GEO Group, the Florida-based company that runs a number of prisons for the Federal Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement has decided to pull the plug on its 2,664-bed illegal immigrant processing center in Adelanto in the face of intensive adverse publicity about inhumane conditions and abuse of prisoners there, the Sentinel has learned.
Within a fortnight the prison’s ownership is to be transferred to the federal government and the guards and personnel there replaced with federal employees. GEO will sell the facility, the Sentinel is reliably informed, directly to the federal government for $950 million, realizing a profit of $875 million on the deal.
Abandoning ownership of the facility, the basic footprint for which GEO first acquired in 2010 from the City of Adelanto for roughly $28 million when it was a 650-bed correctional facility and before it was converted to house prisoners of foreign origin for the federal government, is taking place at a propitious time for the corporation, which specializes in operating private incarceration facilities for governments and governmental agencies. The facility in Adelanto, where operations had dwindled to a marginal level toward the end of the Joseph Bident Administration to the point that the federal government was on the brink of ending its contractual arrangement with GEO for its use, saw a resurgence within four months after Donald Trump’s second inaugural. With that upsurge in usage, however, came a plethora of problems, including at least four inmate deaths.
The circumstances of those deaths and accompanying difficulties experienced by other inmates housed there have raised questions about GEO’s compliance with a host of regulations aimed at ensuring the health and safety of those in custody, including noncitizens. The negative publicity that ensued, while initially of seemingly little consequence to the Trump Administration in terms of domestic politics, had an impact at the international level, which the administrative deemed to be less than concerning. For GEO, however, which last year had 2.631 billion in revenue from operating prisons in the United States, Great Britain, Australia and South Africa, revelations about the abuse of inmates at any of its facilities carries with it a potentially dire implication. That the corporation could divest itself of its single asset most responsible for the damage to its reputation and do so not at a loss but rather at a considerable profit is considered a coup by its corporate officers.
Within months of the Trump Administration significantly increasing the flow of those arrested for being in the country illegally into the Adelanto facility in late Spring 2025, in July 2025, Disability Rights California (DRC), the State of California’s federally mandated nonprofit agency dedicated to protecting and advocating for the rights of people with disabilities, published “They Treat Us Like Dogs in Cages,” a report alleging abuse and neglect of people with disabilities at the Adelanto ICE facility. According to Disability Rights California, the number of inmates, with the advent of the second Trump Administration, jumped from 300 to 1,000 in a single week, prompting a shortage of food, safe water, clean clothing and bedding. Simultaneously, according to Disability Rights California, there was insufficient medical and mental health care staffing to handle the influx of prisoners and no equipment or devices to deal with those with disability-related needs.
On September 23, 2025 39-year-old
Ismael Ayala-Uribe, an illegal alien from Mexico who had been in custody in Adelanto for nearly five weeks, during which his health had steadily declined, died at the Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville.
On October 23, 2025, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, a Mexican national who was in the United States illegally, had arrived at the Adelanto facility on October 15, 2025 and was given a medical examination on October 17 for being in a state of medical confusion with high levels of ammonia in his his blood, died at the Global Medical Center in Victorville.
Alberto Gutierrez-Reyes, a 48-year-old citizen of Mexico incarcerated in Adelanto for being in the country illegally died on February 27, 2026, at Victor Valley Global Medical Center.
On March 25, 2026, Jose Guadalupe Ramos-Solano, a 52-year-old citizen of Mexico in ICE custody at Adelanto for being in the United States illegally died on March 25, 2026 at the Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville.
In January 2026, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Public Counsel and the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of former detainees at the Adelanto facility, alleging denial of essential medical and mental health care, unsanitary living conditions, inadequate food and water, prolonged solitary confinement, life-threatening neglect, including a case where a detainee with a pituitary tumor was denied treatment. Ayala-Uribe’s death was cited in the lawsuit.
In considering the suit, U.S. District Judge Sunshine Sykes made a finding that the inmates at the Adelanto facility, despite their lack of citizenship, had constitutional rights and those rights were being violated. GEO was party to the federal government’s illegal action, Judge Sykes ruled. The government and GEO were engaging in a detention regime that was cruel, inhumane and degrading, according to Judge Sykes.
Early this summer in a set of articles completed with the assistance of the USC Center for Health published in the Los Angeles Daily News, addressed the poor water quality inside the facility. According to that article, drain fly-larvae, i.e., maggots that proliferate in the drains of the showers at the detentions center, were present in the drinking water provided to the inmates at the Adelanto facility. Not only were they present in the tap water, they proliferated in the showers and toilets of the facility. One inmate said he had used his underwear as a filter to remove the larvae and third-of-an-inch-long brown insects from the water he would drink. When samples of the insects were smuggled out of the facility by those who visited inmates there, workers with the Los Angeles County Vector Control District identified them as drain fly larvae.
According to one report, bottled water purchased from the detention facility commissary did not have the larvae.
In recent months, the Sentinel and at least three other publications have been provided with information indicating that drugs are available to inmates in the prison who have the means to purchase them.
After purchasing the prison for $28 million from the City of Adelanto in 2010, GEO carried out extensive renovations to the facility to be able to enter into a contractual relationship with the federal government to house prisoners there in 2011. GEO invested about $70 million to complete a 650‑bed expansion by the end of 2012. The company sunk another $39.33 million into the facility to complete a 640‑bed expansion in 2015. In 2020, a further expansion, entailing enlarging the capacity by another 704 beds, was finished at a cost of $72,600,000.
All told, there are 2,644 beds at the prison, with 660 of those in the Adelanto East portion of the grounds, 1,280 beds in the Adelanto West side and 704 beds in the Desert View Annex.
GEO put up $28 million to acquire the existing prison and its grounds, spent $70 million, $39.33 million and $72.6 million on expansions and $22 million on renovations over the years, representing an investment of $231,930,000.