ICE Is Rushing to Open For-Profit Detention Centers--Right Before California's Ban Goes Into Effect
Five days after California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a strict ban on for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centers, Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly posted a solicitation notice for three new detention facilities in California—a move that advocates are calling a discreet attempt to open up new privately run facilities before the law goes into effect at the start of next year.
ICE is asking for “turnkey ready” facilities near San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles for “the exclusive use of ICE and the ICE detainee population,” according to documents posted on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website on October 16. (When ICE seeks a new contract, the search has to go through a public bidding process.) The facilities would be used to “provide housing, medical care, transportation, guard services, meals, and the day to day needs for ICE detainees,” the documents say. As the Palm Springs Desert Sun first reported, ICE is looking to house up to 6,750 detainees in the facilities.
In the notice, ICE clarifies that it will not accept proposals for constructing new facilities. The notice also includes specific requirements, like being a set distance from ICE field offices and having a certain number of beds. And since California passed a law last year banning any city or county from entering into contracts with ICE or for-profit prison companies to detain immigrants, the only existing facilities that would comply with ICE’s requirements for this contract would be the ones already owned by private prison companies, according to Silky Shah, executive director for Detention Watch Network. “In the amount of time they have for the solicitation,” she said, “it’s going to be tough for a new contractor to offer their services.”
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As written, the ban does not allow the California Department of Corrections to enter into any new contracts or renew any existing contracts with for-profit prison companies. But it says nothing about contracts that will already be in place when the ban is implemented.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/ice-california-new-detention-facilities-private-profit/
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