ruiz said.

Kern County residents, San Joaquin Valley faith leaders, and immigrant rights advocates from across the state spoke in opposition to the facility during a nearly five-hour June 24 city council meeting and urged the council to oppose the project. A few locals spoke in support of the project.

“In January, Kern County was terrorized, families were torn apart, children didn’t go to school,” said a Kern County resident named Macintosh, referring to a high-profile Border Patrol immigration sweep that resulted in the arrest of at least 78 individuals and 40 deportations. “This is a fascist government. I hope you all can wake up and be on the right side of history,” she said.

Kimi Maru, a member of the Little Tokyo, Los Angeles-based group Nikkei Progressives, implored the council to stop the project. Maru said her parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II and seeing detention centers being opened and filled with community members who are denied due process “brings back horrible memories of our community about what happened to us and our families during World War II.”

“We’re seeing history repeat itself and it’s really wrong,” she said.

‘We can’t stop the federal government’

For Hawkins, the town’s mayor, there isn’t much the city can do to oppose the project.

“I feel for the people who were passionate, who have been affected, (who have) families that have been affected. I understand their concerns,” he said.

“We can’t stop the federal government or a private business from doing business and having contracts with each other. They own the land, CoreCivic, they own the facility,” he said.

In 2024, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a 2019 state law that would have banned private prisons and privately-run ICE facilities in California violated the Constitution, affirming a lower courts decision that the law interfered with the federal government’s ability to carry out immigration law.

About a month ago, Hawkins said he and fellow council members, as well as other community leaders, took a tour of the facility with the warden and vice warden.

“Matter of fact, I think one of the former council members is working there,” Hawkins said.

The privately operated prison opened in the late 1990s by Corrections Corporation of America, which later became known as CoreCivic. In the early 2010s, CoreCivic had a contract with the federal government to house federal detainees awaiting trial and those with pending immigration cases. It later became a privately operated state prison known as the California City Correctional Facility, but was closed in 2024 after the state ended its for-profit prison contracts.

Hawkins said California City has lost approximately $1 million in revenue after the prison’s closure in early 2024.

“We had to cut a lot down to bare bones almost just to function,” he said of the city’s nearly $37 million operating budget.

The project’s opponents say in the June 24 city council meeting there is more the city could do, such as not issue a business license. Others raised concerns about extreme heat. One commenter said that the detention center should open its own sewage plant because the city’s doesn’t have the capacity. The city’s wastewater treatment plant manager said in a 2023 interview with 23ABC that the prison’s water system is in need of repair.

“I would imagine those things will come up in our discussions with CoreCivic,” Hawkins said. But it’s “way too early right now” for those conversations, he said.

Hawkins said the existing 13-year agreement between the city and CoreCivic expires in September and will likely be renegotiated and renewed in the coming months.