BS Summary: This article contains 4 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Anecdotal, with Pessimism Bias as the most egregious example at 7.2% saturation with 72 hits. Analysis detected 160 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,005 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 44.2% and a BS Rank of 38% (9,668 of 15,517 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 62.30% of the article peer group.
Private prison company CoreCivic sold Otay Mesa Detention Center, along with California City Detention Facility to the federal government last week.
In an announcement last Monday, the company said that the Department of Homeland Security paid $1.5 billion for the two facilities that primarily hold people in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That included $739.2 million for Otay Mesa Detention Center.
It’s unclear what changes people held at Otay Mesa might experience due to the sale, but many are worried that conditions could worsen.
Before the fall of 2020, ICE ran the medical unit at Otay Mesa Detention Center even though CoreCivic owned and operated the facility as a whole.
That year, the federal agency contracted the medical care to CoreCivic, and detainees told me that the medical care immediately got worse.
As soon as I heard about the sale of the facility, I asked CoreCivic if any of the staffing or management would transfer to ICE, particularly the medical care.
CoreCivic told me that it will continue to manage the day-to-day operations of both facilities and that its current workforce will remain in place.
The company had hinted during its most recent earnings call in May that it might consider selling property to ICE and that it would expect to still run those facilities.
Ruth Mendez, a volunteer with Detention Resistance, said she’s worried that the sale could cause worsening medical care.
“That was disastrous for us to see and for people inside,” Mendez said of the prior switch in medical contracting in 2020.
“Now that we see the sale, it reminds us of those moments because we know that these shifts will severely impact people.”
She and other activists who maintain contact with people inside said they’re suspicious that the sale will lead to less oversight and accountability overall.
Though government ownership of the facility could perhaps increase the possible array of documents that members of the public could request to see, ICE and other immigration agencies have been notoriously slow at responding to Freedom of Information Act requests throughout my time on this beat.
(Medical record information would be protected from public records requests under privacy law.)
As a journalist, when I ask questions about Otay Mesa Detention Center, I am generally more likely to get responses from CoreCivic than from ICE.
California has some laws regulating private prisons in the state, with more pending legislation to take that further.
Current law includes authorization for county and city health officers to inspect private detention centers.
The law specifies that it is referring to private detention centers.
“If they’re no longer a private company, then it’s much harder to hold them accountable,” said Dinora Reyna, executive director of the San Diego Organizing Project.
After a legal battle , the County of San Diego recently conducted an inspection of Otay Mesa Detention Center.
The final report is still pending, and Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer’s office said it expected to release the report around the end of July.
Many have complained of worsening treatment, particularly health care, in the past year and a half during the second Trump administration.
CoreCivic has denied those claims.
Mendez pointed out that the Trump administration has gutted the Department of Homeland Security Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office, which is supposed to monitor complaints from people in ICE custody.
“The ones who are going to feel the full brunt of the issue are the people inside, our family members, our neighbors who continue to be in there,” Mendez said.
Mendez said that detainees reported an uptick in detainee transfers in and out of the facility around the time of the sale.
She said a couple hundred people recently arrived from Florida.
ICE has also recently transferred people from the facility to Texas, Arizona and Mississippi, particularly those who are waiting on appeals in their cases, she said.
Transfers can cause psychological trauma, disruptions in legal cases, loss of attorneys and loss of family support, Mendez said.
Those recent transfers from Florida included at least one man who had already been ordered released, according to another volunteer with Detention Resistance who asked to not be identified due to retaliation concerns.
The collective helped the man return to Florida after his release from Otay Mesa.
Both Detention Resistance volunteers emphasized that the sale only underscores their long-term goal to see the facility shut down altogether.
“I don’t anticipate though, given the government’s track record with everything else on its agenda, that this (sale) will bring anything but more suffering and more death,” the volunteer said.
More than 50 people have died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office.
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The post Border Report: Immigration Detention Sale Heightens Safety Concerns appeared first on Voice of San Diego .
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