The unanimous decision, issued Thursday, centers on Angela Hernandez, a Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States as a legal permanent resident for 19 years before her 2013 arrest on two drug trafficking charges in Kern County. At the time, Hernandez was 55 years old with a father, husband, children and grandchildren all living in the U.S.

During her plea hearing, Hernandez initialed a standard advisement form stating that a guilty plea could trigger deportation, a bar on reentry, and denial of naturalization — and that deportation was mandatory for certain offenses. A certified interpreter confirmed the document had been translated in full, and her defense attorney believed she understood its implications.

She pleaded guilty and served 27 days of a 180-day sentence. Two years later, with permission from the state parole department, she traveled to Mexico. When she attempted to return through Los Angeles International Airport, a customs official detained her and launched deportation proceedings.

Hernandez later told the court she had signed the form without grasping its consequences.

“Well, because if he’s my attorney and he tells me, ‘Sign here, initial here,’ I’m going to sign,” Hernandez testified, according to the court’s ruling. “I was also very nervous at that time.”

She spent years trying to get her conviction thrown out, arguing her attorney had failed to adequately represent her. Both a trial judge and an appellate court rejected that claim. But the state Supreme Court found legal errors in how those courts evaluated her case and reversed the rulings.

Writing for the majority, Justice Joshua Groban said that although Hernandez verbally agreed to the deportation warning during her plea hearing, her subsequent actions undercut any claim that she actually comprehended it.

“Her decisions to request and obtain permission from the parole department to leave the United States, travel to Mexico, and attempt to reenter lawfully through a port of entry support the inference that she did not ‘meaningfully understand’ the immigration consequences of her conviction,” Groban wrote.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had urged the court to uphold Hernandez’s conviction. But public defender organizations and immigrant advocacy groups filed briefs arguing that California courts have applied inconsistent standards when it comes to informing defendants about the immigration fallout of guilty pleas.

The court directed the 5th District Court of Appeal to send Hernandez’s case back to the trial court, which must now vacate her convictions.

In a separate opinion agreeing in part and dissenting in part, Justice Carol Corrigan called for Hernandez to present a fuller record once the case returns to the lower court.

“The trial court can resolve factual and credibility questions, then issue an appropriate ruling in light of all relevant evidence,” Corrigan wrote. “If the record demonstrates that the legal error impaired her ability to meaningfully understand and accept the immigration consequences of her plea, the motion should be granted.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Woman Pleaded Guilty to Drug Trafficking Charge, Then Learned Too Late She Couldn’t Return From Mexico appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The decision, handed down Thursday, centers on Angela Hernandez, a Mexican citizen who had lived in the United States as a legal permanent resident for 19 years before her 2013 arrest in Kern County on two drug charges. At the time, Hernandez was 55 years old with a father, husband, children and grandchildren all living in the U.S.

During her trial, Hernandez pleaded guilty and initialed a standard form warning that a non-citizen’s guilty plea could lead to deportation, exclusion from re-entry, or denial of naturalization. An interpreter certified that the document had been fully translated for her, and her defense attorney later told the court he believed she understood what she was signing.

But Hernandez maintains she never grasped what those consequences actually meant for her future.

“Well, because if he’s my attorney and he’s telling me, ‘Sign here, initial here,’ I’m going to sign,” Hernandez told the court, according to the ruling. “I was really nervous then too.”

Her plea resulted in a 180-day sentence, of which she served 27 days. Two years later, believing she had done nothing wrong by seeking permission, Hernandez asked the state probation department for approval to travel to Mexico — and received it. But when she tried to return home through Los Angeles International Airport, a customs official detained her and launched deportation proceedings.

Since that encounter, Hernandez has fought in court to have her original conviction reversed, arguing her attorney had failed her by not making sure she truly understood what she was agreeing to. Both a trial judge and an appellate court rejected her claims. The state’s highest court, however, saw it differently.

Writing for the majority, Justice Joshua Groban said Hernandez’s own actions after the plea — seeking permission to travel abroad, actually leaving the country, and then attempting to re-enter through an official port of entry — undercut any suggestion that she grasped the seriousness of what she’d agreed to.

“Her decisions to seek and obtain permission from the probation department to leave the United States, to travel to Mexico, and to attempt to lawfully reenter through a port of entry support an inference that she did not ‘meaningfully understand’ the immigration consequences of her conviction,” Groban wrote.

The ruling emphasized that simply checking boxes on a legal form isn’t sufficient — courts must be confident a defendant genuinely comprehends what a guilty plea could mean for their immigration status, not just that they verbally agreed to it in the moment.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation had asked the court to leave Hernandez’s conviction intact. But public defender organizations and immigrant rights groups weighed in on her behalf, telling the court that California’s trial courts have applied inconsistent standards when informing defendants about the immigration risks tied to plea deals.

The Supreme Court has now ordered the 5th District Court of Appeals to send the case back to a trial court, which must vacate Hernandez’s convictions.

Justice Carol Corrigan, in a partial dissent, argued that Hernandez should still have to lay out a more complete case when her matter returns to the lower court.

“The trial court can resolve factual and credibility issues, then make a proper ruling considering all the relevant evidence,” Corrigan wrote. “If the record produced shows that legal error damaged her ability to meaningfully understand the immigration consequences of her plea and accept them, the motion should be granted.”

The case is likely to resonate with immigration attorneys and public defenders across the Inland Empire and greater Southern California, where large numbers of legal permanent residents navigate the criminal justice system each year — often without fully understanding how a single guilty plea can upend decades of life built in the United States.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Woman Who Pleaded Guilty to Drug Charge Barred From Returning After Mexico Trip appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The 2022 law required regulators to write rules governing how companies would monitor stored carbon and respond if something went wrong. It set a January 2025 deadline for companies to prove they could cover cleanup costs and other liabilities, and called for a single, streamlined application to coordinate permitting across multiple agencies.

More than 19 months past that deadline, California still hasn’t finalized its carbon storage regulations.

Meanwhile, in May, California Resources Corp., the state’s largest oil producer, began injecting carbon dioxide underground at Elk Hills, a century-old oil field in rural Kern County. The move made the project a closely watched test case — the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which approved the injections, says it knows of no other similar project operating anywhere else in the country.

Without its own rules in place, California cannot hold companies like CRC to standards tougher than the federal government’s, nor can it guarantee that the carbon — a gas that can be lethal in high concentrations and drives climate change — stays underground for good.

“If something goes wrong, there are really important questions about who would actually address those concerns and consequences,” said Michelle Ghafar, an Earthjustice attorney representing groups suing to halt the project. “And we have a track record of oil companies not taking responsibility for cleaning up their messes.”

State leaders have championed the Elk Hills project. Gov. Gavin Newsom has pointed to the carbon injections there as proof that “innovation and ambition are what California is all about.” State Sen. Anna Caballero, who authored the law establishing the rules, said she never intended for it to stall projects already underway.

California is counting on carbon capture to help meet its aggressive climate goals. Supporters have long pitched it as a fix for industries that are difficult to clean up, such as cement manufacturing. But the California Air Resources Board, the state’s top climate regulator, has told CalMatters it likely can’t cut emissions 85% below 1990 levels without dramatically expanding carbon capture — potentially even at natural gas power plants.

Writing the carbon storage rules falls to the air board. Two other agencies already oversee pieces of the project: the Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, which regulates oil and gas wells, and the U.S. EPA, which permits injection wells under federal safe drinking water law.

Yet questions remain about who’s actually in charge. It’s unclear which agency would be responsible if, say, carbon leaked through one of the field’s older wells. CalGEM regulates those wells, but the company’s own emergency plan calls for notifying the EPA when something goes wrong.

Air board officials say staffing shortages kept them from finishing the rules on time. They point to existing oversight, including the federal permit designed to protect drinking water and a Kern County approval whose environmental review is now being challenged in court.

The financial stakes are enormous. The project could generate billions of dollars in public funding — a mix of federal tax credits and money from California drivers — if it expands as planned.

“If you’re a driver, you should care about how this money is spent,” said Danny Cullenward, a climate policy expert and vice chair of an independent committee that reviews the state’s carbon market. “You’re also paying a lot of money for big oil companies to experiment with these technologies without a regulatory framework.”

The company sees its storage business as being in step with the state’s goals — and as a business opportunity. “Our goal is to be a partner to the state in its transition to the future it envisions for itself,” said Jas Sajjan, the company’s senior vice president of government affairs.

**Depleted reservoirs pierced by decades of drilling**

Amid the scrub-covered hills of Elk Hills west of Bakersfield, an oil worker in a hard hat cranked open a green valve by hand. Nearby, a red digital counter ticked upward like a scoreboard, tallying the tons of carbon dioxide as California’s largest oil producer began pumping the gas deep underground.

The scenes, captured in promotional photos the company released of the May injections, were among the images CRC chose to mark the moment. Elk Hills is the first project from Carbon TerraVault, a joint venture CRC formed with New York-based investor Brookfield Asset Management to develop its carbon capture projects.

For decades, oil companies have injected carbon dioxide into aging fields to squeeze out more crude — a practice banned in California known as enhanced oil recovery. At Elk Hills, the carbon is injected solely for permanent storage, with the EPA saying it’s the only known project of its kind in the country.

The company, federal regulators and state officials consider the field’s vast depleted reservoirs well-suited for storage, since they trapped oil and gas underground for millions of years.

But the very quality that makes the reservoir attractive for storage also creates risk. Drilling here dates back to 1910, and old wells could offer pathways for carbon dioxide to migrate back to the surface. The nearest community, Valley Acres, sits less than four miles away.

FracTracker Alliance, a nonprofit that maps oil and gas development, identified 913 oil and gas wells within a mile of the project’s four injection wells, according to a new analysis prepared for the consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog. Most of those wells remain unsealed, and even sealed wells can degrade over time, said Kyle Ferrar, the group’s western program director. The true number could be even higher, he added, since older records sometimes omit wells entirely.

The concern isn’t new. In 2024, a retired federal geoscientist who reviewed the project warned that 204 wells pierce the rock layer meant to seal in the reservoir now receiving injections — potentially creating escape routes for the carbon dioxide.

The project’s emergency response plan and underlying permit are built around the Safe Drinking Water Act, which also requires surface air monitoring and a public notification plan in case of emergency.

But experts say that leaves a gap: federal rules require regular integrity testing only on injection wells themselves, not the hundreds of older wells surrounding them, said Forrest Smith, a petroleum engineer who spent six years as the sole National Park Service engineer overseeing thousands of aging oil and gas wells. That means much of the responsibility for catching problems falls on the company itself.

“These older wells don’t get looked at much until they become a problem,” he said. “It comes down to making sure the companies doing this work keep tight controls.”

The company declined to comment directly on the FracTracker analysis or the geoscientist’s earlier concerns, but said the risks have already been addressed. Before injections began, the EPA required the company to seal or reseal roughly 200 wells, the agency said in a news release, relying on records from CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulator, according to EPA spokesperson Mikayla Rumph.

CalGEM confirmed it reviewed the wells the EPA ordered sealed. The state retains authority over other wells at the field, including monitoring wells tied to the project, but won’t regulate the injection wells themselves, said CalGEM spokesperson Jacob Roper.

**Rules were never meant to slow projects down**

California released the first draft of its carbon capture regulations in May, and environmental groups say it falls short of what the law requires. The air board expects to finalize the rules later this year.

Oil industry representatives and business groups, meanwhile, want the long-delayed process wrapped up — not expanded.

The air board’s proposal would require companies to monitor their sites, disclose the results and prove they can afford to fix a leak or seal a well for 100 years after injections stop. But because the board hasn’t finalized enforceable rules, it’s unclear whether that 100-year standard currently applies to Elk Hills, or whether the shorter federal standard governs in the meantime.

The draft also doesn’t specify whether companies’ monitoring would be independently verified, or spell out when a leak or earthquake would trigger notification to nearby residents.

CRC has told the EPA it plans to monitor groundwater quality and track the underground carbon dioxide plume for 50 years after injections end. The company has also posted a $9.1 million letter of credit to cover well-sealing and site maintenance, and purchased a separate $24.6 million insurance policy to cover response costs if something goes wrong.

It has asked the air board to spell out what additional coverage would be required for the following 50 years, arguing the risk diminishes once the plume stabilizes.

At a virtual public meeting in June, Jon Kendrick of the California Chamber of Commerce urged the air board to avoid duplicating federal requirements. In written comments, CRC asked the board not to impose broader, California-specific requirements.

Katie Valenzuela, an environmental justice policy advocate, said the board’s draft leans too heavily on letting companies police themselves. “What’s the point of having standards and rules if there’s no mechanism to ensure they’re followed?” she asked during the meeting.

Matthew Botill, a division chief at the air board, said the underlying 2022 law, Senate Bill 905, never gave the board authority to override approvals already granted by other agencies. In a separate interview with CalMatters last year, Botill said his agency lacked the budget to hire the experts needed to finish the rules on time. Even once the rules take effect, he said, the board wouldn’t have authority to approve or block individual projects — that falls outside the state’s direct regulatory reach, he added.

That was by design. While the bill moved through the Legislature, Caballero sent a letter urging agencies not to let the new rules delay projects already in motion.

Caballero told CalMatters the law was meant to coordinate existing agencies, not create a new gatekeeper. California needs projects like Elk Hills, she said, to meet its climate targets and support jobs.

“We want to encourage the kind of investment that helps California meet its climate goals while creating and protecting jobs,” she said.

**A technology that could spread statewide**

With billions of dollars in public funding on the table, carbon storage projects could multiply across California.

CRC is currently injecting carbon captured at its cryogenic gas plant at Elk Hills, which chills gases to extremely low temperatures to separate them.

The company also plans to draw carbon from a nearby natural gas power plant, adding another source of carbon dioxide for the project.

CRC is pressing state utility regulators to classify natural gas plants equipped with carbon capture as clean energy. If regulators agree, utilities could sign long-term contracts for that electricity — opening a new market for the company. CEO Francisco León called the prospect “an inflection point” and “an incredible opportunity” during a May earnings call.

The company has also signed deals to bury carbon dioxide from other businesses, part of a broader plan to turn its storage sites into hubs for industrial emissions from across the state.

A statewide expansion would likely require new pipelines to move that carbon to injection sites. California lifted its moratorium on such pipelines last year, and new safety rules from the Office of the State Fire Marshal took effect last month. Those rules don’t require the gas to be scented, meaning people near a leak wouldn’t necessarily be able to smell it, said Liza Tucker, a researcher with Consumer Watchdog.

In a new report, Tucker argues that carbon storage amounts to a lifeline for an industry the state is supposed to be phasing out.

“All it does is lock us in and force us to keep fossil fuels alive for a lot longer than we should,” Tucker said.

For now, the company continues injecting carbon at Elk Hills while a lawsuit challenging the project remains unresolved. The suit, filed by a coalition of Kern County community and environmental groups, argues the project’s environmental review never fully examined where all that carbon comes from — including the capture and transport of carbon dioxide from industrial sources into a region already among the most polluted in the country.

Ghafar, the Earthjustice attorney, said no single agency is examining the full scope of risk the project poses. Federal regulators are focused mainly on drinking water protections, while state agencies oversee separate pieces of the puzzle — leaving unanswered the question of who would step in if carbon dioxide escaped to the surface.

“It’s really alarming that injections have started when we don’t even have a court ruling yet on these really important questions about whether the risks of leaks, disasters and proper regulation have been fully addressed,” Ghafar said. “There really isn’t one single agency or entity looking at the full picture.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post Former Oil Field Becomes California’s First Carbon Storage Site — But Who’s Liable If Something Goes Wrong? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

The 2022 law required regulators to spell out how companies would monitor buried carbon, respond to problems, prove they could cover cleanup costs, and streamline permitting across multiple agencies. Lawmakers set a January 2025 deadline for much of that work. That deadline has now passed by more than a year and a half.

Meanwhile, in May, California Resources Corp., the state’s largest oil producer, began injecting carbon dioxide deep underground at Elk Hills, a century-old oil field west of Bakersfield. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the injections, and federal officials say there is no comparable project anywhere else in the country.

Because California hasn’t finalized its own oversight framework, the state has limited ability to impose standards beyond what federal regulators already require — or to independently verify that the injected gas, which can be dangerous in high concentrations and contributes to climate change if it escapes, stays safely underground.

“If something does go wrong, there are a lot of really important questions about who would actually address those concerns and impacts,” said Michelle Ghafar, an attorney with Earthjustice, which represents groups suing to halt the project. “And we have a history of oil companies not taking responsibility for cleaning up their messes.”

State leaders have embraced the project. Gov. Gavin Newsom praised the Elk Hills injections as proof that “innovation and ambition are the California way.” State Sen. Anna Caballero, who authored the original legislation, has said she never intended the rulemaking process to hold up projects already moving forward.

Carbon capture and storage plays a significant role in California’s long-term climate strategy. The California Air Resources Board, the agency tasked with writing the storage rules, has told CalMatters the state likely cannot reach its goal of cutting emissions 85% below 1990 levels without deploying the technology more broadly — potentially even at natural gas power plants.

Two other agencies also have a hand in overseeing the Elk Hills project: the state’s Geologic Energy Management Division, known as CalGEM, which regulates oil and gas wells, and the EPA, which issued the underground injection permits under federal drinking-water law. But it remains unclear which agency would take the lead if carbon dioxide escaped through one of the field’s many older wells. CalGEM oversees those wells, yet the company’s own emergency response plan calls for notifying the EPA if something goes wrong.

Air board officials say staffing shortages delayed the rulemaking. They point to existing safeguards, including the federal drinking-water permit and a Kern County land-use approval that is currently being challenged in court.

The financial incentives driving the project are substantial. Elk Hills could ultimately generate billions of dollars through a mix of federal tax credits and state climate programs funded largely by California drivers.

“If you’re a driver, you should care how this money is being spent,” said Danny Cullenward, a climate policy expert who serves as vice chair of an independent committee overseeing the state’s cap-and-trade market. “You are also paying a lot of money for very large oil companies to experiment with these technologies in the absence of a regulatory framework.”

Company officials describe the project as complementary to the state’s climate ambitions. “Our goal is to be a partner to the state as it transitions into the future that it envisions for itself,” said Jas Sajjan, CRC’s senior vice president of government affairs.

Elk Hills has been drilled since 1910, and the field’s long history poses its own risks. A recent analysis conducted for the advocacy group Consumer Watchdog by FracTracker Alliance identified 913 oil and gas wells within a mile of the project’s four injection wells — most of them unplugged. Even wells that have been sealed can deteriorate over time, said Kyle Ferrar, the nonprofit’s western program director, who added that incomplete historical records may mean the true well count is even higher.

The concern isn’t new. In 2024, a retired federal geoscientist reviewing the project warned that 204 wells penetrate the rock layer meant to seal the reservoir now receiving carbon dioxide, potentially creating pathways for the gas to migrate upward.

Federal rules require regular integrity testing only on the injection wells themselves, not the hundreds of older wells nearby, according to Forrest Smith, a petroleum engineer who spent six years as the National Park Service’s only engineer overseeing thousands of aging wells. That leaves much of the monitoring burden on the company itself.

“There’s not a lot of going back and checking these old wells until they become a problem,” Smith said. “It’s really making sure that the companies doing this are staying on top of it.”

CRC declined to respond directly to the well analysis or the geoscientist’s earlier warnings, but noted that before injections began, the EPA required roughly 200 wells in the area to be plugged or replugged, relying on records supplied by CalGEM.

The air board released a preliminary outline of its proposed storage rules in May, drawing criticism from environmental groups who say it falls short of what the 2022 law envisioned. The agency says it expects to finalize the rules later this year.

The draft framework would require companies to monitor storage sites, publicly disclose results, and demonstrate financial capacity to address leaks or plug wells for up to a century after injections stop. But because the rules aren’t finished, it’s unclear whether that 100-year standard currently applies at Elk Hills, or whether a shorter federal requirement governs in the interim. The outline also doesn’t specify whether independent verification of company monitoring will be required, or under what circumstances residents would be notified of a leak or seismic event.

CRC has told the EPA it plans to monitor groundwater and track the underground carbon plume for 50 years after injections cease. The company has posted a $9.1 million letter of credit for well-plugging and site maintenance, along with a separate $24.6 million insurance policy to cover emergency response costs. It has asked regulators to clarify what additional coverage, if any, should be required for a second 50-year period, arguing that risk diminishes once the underground plume stabilizes.

Industry representatives, including the California Chamber of Commerce, have urged the air board to avoid layering new state requirements on top of existing federal rules. CRC has made similar requests in written comments to the agency.

Katie Valenzuela, an environmental justice advocate, has criticized the draft rules for relying too heavily on self-reporting by the companies involved. “What’s the point of having standards and rules if there’s no mechanism in place to ensure those things are being met?” she asked at a recent public meeting.

Matthew Botill, a division chief at the air board, has said the 2022 law never gave his agency authority to override other agencies already permitting such projects, and that budget constraints delayed the rulemaking. Even with rules in place, he said, the air board would not have power to approve or block individual projects — that responsibility falls outside its jurisdiction.

That limitation was intentional. While the legislation was being debated, Caballero sent a letter instructing agencies not to let the forthcoming rules delay projects already underway. In a statement to CalMatters, she said the law was designed to coordinate existing regulatory authority, not create a new veto power, and that California needs projects like Elk Hills to meet its climate targets and support jobs.

“We want to encourage the kind of investment that helps California meet its climate goals while creating and protecting jobs,” she said.

The technology’s footprint could expand well beyond Elk Hills. CRC currently captures carbon from its cryogenic gas processing plant on-site, but the company also plans to draw emissions from a nearby natural gas power plant and is lobbying state utility regulators to classify gas-fired electricity paired with carbon capture as clean power — a shift that could open new long-term supply contracts. CRC’s chief executive, Francisco Leon, called the prospect “a game changer” and “an incredible opportunity” during an earnings call earlier this year.

The company has also signed agreements to store carbon dioxide generated by other businesses, part of a broader strategy to position its statewide storage sites as regional hubs for industrial emissions.

Such expansion would likely require new pipeline infrastructure to move captured carbon to injection sites. California lifted a moratorium on carbon dioxide pipelines last year, and new safety rules from the state fire marshal’s office took effect last month. Those rules don’t require the gas to carry a detectable odor, meaning nearby residents would have no way to smell a leak, according to Liza Tucker, a researcher with Consumer Watchdog.

In a recent report, Tucker argued that carbon storage functions as a lifeline for an industry the state is otherwise trying to phase out. “All it does is entrench us and invest us in keeping fossil fuels alive far longer than we ought to be,” she said.

Injections continue at Elk Hills even as a legal challenge moves through the courts. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of Kern County community and environmental groups, contends that the project’s environmental review failed to adequately consider where all the carbon dioxide will ultimately come from — including emissions piped in from industrial sources in a region already burdened with some of the worst air quality in the nation.

Ghafar said no single regulatory body is evaluating the full scope of the project’s risks. Federal officials are focused primarily on protecting drinking water, while state agencies oversee separate components, leaving open the question of who would respond if carbon dioxide reached the surface.

“It’s really alarming that they’ve started injection when we don’t have a decision yet from the court on these really important questions about whether the risk of leaks, disasters and proper regulation have been fully addressed,” Ghafar said. “There really is no one agency or one entity that is looking at the full scope.”

Original source: CalMatters

The post California Turned an Old Oil Field Into Its First Carbon Storage Site — But Who Answers if It Fails? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

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. 

The post ICE quietly opens another detention center in a former California prison appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

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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