DHS Buys Adelanto ICE Complex from GEO for $950 Million

The Department of Homeland Security has bought three GEO Group detention facilities in Adelanto, California, for $950 million and will keep the company on as the operator.

GEO announced the sale on Oct. 5. The package covers the 1,280-bed Adelanto West ICE Processing Center, the 660-bed Adelanto East center, and the 704-bed Desert View Annex, 2,644 beds in the same San Bernardino County city. The buyer is the United States, through Homeland Security. GEO expects about $705 million in net proceeds after taxes, fees, and expenses. The board raised the company’s share-repurchase authorization by $750 million, to $1.25 billion, through the end of 2029.

GEO will keep day-to-day operations under its existing ICE contract. The current term runs through Dec. 19, 2029, with a five-year option through Dec. 19, 2034. The company said the contracts were not rewritten in the sale announcement. It also said it is in talks to sell other company-owned facilities to ICE, on the condition that GEO keeps managing them.

“We are pleased with the completion of these important asset sales to the U.S. federal government, and we look forward to continuing to provide high-quality secure support services under our existing long-term contracts with ICE,” George C. Zoley, GEO’s chairman, chief executive, and founder, said in the release.

The Adelanto deal is the latest California purchase, not the first. On July 2, CoreCivic sold the 1,994-bed Otay Mesa center in San Diego County for $739.2 million and the 2,560-bed California City facility in Kern County for $732.6 million, $1.5 billion in one closing. CoreCivic stayed on as operator there as well. With the three Adelanto sites, Homeland Security has now bought five California detention properties this year. CoreCivic also sold facilities in Minnesota and Kansas in August. The Los Angeles Times put total federal detention-property purchases at nearly $3.2 billion, most of them in California.

The money traces to detention funding in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which put about $45 billion into immigration detention. A September Government Accountability Office report said ICE officials described the purchases as a way to hold capacity in key regions, take control of the buildings, and limit the ability of state and local governments to restrict detention operations. The Los Angeles Times reported that Homeland Security has said California’s oversight laws are why federal title matters on the West Coast, where the department cannot rely on county jails the way it can in states that cooperate.

Title does not end the state fight. On Sept. 29, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1633, a 25 percent tax on the gross income of private detention-facility operators. The tax starts July 1, 2028, and the statute says it applies whether the contracting agency is federal, state, or local. Federal ownership changes who holds the deed. It does not, on the face of the bill, take GEO’s operating income out of the tax. California also expanded health and oversight rules for civil detention facilities in the same package.

GEO did not announce new staffing or a transfer of detainees. The recorded change is ownership. The operating contract still runs to 2034 if the option is taken. California officials had not, as of Tuesday, said whether they will test the new tax or the oversight rules against a site the federal government now owns.