The Biden administration will extend a contract for a controversial, privately run Immigration and Customs Enforcement jail in the face of pressure from unions to keep the facility open.
The Teamsters and the National Federation of Federal Employees have lobbied lawmakers and President Joe Biden directly in recent weeks not to close the Adelanto ICE Processing Center after the current contract expires in February, as urged by Democratic lawmakers and immigration activists.
The jail, operated by the private GEO Group since 2011, can house roughly 2,000 immigrants, but a COVID-19-era Department of Justice order had left the facility virtually empty since September 2020 despite President Joe Biden’s ending of the coronavirus emergency declaration in the spring of 2023. Adelanto closed last year housing just six immigrants.
ICE spokeswoman Jenny Burke confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security will once again extend GEO’s contract for an additional 120 days as soon as the contract expires on Feb. 19.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to issue a 120-day task order with the GEO Group, Inc. for the Adelanto ICE Processing facility in Adelanto, California. The new task order will extend beyond the current 60-day task order issued on December 19 — expiring February 19 — and provides additional time for potential relief from ongoing litigation that prevents full use of the facility,” Burke said in a statement. “The location and availability of detention space directly affects the agency’s ability to remove individuals to their home countries, enforce immigration law in the interior of the country, and detain those who are threats to public safety or national security. We appreciate the efforts of the vendor to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the agency continues to modernize the immigration system and realize cost efficiencies across the operational landscape while working with DHS leadership and Congress to secure supplemental funding for detention.”
Burke had stated that the current temporary contract extension would be used to work with GEO to evaluate “factors to ensure that appropriate accommodations can be made for both personnel, operations, and individuals in custody” and that “no final” decision regarding the jail’s future had been made.
Since 2015, numerous violations of ICE’s health and safety standards have been recorded at Adelanto, and Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) urged the president to shutter the facility in December at the expiration of the current contract.
“Adelanto’s deplorable conditions have been widely reported and the GEO Group, which runs the facility, has long been responsible for violating the constitutional rights of the people in its custody. The GEO Group, which operates the facility, has a history of violating detainees’ constitutional rights and a deadly track record of denying necessary medical and mental health treatment to immigrants at Adelanto, resulting in eight preventable deaths according to ICE’s investigation,” Chu wrote in a statement.
Republican lawmakers and unions had urged Biden to keep the facility operational, albeit for separate reasons.
Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA), whose district holds the Adelanto facility, told the Washington Examiner that keeping the facility running, as well as lifting the DOJ COVID-19 order barring it from housing new immigrants, are critical for addressing the situation at the southern border.
“The Adelanto ICE Processing Center with its over 1,900 beds should be a vital contributor to ICE’s capacity to detain and process illegal immigrants,” Obernolte said in a statement. “Instead our country is experiencing the disastrous consequences of the Administration’s continued reliance on the policy of catch and release, which has resulted in millions of immigrants flooding into our communities, causing states, counties, and cities to declare a state of emergency due to the financial burden that the federal government has forced upon them. Making better use of facilities like the one in Adelanto is critical to solving this urgent problem.”
Teamsters Union General President Sean O’Brien urged Biden in December not to close the facility “on behalf of the 1.3 million members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters,” which represents medical and mental health workers staffing the facility.
NFFE National President Randy Erwin similarly requested a meeting with Biden’s Domestic Policy Council to outline how closing Adelanto “would devastate [the union’s] members, their families, and the Southern California communities where these proud union members work and live.”
Biden scored endorsements from Teamsters and NFFE in 2020, but neither group has endorsed a candidate for the 2024 cycle. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has actively courted O’Brien and Teamsters members in recent weeks.
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O’Brien met with Trump in person on Jan. 3, and the former president committed to sitting down with “rank-and-file Teamsters,” O’Brien, and Teamsters General Secretary-Treasurer Fred Zuckerman at a roundtable at the Teamsters’ international headquarters in Washington, D.C., later in January.
“Between his disastrous open border policies and his insane electric vehicle mandate, Joe Biden appears to have declared war on Union voters, imperiling his chances in states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told the Washington Examiner.