California farm town backs ICE detention centers

Leaders of a cash-strapped California farm town, home to many migrants in the country illegally, have voted to convert two privately run state prisons into immigration detention centers, just two months after public opposition appeared to have derailed the proposal.

After a three-hour virtual meeting over Zoom on Thursday night, the City Council of McFarland voted 4-0 in favor of a plan by the GEO Group, which has been operating the prisons, to repurpose them to detain up to 1,400 migrants.

One council member recused himself due to a conflict of interest.

Up to half of the 15,000 residents of McFarland are in the country illegally, according to some estimates, meaning they could face confinement in the same cells that have been holding convicted criminals.

The decision follows several court rulings that have ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has contracted with GEO to run the McFarland facilities, to reduce the number of migrants it holds in detention because of the risks they could face from the coronavirus pandemic.

McFarland’s interim city manager, Larry Penell, had urged the council to approve the GEO proposal, saying it would generate sorely needed revenue for the town, which he said was on the verge of bankruptcy.

California’s new law banning privately run prisons would have cost McFarland $1.5 million a year in taxes and other fees paid by GEO if the company left the city, officials argued.

To circumvent the law against private prisons, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in October and took effect in January, GEO and ICE reached an agreement in December to turn the McFarland state prisons into federal detention facilities for migrants.

In January, McFarland residents, many of them field workers in the country illegally, began mobilizing against the proposal.

Hundreds marched through the city’s streets and protested outside a meeting of the planning commission in February, when a vote was held on whether to approve the plan.

A tie vote doomed it, and the protesters declared victory.

But GEO swiftly appealed the decision to the City Council, culminating in Thursday’s vote.

Migrant advocates and civil-rights groups had urged the council to postpone a new vote until after the coronavirus crisis had passed so that residents could participate. When the council moved ahead, advocates accused it of intentionally scheduling the vote while California’s lockdown was in effect, to ensure that large numbers of demonstrators could not attend.

During the virtual meeting Thursday, both supporters and opponents of the plan were called on to speak. But hundreds of people were unable to even listen in, because Zoom and telephone lines were jammed.

“In the middle of a pandemic, when all of us are being forced to risk our health to work as essential workers in the fields or, if we’ve lost our work, afraid of how we’ll make rent and pay bills, our City Council decided to hold a Zoom call limited to 100 people,” said Alex Gonzalez, a community organizer with Faith in the Valley, a religious coalition that opposed the plan.