The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Chad Merrill said he wasn’t a soccer fan before the FIFA World Cup, but he enjoyed learning about the game from the local and international fans who came to the city for the tournament.

“To host it here was actually awesome and it was great,” said Merrill, manager at Inglewood’s 3rd and Out Sports Bar on Market Street. “We had people from everywhere, and the vibe was outstanding!”  

On top of that, Merrill estimated the bar made 25-30% more than what they’d normally make on game days. 

“We understood that we’re blocks away from SoFi Stadium, and there was nothing but positivity from the World Cup,” Merrill said.  

The sports bar’s boost in business wasn’t a one-off, either. With so much hype around the World Cup, local businesses across L.A. expected to get an economic boost from fans coming out to watch matches. The tournament was projected to generate nearly $892 million in economic impact across L.A. County, with more than $515 million in direct visitor spending on hotels, restaurants, transportation and entertainment, according to L.A.’s World Cup website.

So now that the tournament is over, how well did the businesses do?   

Restaurants and bars near SoFi Stadium said they saw packed houses during the World Cup. 

Bars and restaurants in other parts of L.A. also saw some of their busiest days of the year during key games. For a Koreatown hotel operator, though, business was actually slower than normal. Taken together, businesses said the World Cup offered a valuable preview of the opportunities — and the problems the city still must solve — as the 2028 Olympics approach.

Foot traffic from SoFi helped Inglewood businesses

The Nile Restaurant and Bar in Inglewood on July 7, 2026.

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Bella Buccino

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The LA Local

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The influx of soccer fans transformed portions of downtown Inglewood into lively gathering spots, like the Wood Cup events held on Market Street.  

Businesses along Market Street, like Merrill’s sports bar, benefited from visitors looking for food, drinks and entertainment before and after matches at nearby SoFi Stadium.

Every World Cup match felt like a cultural celebration for Saizana Evans, manager at The Nile Restaurant and Bar on Market Street.

“We tried to play music that catered to certain countries,” Evans said. “If we had Spain’s fans in here, we would play some Spanish music.” 

Evans said they partnered with sponsors like Casamigos, Don Julio and Bud Light, and estimated that sales were up 30-35% during the international soccer tournament.

“It was great. It did bring in a lot of foot traffic,” said Evans. “The World Cup was just another example of how big it can get with different countries coming over to support their team.”

Restaurants did well in Koreatown and Pico Union; hotels not so much

H Hotel manager Nojan Haddadi stands inside the Koreatown hotel on June 16, 2026.

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Hanna Kang

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The LA Local

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For restaurants in Koreatown and Pico Union, the World Cup brought a much-needed economic boost to their businesses. 

Local pupuseria Pulgarcito Family Restaurant in Pico Union saw an increase in customers and hours for workers. 

“They were waiting for this for a long time; it was a big help for us,” employee Elizabeth Aguirre said. 

Erik Avila, owner of Baja Cantina Sports Grill in Koreatown, said the World Cup helped many customers discover his business as a sports restaurant, and it was the busiest they’ve been since starting seven years ago.

“It’s the most attention we’ve ever gotten; people kept calling,” said Avila.

While soccer fans may have visited restaurants in the area, Nojan Haddadi, operations manager of the H Hotel, said he thought the World Cup would bring in more visitors. But business was slower than he expected.

“We were definitely expecting a lot more of an outcome for the World Cup being here,” Haddadi said. “But we’ve been super slow through the World Cup, and it’s been unfortunate.”

Haddadi told The LA Local he thinks the issues at MacArthur Park, which is a little over a mile away, may have deterred people from booking rooms at the H Hotel. 

“It affiliates us to that area,” said Haddadi, who also serves on the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council. “If you just take a walk around the area, you can see there’s trash everywhere. The unhoused problems are tough here. It’s like a ripple effect.” 

To keep rooms filled, the 49-room boutique hotel lowered its nightly rates, which Haddadi said has significantly reduced monthly revenue.

“That could be a $30,000 to $40,000 difference at the end of the month, which is huge,” Haddadi said.

Businesses in Boyle Heights thrived during the games

Guillermo Piñon, co-owner of Distrito Catorce in Boyle Heights, said the World Cup saved his business and brought in a 200% increase in sales.

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Laura Anaya-Morga

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Guillermo Piñon, co-owner of Distrito Catorce on East 1st Street, told The LA Local the World Cup saved his business and brought in a 200% increase in sales. 

It was the best month of business the restaurant has seen since Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids picked up last June, which decreased foot traffic exponentially, Piñon said. 

The raids caused him to close the business during lunch service. But throughout the World Cup, doors were open one hour before the starting game of the day and didn’t close until the last game was over. 

“That’s more important than the financial stuff,” Piñon said. “We need the money to keep surviving, but we need each other more to grow and to just, you know, be better for each other.”

Thousands of people showed up on June 18 for the Mexico-Korea game on 1st Street, and dozens of people watched the games in their soccer jerseys, cheering loudly every time the national team scored a spectacular goal, or a “golazo.” 

Now, the smells of rotting food that sometimes waft over from the Lineage warehouse have at times deterred business. 

Still, Piñon is hopeful that the hype around soccer events and Distrito’s hospitality will keep customers coming back, especially for upcoming LAFC games.

“We really focused on giving people the best experience that we possibly could because we knew that if we did that as best as we could, we were going to have those people come back,” Piñon said.

Looking forward to 2028

With L.A. preparing to host the 2027 Super Bowl and the 2028 Olympic Games — both of which will be in or have a presence around Inglewood —  some businesses believe the World Cup served as a rehearsal for the upcoming global events. 

Business owners along Inglewood’s Market Street say they are already making plans to expand operations, improve customer service and capitalize on what they expect will be another influx of international visitors when the Olympics arrive.

“I’d like to see a lot more businesses here on Market Street,” said Evans, who said The Nile Bar is a member of the Downtown Inglewood Association and the Inglewood Chamber of Commerce. 

“We need to see things happening, businesses improving before 2028.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

What do Ukrainian food, soft serve and Thai fusion tacos have in common? They’re all served out of trucks built from scratch in an industrial building on Anaheim Street next to the Los Angeles River.

“This is where food trucks are born,” said Martin Ramirez, owner of California Food Trucks.

Over the past 15 years, he’s quietly had a hand in the success of some beloved local businesses and major corporations. He’s built custom projects for the Long Beach dessert shop SnoCorner and Peruvian food truck Mikhuna, along with major 30- and 40-foot catering trucks for high-profile clients like Google and Monster Energy.

Ramirez, his shop manager Cody Madole, and four other employees are a one-stop shop for everything a food truck needs, including plumbing, welding and electrical work to transform vans and commercial trucks into functioning mobile kitchens.

It’s a niche manufacturing business that caters to enterprising chefs and restaurateurs who are testing a concept or hitting the road for music festivals, farmers markets or a meal break at offices.

The food truck industry has grown as the costs to start a brick-and-mortar restaurant have steadily increased. In a business that’s notorious for having razor-thin profit margins, a truck is a safer bet — and one you can also resell if things don’t work out, Ramirez said.

Martin Ramirez, who owns California Food Trucks, at his workspace in Long Beach, where he builds food trucks in Long Beach on July 14, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Ramirez, who grew up in Bellflower, found his way to food truck manufacturing through his stepmother. In the late 2000s, she discovered how lucrative the business could be when she bought a truck to start selling tacos in Miami. Before she sold her first taco, she decided to list the truck on Craigslist to test the resale market. Within a few days, a buyer offered her double what she had paid for it, Ramirez said.

After some coaxing from family, Ramirez realized he was perfectly equipped to create mobile kitchens from scratch.

He had spent more than a decade remodeling homes as a general contractor and also had experience in metal fabrication from a job building race cars. Food truck manufacturing was like a blend of the two, Ramirez said. 

For years after he started building trucks, Ramirez and his cousin also ran a taco truck called LA Tacos and Co. 

He’s no longer involved in that business but runs a pizza truck with Avalou’s Italian Pizza founder and Long Beach resident Louis Lombardi. 

The two met through a mutual friend, Lombardi said. Ramirez loved the pizza and offered to build a truck to make the pop-up concept mobile.

“We hit it off, and we’ve been great buddies since,” Lombardi said.

Starting next week, the pair plan to sell pizzas for delivery through UberEats from the truck parked outside Ramirez’s California Food Trucks business.

Working in food truck businesses has given Ramirez first-hand knowledge of how to efficiently lay out a mobile kitchen and set up new food vendors for success before they even pick up a knife.

Ashley Monconduit, owner of SnoCorner near Long Beach Poly High School, ordered a custom food cart from Ramirez in 2024. Her brick-and-mortar business specializes in New Orleans-style shaved ice, called Snoballs, but Monconduit was looking for a cart to serve beignets and soft serve at corporate events and birthday parties.

Ramirez made the cart “based entirely on what was in my head” and even made the soft serve machine removable, Monconduit said. That’s been a big help for events where she only serves beignets because the soft serve machine accounts for a significant portion of the cart’s weight.

Martin Ramirez, owner of California Food Trucks, shows the solar power and battery technology on his latest food truck, which he built in Long Beach on July 14, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Ramirez also tries to stay ahead of the curve on innovations in the food truck industry. He now steers clients away from using generators in favor of solar-powered batteries. Ramirez knows from experience that if you use a generator, “it will break down at the worst time.”

With most of the batteries he installs, he can troubleshoot problems from his desk no matter where a truck is.

But he still makes his fair share of on-site repairs for drivers who accidentally sheared off a side mirror or rooftop exhaust fan in their scramble to make it to an event.

Not all the repairs are a drag: He’s built out several trucks for clients in Hawaii. Ramirez, an avid surfer, makes a point to visit those trucks whenever his schedule allows.

Gov. Gavin Newsom is in his populism era.

He started the year vowing to stop corporate investors from buying up large tracts of single-family homes, a desire shared by both socialists and President Donald Trump.

Last month, after he was unable to keep a proposal to tax California billionaires from appearing on voters’ ballots, he tried to get ahead of the debate by pitching nationwide higher taxes on the wealthy.

Last week, he spoke to a crowd of national Latino policymakers about the need to “democratize our economy” in the face of artificial intelligence-driven job losses.

Newsom’s populist appeals come as he prepares to leave office and looks toward an expected 2028 presidential campaign in which widespread anxiety about wealth inequality and the effects of AI on the economy will feature prominently.

“The old bargain is dead, and AI is going to finish it off,” he said last week in Los Angeles, of the concept that Americans could support families with working-class jobs. “We need to wake up to that foundational reality.”

The posture is new territory for Newsom, who is not a natural populist and who maintains his longstanding relationships with wealthy tech donors who have railed against the proposed billionaire tax, Proposition 40.

As governor, he’s kept his image as a liberal who favors progressive income taxes and expanding the social safety net without teetering too far into the overtly redistributive politics of democratic socialists. He eschewed most new tax proposals and stood by several state corporate tax benefits that progressives have longed to scrap.

By focusing on AI-driven inequality now, Newsom is choosing a popular issue to define his expected 2028 run. But it’s not yet clear whether voters will buy his solution.

“Newsom is balancing two pressures,” said Kevin Liao, a Democratic strategist who worked on billionaire Tom Steyer’s “tax the rich” gubernatorial campaign this year. “There’s a desire to meet the demands of his constituents and the current appetite to be against billionaires, and to address the massive wealth inequality in the state and the country, with the cold political reality that much of his career and presumably his future ambitions have also been built on the financial support from a lot of wealthy folks in Silicon Valley.”

Four tax measures on the California ballot

Even as he adopts a more progressive posture while appearing in other states, Newsom is walking a fine line back home, where his vocal opposition to California’s billionaire tax proposal could confuse voters staring at multiple tax measures on the November ballot.

Proposition 3, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, is also a tax on the rich: It would make permanent the state’s higher income tax rates for the top 2% of earners. That money goes into the state general fund, 40% of which pays for schools.

Voters approved those rates temporarily in 2012 at the behest of then-Gov. Jerry Brown, and extended them again in 2016. If they expire as planned in 2030, the state stands to lose between $5 and $15 billion a year in revenue.

Early polling shows that measure is popular, but CTA President David Goldberg acknowledged it will be tricky to campaign in favor of it with another tax on the ballot. The union opposes the billionaire tax because it would not send the same proportion of its revenues to schools, instead prioritizing healthcare.

A large banner hangs at a campaign event for a proposed billionaire tax in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 2026.

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Jae C. Hong

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AP Photo

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Voters will also be asked to weigh in on three other tax-related ballot measures: two backed by tech billionaires designed to undercut the billionaire tax, and one by an anti-tax advocacy group that would make it harder for cities to raise local taxes.

“It’s always hard when you have a bunch of things” on the ballot, Goldberg said. “It is going to mean that we have to really go out there and make the case for this.”

Asked whether his opposition to Prop. 40 could hinder public support for Prop. 3, Newsom told reporters recently: “I hope that’s not the case. … It’s a legitimate question.”

How Newsom wants to be seen

For years, Newsom has defended California on Fox News and on social media against a national reputation that it is over taxed, often arguing that lower- and middle-income families pay more in taxes to live in states like Florida and Texas. The basis of his claim is a study from the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy that found Florida and Texas rely heavily on property and sales taxes, which effectively take a greater share of those households’ earnings than those of the wealthiest. The states do not tax personal income.

“He taxes low-income workers more than we tax millionaires and billionaires in the state of California,” Newsom said of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, during a 2023 debate hosted by Fox’s Sean Hannity.

Critics say those arguments don’t take into account the lower costs of goods and property in other states.

“California is a high-tax state,” said Jared Walczak, a senior fellow at the right-leaning Tax Foundation. “A state like California can get away with higher rates than some other states because the state has so much to offer. … It doesn’t mean there isn’t a tipping point.”

Now nearing the end of his term, Newsom is touting all the progressive programs California’s tax system has made possible, including universal school meals and subsidized child care.

At the same time, Newsom often chides more left-wing colleagues in the Legislature “not to be profligate” with public spending. He touts that he’s never raised taxes in his eight years as governor, though critics may quibble over limiting businesses’ tax deductions or a law he signed this month raising a tax on health insurance plans.

When Democratic lawmakers pushed to raise new revenue in the face of budget deficits the last three years, he quickly quashed the idea.

“We have among the highest tax rates in the United States of America for high-wage earners, we have among the highest tax rates … for corporate taxes,” he said in 2024. “I feel strongly that we have to live within our means.”

This year, some Democrats insisted on a proposal to tax corporations whose workers earn so little that they qualify for public healthcare; Newsom would agree only for the state to study the idea.

‘He’s never banged this drum’ 

He’s taken a similar stance with the state billionaire tax. Along with a cadre of Democratic allies like Planned Parenthood, he argues that billionaires could easily move their assets to another state — as some, like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, have done with their homes and businesses. Early polling shows a slim majority of Californians support the measure.

Newsom pressured SEIU United Healthcare Workers West to drop the measure in exchange for concessions, but when he didn’t succeed, he pivoted to proposing his own federal billionaire’s tax, taking a page from progressives like Elizabeth Warren.

He’s calling for a minimum tax rate on anyone making more than $100 million, undoing corporate tax cuts that President Trump and Congress approved in 2017, boosting inheritance taxes and closing loopholes used by the wealthy to borrow from unrealized capital gains without paying income taxes.

Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference in Hayward on March 2, 2026.

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Manuel Orbegozo

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CalMatters

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Without getting into details, he also said he supports the idea of a public fund using AI-derived wealth to support displaced workers.

Rob Stutzman, a Sacramento Republican strategist, said Newsom risks being seen as inauthentic in a primary campaign.

“He’s never banged this drum … he’s a big spender but not a big taxer,” Stutzman said. “This whole jiu-jitsu he has to do to oppose the (billionaire) tax in his state and then support it federally, it doesn’t sound as authentic as others might sound on the soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.”

Voters are anxious about AI

The call for sharing wealth also opens doors for anti-tax attacks from the right, which is eager to link a wide swath of Democratic policies to communism.

“Most Democrats have the foresight to tie their tax hikes to a far-left policy, but Newsom just wants to take your money because he wants to take your money,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Nicholas Poche said in an emailed statement, criticizing Newsom for trying to “have it both ways with progressives and establishment Democrats.”

But political strategists agree that framing tax proposals as a response to AI anxiety is appealing across the ideological spectrum.

“A wealth tax is more simplistic and falling along ideological lines,” Liao said. “If we’re talking about broad societal change, it is much more than wealth redistribution. It is something that’s going to touch every single person.”

More than half of Americans worry the technology will leave someone in their household jobless; a growing sense of precarity has seized workers from customer service representatives to Silicon Valley’s own elites. Meanwhile, the upcoming public offerings of AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to turbocharge the nation’s already unequal distribution of wealth. The top 10% of the country owns nearly 70% of its wealth, and the bottom half own just 2.5%.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, known as a moderate Democrat, is floating more aggressive regulations on the technology as he weighs a run for president and is open to basic income payments for displaced workers. Progressive standard-bearer U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is proposing a national sovereign wealth fund paid for with a 50% tax on AI companies that would directly pay Americans, making the nation essentially a part owner of AI.

Even Vice President J.D. Vance is considering the issue, telling a podcaster last month that his biggest concern about AI is not mass unemployment but the breakup of “social harmony” that comes with increasing inequality.

“If you make rich people way richer, you are going to have significant problems,” he said. “That is one of the consequences that I see from AI.”

He added that Trump is generally supportive of Sanders’ idea, though the president also has developed cozy ties with many tech leaders during his second term.

But many progressives are holding their applause for Newsom for now. Lorena Gonzalez, leader of the California Labor Federation, said she’s pleased he is taking on AI-driven inequality, but unions still want the state to curb AI in workplaces and stop mass displacement of workers. Newsom has been reluctant to back aggressive regulation or bans on the technology.

Flanked by labor leaders in important presidential primary states earlier this year, Gonzalez warned the governor that unions could withhold their political support if Newsom does not rein in use of the technology.

“It’s not enough to say, ‘I feel your pain,’” Gonzalez said. “We don’t think that catastrophic job loss is inevitable.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

As California officials try to block immigration facilities across the state, the Trump administration is deploying a new strategy to secure detention capacity on the West Coast. It’s buying up the real estate outright.

The Department of Homeland Security’s $1.5 billion purchase of the Otay Mesa Detention Center and the California City Detention Facility from the private prison company CoreCivic is a direct response to the state’s political resistance to new and existing ICE detention facilities, government officials said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Jason Sweeney said in a statement that California detention centers are “crucial to ICE’s detention network on the West Coast.”

“Unlike in states like Florida and Oklahoma, ICE can not rely on local state and county partners for detention space in California,” Sweeney said. “The state’s sanctuary politicians continue to push legislation to outlaw or make private prisons financially infeasible.”

The conflict dates to the last Trump administration, when California Democrats raced to adopt policies that would counter his first deportation push.

Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2019 signed a law aiming to phase out all private for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers by 2028. Private prison operator GEO Group and the federal government sued, arguing the law violated the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which bars states from interfering with federal authority. They won, with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 striking down the ban on privately run immigration detention facilities.

Since then, California lawmakers have pushed newer measures, such as imposing heavy taxes on private detention centers to make them financially unviable.

The federal government’s purchase of CoreCivic properties comes in the middle of a showdown between California Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Trump administration over the controversial construction of new ICE offices near Gilroy, a former farm town south of San Jose. The city has grown to about 60,000 people and is ringed by garlic fields and vineyards in south Santa Clara County.

The state argues the land has been designated exclusively for agricultural uses since 1967.

“ICE’s plans to construct a facility near Gilroy violate multiple federal laws,” said Bonta, arguing ICE failed to examine the potential environmental consequences before beginning construction.

Federal contracting records show in 2025 the General Services Administration leased the property for 20 years from Beverly Hills-based ECG 6 LLC for a total of $26.5 million.

The federal government agreed in July to pause construction on the 26-acre site while the lawsuit proceeds.

California officials are using another law dating to the first Trump administration to demand entry and inspect detention centers. Bonta sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security in December highlighting “dangerous and inadequate living conditions” at the California City Detention Facility. In San Diego County, local health inspectors are in a legal feud with CoreCivic over inspections of the Otay Mesa center.

Selling the properties to the federal government likely will shield them from California health inspections, said Claire Trickler-McNulty, who was a senior ICE official in the Biden administration.

“It gives them protections from state and local laws, especially from zoning and environmental requirements,” Trickler-McNulty said.

Sales reveal a new strategy

A year ago President Trump signed a spending bill with a huge windfall for immigration enforcement. It gave ICE $45 billion for detention capacity, and the administration had a plan to build new sites all over the country.

The purchases of Otay Mesa and California City mark a significant reversal, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

That plan, laid out in early 2026 in a document known as the ICE Detention Re-engineering Initiative, centered on converting warehouses into mega-centers designed to hold 7,500 to 10,000 people — each larger than any correctional facility built in the U.S. since Japanese internment during World War II.

Reichlin-Melnick described the system as one that was never thoughtfully planned out. Todd Lyons, then-acting director of ICE, at the 2025 Border Security Expo in Phoenix said he wanted deportations to run “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”

“At no point did anyone sit down to intelligently design the ‘Amazon Prime for human beings,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

The Detention Re-engineering Initiative has largely collapsed, undone by lawsuits, an unrealistic timeline, and national shortages of correctional staff and prison healthcare workers, Reichlin-Melnick said.

But that leaves billions of dollars that ICE needs to spend before the money expires.

“We expect them to buy other facilities,” said Reichlin-Melnick.

One former senior Department of Homeland Security official said conditions for immigrant detainees in ICE-owned facilities could be an improvement.

“ICE taking over an actual facility is maybe better than warehouses or putting people in soft-sided facilities or the privately run facilities,” he said.

A detention officer waits outside the main entrance of the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego on Feb. 20, 2026.

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Adriana Heldiz

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CalMatters

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Prices eclipse assessment rolls

County assessor records show the federal government paid a premium on the real estate. In San Diego County, the Otay Mesa property’s assessed value for the current tax year is $164.9 million. DHS paid $739.2 million for it, or about 4.5 times the assessed value. In Kern County, the California City facility was assessed at $171.5 million; DHS paid $732.6 million or 4.3 times the figure.

A former senior ICE official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, questioned whether the price tag matches the actual security need. “So, $1.5 billion just for the facilities and how many migrants are ever going to come in and out of there who are national security and public safety threats? The people that we actually do need to keep off the streets,” the former official said.

A spokesperson for Gov. Newsom, Anthony Martinez, called the administration’s deportation agenda a “reckless and cruel misuse of taxpayer money,” and accused the federal government of pouring billions into contractors while avoiding transparency over conditions inside their facilities.

San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre connected the purchase directly to CoreCivic’s political spending, noting the company’s $500,000 donation to the Trump’s inaugural committee. That preceded what she called a “billion-dollar taxpayer-funded windfall” that will help erase the company’s debt while letting it continue running the facilities. She said the arrangements treat detained immigrants as revenue streams rather than people.

CoreCivic said the “valuations for the facilities were established through the federal government’s required appraisal process, which is designed to determine objective fair market value.”

“CoreCivic has contributed to presidential inaugural events across multiple administrations, including Democratic ones. The federal appraisal process is conducted independently of any political contribution,” said Steven Owen, the vice president of communications for CoreCivic.

He added that under California law, the assessed values of the properties may differ greatly from their market value. He pointed to California’s Proposition 13, which prohibits most property reassessments outside of sales.

“California's Prop. 13 limits annual increases in assessed value, which means assessed values for commercial properties can diverge significantly from current market value over time. The two figures are not directly comparable,” said Owen.

The company also expects to earn $130 million a year to run the California City detention center, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Will feds buy more detention centers?

What’s next? Former ICE official Trickler-McNulty said the abandoned plan to buy 24 warehouses under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could hold some hints to the agency’s plan under Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

An internal roadmap obtained last year by the Washington Post reveals at least 10 “turnkey” facilities originally targeted under Noem.

They include the California City facility, but not Otay Mesa. The rest of the facilities are in Texas and Oklahoma.

The purchase of an immigration detention facility eliminates risk for both the private prison companies and the Trump administration’s deportation program, said R. Andrew Free, an immigration lawyer and writer, pointing to divestments California’s two biggest pension funds made from CoreCivic and GEO Group in 2019 that contributed to the companies’ spiraling liquidity crunch and cratering stock prices five years ago.

If private prison investments become politically toxic on a national scale, Free said, federal purchases of the detention facilities safeguard the companies and the detention space itself from divestments and the kind of environmental reviews that have ended similar projects in other states.

“This is a big upfront cash award from the federal government,” Free said.

Local governments and the state will be essentially locked out of the facilities, but will still have some contact with the people inside, Free said.

The detention centers are “still going to need police and fire, they’re still going to need coroners,” Free said, but noted that the majority of traditional inspections from the state are probably over.

Free said there are two ways to look at ICE’s detention expansion. One is, to him, optimistic: They’re simply gifts from a friendly government to their valued contractors. The other is more cynical.

“The cynical view is this definitely will be used to hold people who are not migrants,” Free said. “That it will be used to hold U.S. citizens.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.