The Brief

Even with all the industries where Californians went on strike during last year’s “hot labor summer,” some of the most active sites of organizing in the state may well be a pair of private immigration detention centers in the Central Valley.

The Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex facilities, operated by The GEO Group, a Florida-based federal detention contractor, have been a hotbed of activism since the pandemic. But it’s not The GEO Group’s staff agitating for better pay and working conditions.

It’s their detainees — immigrants awaiting the outcomes of deportation cases or asylum claims, many of whom also work where they’re jailed, scrubbing bathrooms and cutting hair for $1 a day.

Detainees in the two Kern County facilities said this month they started the second labor and hunger strike in two years to protest poor working and living conditions. Two years ago, they sued over the program’s wages.

And during the 2022 strike, they prompted California workplace safety regulators to inspect the Golden State Annex facility and issue a citation to The GEO Group — showing how far the state is pushing the traditional boundaries of labor rights.

The case, alleging a “willful and serious” violation of state labor laws meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19, has turned heads. Labor and immigration policy experts believe it is the first time the state has treated detained immigrants as employees who benefit from workplace safety protections. The case is before a three-member appeals board of Cal/OSHA — the state’s occupational safety and health agency — as California grapples with whether to expand labor rights to state prisoners, including a proposition on the November ballot.

Even more novel: The state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health in May sent the U.S. Department of Homeland Security a request not to deport seven complainants for at least two years, under a Biden administration program to temporarily protect immigrant workers who are assisting with labor investigations.

“Cal/OSHA cannot properly pursue enforcement action without the cooperation of worker detainees in these situations,” agency chief Debra Lee wrote.

It’s “highly unusual, if not unique” for the state to ask federal immigration authorities to temporarily waive deportation for state witnesses against the immigration authorities’ contractor, said Anastasia Christman, senior policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project.

Cal/OSHA spokesperson Erika Monterroza declined to comment on the case as it is being appealed by the company. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson also declined to comment.

The GEO Group’s corporate counsel Spencer Winepol did not respond to multiple requests for comment about detainees’ complaints, the Cal/OSHA citation or the current labor and hunger strikes.

The company, in its appeal of the citation and in prior public statements, has denied that detainees should be considered employees who were exposed to workplace hazards. It also argues the alleged violation was only technical, and has been corrected.

In the complaint, detainees said they weren’t informed of close contacts with others who had COVID-19; the state’s citation alleges the company did not maintain a required written plan for preventing the spread of the virus.

The company “vehemently disputes the notion that any of these individuals are employees,” attorneys for The GEO Group wrote to a Cal/OSHA appeals board administrative law judge in April 2023. “Rather, the named detainees were voluntary participants in a federally established Voluntary Work Program, designed to offer rehabilitation and job skill training.”

If the citation is upheld, it would be a victory for immigrants’ advocates who have pushed unsuccessfully for years to curb private detention facilities in California.

“It is uncharted territory both in terms of worker issues but also uncharted territory overall about what California can and can’t do versus these private entities,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, advocacy director of Immigrant Defense Advocates, which has backed a ban on private detention in California. “We’ve continuously pushed the envelope on that.”

California fights private detention centers

In one of many moves against the Trump administration, state lawmakers in 2019 tried to ban private immigration detention centers from operating in California.

The for-profit facilities “contribute to over-incarceration” and “do not reflect our values,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement when signing the bill.

Instead, the Trump administration expanded immigration detention beds in California, including with The GEO Group, a global private prison giant that reported $2.4 billion in revenues last year. Under its new contract, the company opened the Golden State Annex facility in McFarland and immigration authorities began sending detainees there in 2020.

ICE pays the company to hold as many as 880 immigrants in its Golden State Annex and Mesa Verde facilities, though the numbers have been far lower, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a regularly updated database of immigration records at Syracuse University.

The company and federal government sued over California’s ban. It was ultimately overturned last year by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled the state was unconstitutionally overstepping on federal immigration enforcement.

But during the COVID pandemic, as outbreaks hit Mesa Verde and other ICE detention centers in California, there appeared to be confusion over whether local health departments had jurisdiction. Advocates called for stricter regulations.

In 2021, Newsom signed a law clarifying the facilities had to abide by local and state health orders. Another provision made them subject to state workplace safety rules.

The Golden State Annex, a U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement detention facility, in McFarland on July 8, 2024.

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One of the complainants in the Cal/OSHA case said he was sent to Golden State in late 2021, after being released from a state prison. But the living conditions, such as the food, were worse in the detention centers, he said.

The man, who was released last year after nearly two years in detention, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of jeopardizing ongoing legal cases. He said that he contracted COVID-19 in a dorm room with dozens of other detainees — allegations echoed in the Cal/OSHA complaint.

“I’m not going to say prison is a good thing, but a state prison is far more well-conditioned to be housed in,” he said.

Detainee jobs worse than prisoners?

The jobs were worse, too, the former detainee said, even as most California prison jobs pay less than 74 cents an hour.

ICE requires its detention contractors to provide voluntary work programs that improve “essential operations and services” and reduce the “negative impact of confinement” through “decreased idleness, improved morale and fewer disciplinary incidents.” While the work can take as many as eight hours a day, ICE requires the jobs to pay “at least” $1 a day; its contracts with The GEO Group show that’s how much the company budgets for the program.

Many participants take the jobs to afford food and hygiene products from the commissary, or phone calls to family. (A limited number of calls were free during the pandemic, but that’s recently been revoked, advocates said.) Common assignments include cleaning the dorms and bathrooms, and cutting fellow detainees’ hair.

Some even help care for other detainees. Ever Oropeza-Paz, who has been detained at the Golden State Annex for nearly two years, said he spent several months working as an aide for a dormmate who had a mental health condition. Oropeza-Paz said he was paid $1 a day to assist with basic tasks such as buying items in the commissary, using a tablet to communicate and teaching him how to shower.

“People are forced to work,” said Oropeza-Paz, who does not currently have a job in the facility. “They do it just to have the funds to make a quick call to their relatives.”

Critics of immigration detention have challenged the work program’s legality around the country.

Washington state’s attorney general and a group of detainees sued The GEO Group in 2017, arguing participants should have been paid the state minimum wage, which was $11 an hour at the time. A federal jury decided in 2021 the company owed $17 million in back wages to hundreds of immigrants who had cooked and cleaned.

In a lawsuit challenging the program at The GEO Group’s detention center in Adelanto, California, a federal judge decided in 2022 the detainees should be considered employees because the contractor paid them and dictated their hours and working conditions. The case is on hold as the Washington case is appealed.

And in July 2022, nine detainees at Mesa Verde and Golden State, represented by attorneys at the the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, sued The GEO Group over the work program’s wages.

At Golden State, the advocacy organization also helped file a workplace safety complaint. Detainees there complained of cleaning black mold without protective equipment, black dust in the heating and air conditioning system, and a lack of COVID-19 notification and testing protocols.

“There’s fungus on the bathroom floor, on the shower walls,” said the former detainee who made the comparison to state prisons and who echoed allegations in the Cal/OSHA complaint. “We weren’t given the proper equipment, we weren’t given the proper chemicals … We didn’t even get a small talk of what everything’s for.”

The detainees staged a work stoppage that summer. It ended up lasting nearly a year, into 2023, and escalated into a hunger strike. In a civil rights complaint to the Department of Homeland Security and a 2023 lawsuit, detainees claimed they experienced retaliation, including having family visits suspended and being placed in solitary confinement. They withdrew the suit when they ended the strikes.

The company told KQED in 2022 it didn’t consider detainees “choosing not to participate in a voluntary work program” to be on strike, and told other local media outlets last year that allegations of abuse were “baseless.”

A recent inspection of Golden State by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog office found GEO Group staff were slow to respond to some medical complaints from detainees, and hadn’t fixed leaks that regularly caused pools of water on the floor, “forcing detainees to live in a potentially dangerous setting.”

But the department’s inspector general said the work program didn’t violate any ICE policies.

Detention company resists

Cal/OSHA accuses The GEO Group of resisting state inspections, according to case records obtained by CalMatters through a public records request.

After the agency opened an investigation in June 2022, The GEO Group “refused to produce any documents pertaining to worker detainees, taking the position that worker detainees are not employees” and told inspectors to request documents from ICE, Cal/OSHA senior safety engineer Greg Clark later declared in a court filing. But an August 2022 memo shows GEO employee and facility administrator Minga Wofford told Clark’s colleague that ICE wanted requests routed “through the facility.”

Wofford declined to comment.

When Clark and a colleague visited in August 2022 for a second inspection, Clark said the company “denied us access to worker detainees to conduct interviews with them.”

Cal/OSHA eventually got a warrant from a Kern County judge for the company to turn over documents about the work program and allow inspectors to speak with detainees. An inspector returned to the facility three times in December 2022, and issued citations that month, barely missing the six-month cutoff after which an investigation must be closed.

Among the citations are that the company blocked access to a chemical eyewash station, didn’t properly label chemicals in the barbershop and train workers on their uses, and failed to have a written plan to prevent the spread of airborne diseases such as COVID-19. Because there had been COVID cases, the agency issued that citation as a “serious” violation, bumping the total fines up to over $100,000.

Over the past year and a half, the appeals have centered on whether the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and other advocacy groups, representing the detainees, can also participate in the legal case.

The GEO Group has pushed back, arguing that several of the detainees involved no longer are housed in the facility and that none were exposed to actual hazards in the work program.

“The citation in question is for a written policy deficiency,” company attorneys wrote to the Cal/OSHA appeals board last October. The detainees’ attorneys and Cal/OSHA disagreed; agency attorney Lidia Marquez wrote that “worker-detainees tasked with cleaning and maintenance assignments found themselves directly exposed to the hazard” of being at a higher risk of contracting the virus.

As those proceedings dragged out, Cal/OSHA asked the federal government to help keep the complainants in the country.

Cal/OSHA first tried in April 2023, and then again in May, this time writing to the Department of Homeland Security that the case will fall apart without witnesses and naming specific immigrants the state hopes can testify. One of the witnesses Cal/OSHA had interviewed, agency director Lee wrote, had already been deported.

“There have already been an alarming number of reports by worker detainees stating they are facing retaliation for cooperating with Cal/OSHA’s investigation,” she wrote. “The loss of one witness is a setback to Cal/OSHA’s enforcement action, which is why immediate protection for the remaining witnesses is critical.”

Homeland Security declined to comment on Cal/OSHA’s request in The GEO Group case, and a spokesperson did not answer questions about the deportation protection program, known as deferred action. Earlier this year, the department said it’s granted more than 1,000 workers involved in labor investigations nationwide such protections.

It’s not clear how the department will handle California’s request. Lisa Knox, co-director of the collaborative representing detainees, said the workers are still in the process of using Cal/OSHA’s letter to apply for deportation protections individually.

Meanwhile, ICE has steadily sent more immigrants to the Golden State center. Records show the detainee population in June was more than 300 people — double the number a year ago.

As the federal investigation related to Los Angeles Unified’s superintendent continues, the district’s acting leader and the elected board face key decisions about the district’s finances and negotiations with unions poised to strike.

This on top of the day-to-day tasks of running a school district that employs 83,000 people and enrolls more than 400,000 students across more than 1,000 schools.

“This removal of [Superintendent Alberto] Carvalho, which is understandable under the circumstances, comes at the very worst time for the system,” said Pedro Noguera, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education.

LAUSD’s board voted unanimously to place Carvalho on paid administrative leave two days after FBI agents searched his home and office in late February. The reason for the searches is unknown. A DOJ spokesperson said the agency has a court-authorized warrant but declined to provide additional details.

While Carvalho has declared his innocence and expressed a desire to return to his job, the district says an investigation is ongoing.

Which means, for now, longtime administrator Andres Chait will continue leading the country’s second largest school district through a series of pressing challenges.

What does an acting superintendent do?

This is not the first time in recent history an acting superintendent has led LAUSD.

Vivian Ekchian stepped in to lead the district in 2017 when then-Superintendent Michelle King was out on medical leave; King stepped down altogether the following year. Ekchian previously served as associate superintendent and, before that, an elementary school teacher, principal, administrator and chief labor negotiator.

“The role of the acting superintendent, from my perspective, is not different from the actual superintendency,” Ekchian said. “The work needs to get done, and it doesn't stop.”

When asked about the acting superintendent’s decision-making power compared to the permanent position, a district spokesperson wrote in a statement that “acting superintendent is a board-appointed position and carries all responsibilities and authority afforded the position of district superintendent.”

Ekchian said the superintendent’s decisions are guided by the district’s existing strategic plan, consultation with other senior leaders and community partners.

“If there's an urgent matter, like a fire or something that requires immediate decision-making, systems and structures are in place for organizations and departments to know what to do next with immediate guidance from the superintendent,” Ekchian said.  ”All decisions aren't the same, and the urgency is dictated by the matter at hand.”

Like Ekchian, Chait rose through the ranks from teacher to administrator at LAUSD over nearly three decades.

The responsibilities of his most recent role, chief of school operations, included overseeing school safety, athletics and the district’s office of emergency management. The salary for the chief of school operations position is $278,205 annually (the district did not indicate whether his salary has changed).

Since being named acting superintendent, Chait has appeared on the district’s social media, but the district has declined to make him available to LAist or other media outlets for interviews.

In his first verbal statement to the public on Monday, March 2 before a closed board meeting, Chait said his priority as acting superintendent is to keep the district focused.

“We remain committed to academic excellence and student wellbeing,” he said. “Our core values remain unchanged. I know transitions can create uncertainty, but our district is strong.”

Mounting pressure from labor

On Tuesday, the board approved labor agreements with the unions representing school police, support staff supervisors, office personnel and other classified staff.

But contract negotiations with the district's largest unions, those that represent teachers and school support staff, have stalled. Members of both United Teachers Los Angeles and SEIU Local 99 voted overwhelmingly in January to give their leaders the power to call a strike.

An IT worker and a gardener, both in positions targeted for reductions, were among the union members that addressed the LAUSD board.

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“ A strike is always the last resort,” said Maria Nichols, president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, the union representing principals, on Tuesday. “None of us — AALA/Teamsters, UTLA, SEIU — want to go on a strike and be disruptive for our students, our families, our school communities, especially at a time when LAUSD is already navigating uncertainty.”

More than a hundred school support staff and other union members filled the chambers Tuesday as Nichols and other representatives addressed the board.

Alex Orozco, UTLA’s secondary vice president, told the board that negotiations were “not anywhere close” to being settled. (The following day, the union announced the most recent step of negotiations, “fact-finding,” ended without an agreement.)

In past negotiations, the district’s superintendent has been a lightning rod for the union’s criticisms. In 2018, for example, UTLA weaponized then-Superintendent Austin Beutner’s calendar ahead of a strike.

The unions’ approach to Chait has been restrained so far.

“ The problem our members are facing, and students, is a systemic issue. It's not an individual,” said Max Arias, executive director of SEIU Local 99, in an interview with LAist. “We have to continue to attack the system, but I'm trying to hold out some hope that [the acting] superintendent will, you know, understand what we need to get done.”

The unions plan to hold a rally in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday.

At Tuesday’s board meeting, Chait described a first week on the job spent visiting with teachers, principals, students, support staff and labor partners.

“As someone who's been a teacher, principal, held a number of roles in the district, I understand that you are indeed the backbone of this district,” Chait said. “The work simply just does not happen at schools or at offices without you. My commitment to you is to always come from a place of transparency, honesty and dialogue.”

Cutting back on spending

Part of the labor negotiation challenges are related to the district’s financial constraints. In February, a divided board voted to send layoff notices to more than 650 employees as part of a plan to cut spending.

Even as California is poised to fund schools at record high levels, Los Angeles Unified and other districts have grappled with increased costs.

For example, LAUSD hired more staff to support students during the pandemic, and now the federal relief dollars that initially funded those positions are gone. For the last two years, the district has relied on reserves to backfill a multi-billion-dollar deficit.

Noguera, with USC, said the budget is the district’s most immediate priority.

“There's no easy solutions,” he said, “and I think that's part of the reason why they've held off for a while on making tough decisions.”

The financial report presented Tuesday indicates that the district will continue to spend more money than it brings in over the next three years. Still to be determined are how the outstanding labor negotiations and the state budget will affect LAUSD’s spending plan for next year.

Defending immigrant families

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Los Angeles educators — and those around the country— have said the increase in immigration enforcement actions contributed to lower attendance and fewer students enrolled in school this year.

Thousands of Los Angeles Unified students have walked out in recent months to protest the Trump administration’s militarized crackdown on immigrants, detainment of children and violence against U.S. citizens protesting the raids.

Thousands of students from schools across Los Angeles walked out Wednesday, Feb 4, 2026 in peaceful protest of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies.

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In response, the district has expanded summer school and transportation options, distributed “know your rights” information and asked the federal government not to conduct immigration enforcement actions near schools. Teachers and community organizations have also volunteered to patrol schools before and after school.

On Tuesday, the board instructed staff to review contracts with outside vendors and evaluate whether they support or enable immigration enforcement and detention.

Chait, whose own family immigrated from Chile in 1983, said the district’s work to support immigrant families will not change during his tenure.

“Please know we stand with you,” Chait said Tuesday. “We will support you. We will ensure that our campuses are safe, secure and welcoming environments for our students and staff.”

A theater project bringing the world of William Shakespeare to local veterans is gearing up for its first public performance on Sunday.

For the past year, a group of about a dozen veterans have met at the West Los Angeles VA campus to study the work of the Bard of Avon.

The project is a partnership between the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles and The Veterans Collective. The group is led by trained theater artist — and fellow veteran — Aaron Lyons.

Lyons is a longtime staple of L.A.’s theater community and is a member of the Antaeus Theatre Company. He said seeing this group express themselves through these timeless works has been inspiring.

“Helping them grasp Shakespeare, not only intellectually but emotionally, has been one of the most uplifting experiences of my life,” Lyons said.

Ranging in age from their 30s to their 70s, the group includes veterans of the Vietnam War and most of its members live at the West LA VA Campus, Lyons said.

The actor, who’s performed in more than half of Shakespeare’s plays, said part of his goal with the project was to demystify Shakespeare’s canon for veterans who might not have studied it since grade school.

“Watching this group of men and women understand it and be able to connect with it in ways that they didn’t think possible was really, really inspiring,” Lyons said.

The group will perform an original work called “Shakespeare Night Live” at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 15, at McCadden Place Theatre. The performance weaves through several Shakespearian monologues and scenes.

Tickets are $10 and available at the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles website.

The war in Iran is rattling the aviation industry, from flight cancellations to rising costs for jet fuel. So if you're planning to travel this spring or summer, should you grab a ticket now, or wait?

"You should go ahead and book," says Sean Cudahy, an aviation reporter at The Points Guy travel and personal finance website.

It's generally recommended to buy international flights further in advance than domestic trips. But in the current circumstances, Cudahy says he would go ahead and book even domestic flights.

His advice is a sign of how the Middle East conflict is rippling outward, affecting prices and itineraries around the world, beyond the thousands of travelers who were stuck after the war forced a barrage of flight cancellations.

Airlines warn that ticket prices will rise with fuel costs

The war's effect on travel was sudden and striking, resulting in the cancellation of more than 46,000 flights in and out of the Middle East from Feb. 28 — when the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran — to March 11, according to Cirium, the aviation analytics company.

That includes Dubai International, the busiest airport in the world for international travel, according to Airports Council International, along with popular hubs in Doha and Abu Dhabi.

But even airlines far from the Mideast are facing a sudden surge in a core expense: jet fuel. At the beginning of the year, a gallon of jet fuel cost $2.11; by March 10, the price rose to $3.40, according to the Argus U.S. Jet Fuel Index, a gain of more than 60%.

The spike came after tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz came to a virtual halt, as Iran announced it would close the waterway that normally handles about 20% of the world's oil and liquified natural gas.

Mideast refineries had been sending some 470,000 barrels of jet fuel each day through the strait to airports in Europe and elsewhere, says Rick Joswick, who heads the near-term oil analytics team at S&P Global.

The price for a gallon of jet fuel soared close to $4 in the first week of the war, prompting United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby to say on Friday that airfare price hikes from higher fuel costs would "probably start quick."

As they absorb higher fuel costs, airlines could adjust prices higher across the board, or they might tuck an increase into premium fares, where they'll be less noticeable, Cudahy of The Points Guy says.

Several airlines have publicly confirmed that they'll be raising prices to compensate, as Reuters reports. Other carriers, such as Japan Airlines, publish a schedule of fuel surcharges triggered by cost increases.

"I do think that this is ultimately going to lead to higher fares for everyone," Cudahy says. "The only question now is how significant and how long does it last?"

Air travelers stranded by the Iran conflict are greeted in Athens, Greece, after arriving on a charter flight from Dubai on Saturday.

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Crisis parallels earlier global disruptions

The higher fuel prices reflect a genuine struggle to ensure the aviation industry has ample supplies, says Joswick.

"It's not irrational. It's not some trader bidding up prices," he says. Comparing the situation to the COVID-19 pandemic, he adds, "The consumption of toilet paper didn't change. But you notice that all of the supermarkets ran out of toilet paper, right? Everyone wants to be sure that they have coverage of a critical need."

Both Cudahy and Joswick compare the Iran conflict's ripple effects to Russia launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which set off flight disruptions and higher fuel prices. As long as the Strait of Hormuz is closed, Joswick says, prices will keep rising.

"If that were to persist, this would be like a 1979 kind of [oil] crisis," he says. "Anything over a month, and you're seeing a substantial long-term price increase until the flows are restored."

The U.S. and other large economies can mitigate those effects by tapping strategic oil reserves — which they opted to do on Wednesday. But Joswick predicts that while such a move can help ensure adequate oil supplies, it might not bring a sharp drop in jet fuel prices. For one thing, he says, the U.S. reserve focuses on holding crude oil, not jet fuel. And he cites logistical challenges, such as California's reliance on jet fuel that it either produces or imports.

Tips for buying a plane ticket right now

If you're ready to take your chances and book a flight, Cudahy has some guidance.

First, don't buy a restricted, basic economy ticket that you can't change later, he says.

Instead, he recommends buying a regular, full-fare economy ticket: "If the price does eventually drop, you can then go back and change it and capture the lower price."

Another tactic, Cudahy says, is to use airline miles.

"You can generally cancel it and get all your miles back later, if the price goes down," he says.

Use services such as Google Flights to comparison shop and set up alerts for price changes. And if you book flights through a third-party site such as Expedia, be sure you understand its cancellation and change policies, in case they differ from the airlines.

Because of the chance for renewed hostilities in and around Iran, Cudahy says he would try to avoid nearby airline hubs for the next couple of months.

But he wouldn't wait to book a ticket.

"In the same way that we're seeing relatively long lines at gas stations with folks trying to get their tanks filled up before the price goes up even more than it already has, I would be thinking the same way when it comes to airfare right now," he says.

While you might drive an extra mile or two to find cheaper gas, airlines and airports don't have that luxury when they buy jet fuel.

"Prices are always set on the margin," Joswick says. "That last airport that needs to buy jet fuel, they will pay whatever it takes to get that. And that price then becomes the standard for the whole industry."
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