Advocates say the agency began transferring immigrant detainees to the McFarland facility last week.

The facility, called Central Valley Annex, brings the total number of active detention centers in California to eight, up from six at the beginning of 2025. They are all operated by private companies and they have a total capacity of nearly 10,000 beds. 

Both of the detention centers that opened since President Donald Trump took office had been used as private prisons until California’s incarcerated population fell to a level that allowed the Newsom administration to end those contracts.

The latest figures show an average of about 5,337 people are being held in California immigration detention facilities, according to DetentionReports.com. That number is up 72% from the average daily population of about 3,104 individuals being held in California in April 2025. 

This newest facility is part of a cluster of detention centers in Kern County, which includes the Golden State Annex in McFarland. It is unclear if GEO obtained conditional use permits or business licenses from the city of McFarland to start detaining immigrants at Central Valley Annex.

Advocates for detained immigrants said they did not have an opportunity to raise their concerns at public hearings before ICE began using the new site.

“We don’t want another ICE detention center in California, or anywhere else for that matter,” said anti-ICE detention advocate Edwin Carmona-Cruz about the new Central Valley Annex.  

The Central Valley Annex is adjacent to Geo Group’s Golden State Annex, which is holding an average daily population of 565 people.

Until 2020, GEO Group operated a cluster of private prisons in McFarland for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The writing was on the wall for their closure as private prisons because Gov. Gavin Newsom had committed to ending those contracts. 

California Democrats in 2019 tried to stop GEO Group from turning the sites into immigrant detention facilities by passing a law to prohibit that use. 

ICE signed a 15-year contract worth $1.5 billion with GEO for two McFarland sites and one in Bakersfield just weeks before the law went into effect. In 2023, a federal court found the state law unconstitutional, ruling it infringed on federal authority to enforce immigration law. 

In 2020, the McFarland mayor resigned because the city’s planning commission deadlocked on GEO’s proposal to convert two of its sites there into immigration detention facilities. Then-Mayor Manuel Cantu Jr. told the Desert Sun the day after the vote that the small city relies on the approximately $2 million annually that GEO pays in property taxes and utility fees to provide vital municipal services like water, sewer and public safety. 

The private prison company appealed, though, and eventually was able to move forward in 2020 with opening Golden State Annex for its work with ICE. 

GEO told the planning commission in 2020 that opening both the Golden State and Central Valley annexes would bring the town $511,000 annually in mitigation payments, along with well-paying jobs. 

California state law requires a city or county to provide a 180-day notice and hold public hearings before approving or allowing the reuse of a facility for immigration detention.

The city clerk and city manager of McFarland, a small agricultural town with a population of about 15,000, did not immediately respond to phone calls and questions from CalMatters. 

Jason Sweeney, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the facility opened “under an existing intergovernmental services agreement” that “has been in place for several years.” He said the Central Valley Annex began housing detainees within the last two weeks and that the agency would add the new site to its bi-weekly reports.

California’s newest detention centers

Last year, CoreCivic, another private prison operator, opened a 2,560-bed immigrant detention center in California City, in eastern Kern County, on the site of another shuttered state prison. It’s the largest ICE detention center in the state. The company began detaining immigrants there in late August 2025 without acquiring necessary paperwork from California City, contributing to legal and community opposition. 

According to GEO Group’s website, the newly activated Central Valley Annex facility is accredited by the American Correctional Association and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care. It previously housed detainees from the U.S. Marshals Service. 

ICE did not immediately respond to a question about whether the facility is now holding both U.S. Marshal and immigrant detainees. 

The unprecedented growth in people being held in ICE detention centers nationwide has been fueled by an influx of $45 billion delivered through the spending law Trump signed last year that he referred to as the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The Trump administration is aiming to hold more than 100,000 immigrant detainees on any given day as part of his massive deportation campaign. When he took office in 2025, ICE was holding an average of about 40,000 people per day. 

State oversight of conditions inside

Carmona-Cruz, the co-executive director of the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, said people being sent to Central Valley Annex “are at risk of the same terrible abuses and inhumane conditions that people in the ICE detention center next door have faced for years.” 

For years, detainees at the Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex facilities — the others under the same contract as Central Valley Annex — have alleged abuse and dangerous conditions, including medical neglect, being paid only $1 a day for labor, being held in solitary confinement after reporting sexual abuse and inadequate food. 

In response to some of those previous allegations, Chris V. Ferreira, the spokesman for GEO Group, has previously told CalMatters that his company “strongly disagrees with these baseless allegations, which are part of a long-standing, politically motivated, and radical campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention by attacking the federal government’s immigration facility contractors.” He did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. 

“The people being sent there are our community members, neighbors, family members,” Carmona-Cruz  said. “ICE and GEO Group are incapable of meeting the human needs of the people they detain. ICE detention is not only unjust and unnecessary — it is deadly. Nearly 50 people have died in ICE detention since Trump took office again, and it’s only getting worse.” 

Last year,  the California Attorney General’s Office released a report raising concerns about health care inside ICE facilities. At that time, there were only six detention centers operating in the state. 

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Deputies with the Kern County Sheriff’s Office, Mojave Station, arrested three Inland Empire men in connection with the case. The suspects were identified as Jose Lopez, 37, of San Bernardino; Ruben Lopez Flores, 25, of Los Angeles; and Freddy Hernandez Polinar, 35, of Chino. All three face multiple felony charges, including cargo theft, possession of a stolen vehicle and conspiracy.

The investigation began April 8 when deputies were called to the 400 block of Silver Queen Road after reports of suspicious vehicles. When law enforcement arrived, two box trucks attempted to flee the area. Deputies conducted traffic stops and detained the drivers without further incident.

Inside the trucks, authorities discovered a large quantity of Lego merchandise. Further investigation revealed the cargo had been taken while in transit from Fort Worth, Texas, and was headed to Moreno Valley in Riverside County.

According to Kern County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Lori Meza, the shipment was destined for Moreno Valley but was not en route to an official Lego retail store. Additional details about the intended destination and whether any items are still missing remain under investigation.

The recovery comes amid a growing number of theft cases involving high-demand retail goods in the Inland Empire.

In a separate incident last month, Hemet police uncovered a retail theft operation involving stolen merchandise, including Lego sets, being resold at a local swap meet. Authorities said thousands of dollars worth of items — ranging from Star Wars-themed Lego sets to toys and power tools — were seized during that investigation.

Hemet Police Chief Michael Arellano said at the time that the crackdown reflects a broader effort to combat organized retail theft and protect local businesses from financial losses.

It remains unclear whether the two cases are connected.

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Three people from Chino were arrested in connection with the heist on counts of possession of a stolen vehicle, cargo theft and conspiracy, authorities said.

Deputies with the Sheriff’s Office had responded to a request regarding suspicious vehicles in the Mojave area on the 400 block of Silver Queen Road.

The deputies conducted traffic stops after seeing two box trucks fleeing the area, according to information released by the Sheriff’s Office. In their search, they discovered a large number of Lego products.

After a further search, they also found two freight trailers, authorities said. An investigation later revealed, authorities said, that the trailers had been stolen while in transit from Fort Worth, Texas, to Moreno Valley, Calif.

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