ADELANTO, CA – Assemblymember Matt Haney (D–San Francisco) was joined by Assemblymembers Juan Carrillo, Liz Ortega, and Celeste Rodriguez, immigrant rights advocates, community leaders, and formerly detained individuals outside the Adelanto ICE Processing Center to call for passage of AB 1633, legislation that would hold for-profit corporations accountable for operating private immigration detention facilities in California by imposing a 50% tax on income generated from their detention operations and reinvesting the revenue into immigration-related services.
The lawmakers and advocates stood in solidarity with people currently detained at Adelanto and highlighted dangerous and inhumane conditions documented inside the facility, where four people died between September 2025 and March 2026.
“For years, ICE has fueled a system that profits from human suffering and family separation, outsourcing detention to private corporations who rake in profits while people endure dangerous, inhumane conditions,” said Assemblymember Haney. “What we’re seeing across the country shows the real-world consequences of ICE’s unchecked power, putting communities and lives at risk for profit with zero accountability. Corporations running these facilities are being paid hundreds of millions to detain people in cruelty right here in California, and it has to end.”
California’s privately operated immigration detention facilities have faced years of scrutiny over unsafe and inhumane conditions, including substandard medical care and repeated health and safety violations. Recent inspections by the California Department of Justice confirmed many of those concerns.
At Adelanto, the DOJ documented serious concerns involving medical care, staffing, drinking water, sanitation, disability access, and use of force. The detained population at
the facility grew from just seven people in 2023 to approximately 1,570 by early July 2025, while medical and detention staffing did not increase sufficiently to meet the needs of the growing population. Investigators also witnessed murky drinking water coming directly from a tap in the women’s housing unit.
In July, a federal judge ordered significant changes at Adelanto, including 24-hour access to clean drinking water, adequate meals, hygiene products, medical care, disability accommodations, mold remediation, appropriate clothing and bedding, outdoor recreation, and independent monitoring.
The recent death of José Guadalupe Ramos-Solano, 52, has added new urgency to calls for accountability. Ramos-Solano had been detained at Adelanto for just over a month when he was found unconscious and unresponsive in his bunk on March 25 and later died at a hospital. His death was the fourth at Adelanto between September 2025 and March 2026.
“These companies are getting rich while separating families and causing actual harm to our communities,” Haney said. “That has a real cost, and Californians are stuck paying the price. This is not an abstract policy problem, it’s a human crisis.”
AB 1633 would impose a 50 percent tax on income generated by private detention companies from their detention operations in California and direct the resulting revenue into the Due Process for All Fund to support immigration-related services.
The legislation seeks to reduce the financial incentives for corporations to profit from mass immigration detention while requiring companies benefiting financially from detention to contribute toward addressing the harm detention causes to individuals, families, and communities across California.
“Billions have been invested into expanding detention centers and private companies like GEO and CoreCivic gleefully detain immigrants in inhumane conditions for massive profits,” said Huy Tran, Executive Director for Services, Immigrant Rights and Education Network (SIREN). “We have clients and community members who have endured the terrible conditions in these facilities. This industry is built on heartbreak and AB 1633 makes it clear that California will not allow immoral profiteering to go unchecked.”
“What the Attorney General called ‘cruel, inhumane and unacceptable’ is not a glitch — it’s the business model,” said Shiu-Ming Cheer, Deputy Director of Immigrant and Racial Justice at the California Immigrant Policy Center. “GEO Group gets paid every single day it holds someone at Adelanto, and the video showing worm-infested drinking water is the predictable result of a system built to cut costs and to inflict misery. AB 1633 changes that equation: it says no company can profit off detaining and separating
California families while leaving taxpayers and our communities to absorb the harm. The Legislature has the chance to act now — the people inside Adelanto can’t wait any longer.”
“AB 1633 is about a simple principle: California should not reward private corporations for profiting from the detention of immigrants. For too long, private detention companies have benefited financially from a system that separates families, destabilizes communities, and denies people their freedom. AB 1633 is an important step toward ensuring that California’s tax policy reflects our values, not the interests of corporations profiting from immigrant detention,” said Javier Hernandez, Executive Director of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice (IC4IJ).
Despite years of documented concerns, private detention corporations continue to receive lucrative federal contracts funded by taxpayer dollars. For-profit detention companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic receive hundreds of millions of dollars to operate immigration detention facilities throughout California.
California is home to privately operated immigration detention facilities with a documented history of unsafe and inhumane conditions, including inadequate medical care, poor living conditions, and repeated health and safety violations. Those conditions have drawn increasing scrutiny from state investigators, advocates, detained individuals, and their families.
AB 1633 says that corporations should not be able to profit from incarcerating immigrants while detained individuals, their families, immigrant communities, and the State bear the consequences.
With AB 1633 nearing the final stages of the legislative process, lawmakers and advocates called on the Legislature to send the bill to Governor Newsom’s desk, and for Newsom to ultimately sign it.
“Private corporations should not be allowed to profit off of the mass detention of our neighbors, which is traumatizing whole communities and causing our students mental and emotional distress. This undermines the all-important work underway to close achievement gaps and support student learning. We must make every effort to make sure that our students have healthy, safe environments in which they can thrive,” said Superintendent Tony Thurmond. “That’s why I’m proud to be a co-sponsor of AB 1633, to impose a tax on private detention centers and hold these corporations accountable. This bill would not only discourage bad actions by corporations, it would put resources back into our schools and communities to offset the harm done to California families.”
AB 1633 is expected to be heard on the Senate Floor in the coming weeks.
