Rep. Jay Obernolte lack of oversight of ICE detention facilities in our district threatens those facilities to become the Auschwitz of Adelanto and Dachau of Desert in California City.
The reopening of California City Correctional Facility (CCCF) as an ICE detention center, operated by the private prison company CoreCivic, is a troubling development that demands oversight.
CCCF was once slated for closure as part of Governor Newsom’s broader effort to reduce California’s prison population. But with the federal government ramping up deportations under the Trump administration, the facility has been repurposed to detain immigrants—many of whom have no criminal record and are simply seeking a better life. Representative Obernolte has stated otherwise in a Facebook post when he visited the facility but provided no concrete evidence except to trust his word.
Economic gain should never come at the expense of human dignity. We cannot allow our communities to become dependent on the incarceration of vulnerable people for survival. California has already taken a stand against private prisons and mass incarceration. We cannot allow federal policy to undermine state's rights which Representative Obernolte is eager to do.
CoreCivic is a for-profit prison corporation with a long, well-documented history of abuse, neglect, and cutting corners to boost profits. They are not accountable to the public but only to the billionaire shareholders who stand to make windfall profits.
They are not in the business of justice—they are in the business of incarceration.
If Rep. Jay Obernolte doesn’t step in now, we are handing over human lives to a corporation with every incentive to detain as many people as possible, for as long as possible, with as little scrutiny as possible.
We’ve seen what happens when ICE detention centers operate without oversight. The Adelanto facility, also in California and run by a private contractor, has been repeatedly cited for inhumane conditions, medical neglect, and civil rights violations. Do we really want to replicate that model in California City?
Rep. Jay Obernolte has failed to act and is complicit in the expansion of a shadow detention system that thrives on secrecy, suffering, and silence. We cannot wait until the next scandal breaks or another detainee dies in custody. The writing is on the wall. ICE is expanding. CoreCivic is profiting. And California is being used as a staging ground for mass detention.
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