The Brief

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.

Local election officials across California are confused and frustrated after receiving letters from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department demanding that county registrars sequester ballots that the federal government believes were sent to noncitizen voters ahead of the midterm elections.

The letters, which were sent on Friday, ask for sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, on roughly 20,000 voters. It is illegal for noncitizens to register to vote or cast a ballot. The administration has insisted that immigrants voting is a major problem nationwide, when in fact it is quite rare, as even its own investigations have shown.

“All of this is simply meant to raise huge doubts about the integrity of this election,” said John Tuteur, the registrar of voters for Napa County in California’s wine country.

Tuteur and other election officials who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday said they have already started to count ballots that have trickled in from the state’s 23 million registered voters.

“We’re not changing anything we’re doing. We’re proceeding with the election,” he said.

The federal government set a 48-hour deadline to provide information, and it warned that legal action could be taken against any official who knowingly counted a noncitizen’s vote.

However, the California Attorney General’s Office said the letters contained errors. For example, Mendocino County officials received a list of people who were not residents there, according to the state’s court filing.

The letters are the latest escalation in a legal battle between Democratic-dominated California and Trump’s Department of Justice ahead of the midterms. The federal government sued on Oct. 15, roughly three weeks before elections, asking a judge to bar the state from counting mail-in ballots from people the federal government has identified as likely noncitizens. A panel of 9th Circuit appeals court judges will hear arguments on Sunday about whether California can be compelled to comply with the federal government’s demands.

Some clerks say they will proceed with counting ballots

Tuteur said that two uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers delivered a letter to his office late on Friday afternoon. The letter included the names of 42 people whom the federal government accused of being noncitizens illegally registered to vote. There are roughly 86,000 people registered to vote across the county of over 130,000 people, Tuteur said. Approximately 11,000 people had already cast a mail-in ballot as of Friday. In larger counties like Los Angeles, that number has already reached over 331,000 counted mail-in votes.

He said his employees and his relatives were worried about what could come next.

“My family’s upset, worried about what’s going to happen to me,” he said.

The letter sent to Clerk-Recorder Kim Grady’s office in rural Amador County listed four people allegedly illegally registered to vote in the county. Grady was waiting on more guidance from the state about what she should do, and she wasn’t sure if she would get any clarity before the deadline.

DOJ threatens to prosecute

Department of Justice spokeswoman Kiersten Pels emphasized in a statement on Saturday that the department is explicitly “not requesting a purge, cancellation of registrations, or any programmatic action.”

Instead, Pels wrote, federal officials are asking for collaboration to “ensure the most secure election in California history.”

The letters on Friday came on the heels of a statewide sweep by federal authorities on Monday, where 28 people from the list of 20,000 were charged with illegally registering to vote. Some were also charged with illegally voting and lying on naturalization paperwork. Those charges could lead to years in prison.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, said that the clerks who didn’t comply with the government’s demands could face prosecution as well.

“The letters speak for themselves. Any election official who knowingly processes the ballot of a noncitizen is opening themselves to legal jeopardy,” Essayli said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting is very rare. For example, earlier this month Attorney General Todd Blanche announced federal charges against 10 people in Minnesota alleged to have voted illegally over the last three elections, a period in which more than 8 million ballots were cast in the state.

But Essayli said on Monday that even a small number of illegal voters could “dilute” the vote and undermine confidence in elections.

Concerns about the accuracy of federal data

Some election officials who spoke to The Associated Press on Saturday have questioned the accuracy of the federal government’s list of 20,000 voters.

“I expect this accusation to fall apart like we saw recently in Nevada,” Kristin B. Connelly, the Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder and registrar of voters, said, referring to remarks Trump made in July, when he claimed the neighboring state had 1,500 noncitizen voters on its rolls. After his administration was asked to identify them, the number of actual registered noncitizens turned out to be zero.

Officials in Los Angeles County, who are named as defendants in the federal lawsuit, have echoed Connelly’s concerns about the federal government’s data. A preliminary analysis of 200 names from the statewide list of 20,000 found that over 40% had canceled registrations, according to a court filing from county officials on Wednesday. More than 70% of that sample had no voting history whatsoever, and nearly 4 in 10 were born in the United States.

Master escape artist and world-famous entertainer Harry Houdini had been dead for decades by the time teenager Kevin Connolly sat down with his dad in their New Jersey home in the late 1960s to watch Houdini, the biopic with actor Tony Curtis in the title role.

“I'm so engrossed in the movie that I'm crying that he passed away. And my dad looks down at me and says, 'What's the matter, son?' I said, 'Houdini died,'" Connolly said.

His father then comforted him.

That experience with the movie and with his father sparked a five-decade-plus collector’s obsession in the teen that led him to amass thousands of items from Harry Houdini’s life and career.

The collection includes handcuffs owned by Houdini, a signed life-size portrait of Houdini in chains, a linen bag his wife, Bess Houdini, made him and a pocket watch she gifted him on his birthday in 1910, at the height of his career.

Signed Cabinet Card Photograph of Houdini in Chains.

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Connolly Collection courtesy Potter & Potter Auctions.

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“Engraved inside the cover is a very personal note from her to him that also contains a little hidden code in the inscription,” said Gabe Fajuri, president and principal auctioneer at Potter & Potter Auctions. The watch has the highest valuation of the items, with an estimate between $20,000 and $40,000.

The auction house has been displaying these 100 items at its Chicago offices and will transport them to the Magic Castle in Hollywood for display on Oct. 30 and the final auction the day after.

“ These are things that potentially have his DNA on them. These are things that Houdini himself owned, handled, used, treasured,” Fajuri said.

The auction marks two milestones: 100 years since Houdini's death and the winding down of 71-year-old Connolly's collecting efforts, which enriched his and his family’s life.

“It broadened our world, and it was nice to be recognized for your collecting abilities,” he said.

Connolly’s collection has turned him into a Houdini authority, attracting the attention of Houdini biographers, film documentarians, as well as museums and galleries.

Houdini was born in Hungary in 1874. He came to the U.S. as a young child and moved to New York with his father, a rabbi, at 13. He began performing as a magician four years later and shot to stardom on the vaudeville circuit with bold escape acts. There wasn’t a straitjacket, chains or ropes that he couldn’t escape.

Connolly admires how Houdini inspired a generation of immigrants with these stunning feats.

A photo of an escape stunt by Harry Houdini. It's the first Houdini item Kevin Connolly bought as a teen during his 50-plus years of collecting Houdini memorabilia.

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Courtesy Kevin Connolly

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One of those acts is captured in the very first Houdini item Connolly bought after watching that Houdini movie. It’s a photo of Houdini hanging upside down from a rope in front of a building, two stories up. His arms are bound to his body. Crowds look up from the street, staring at Houdini as he attempts to escape. “TORONTO OCT. 18/’16” is written along the bottom edge of the photo.

“That one is not in the auction,” he said. Oct. 18 is Connolly’s father’s birthday, which makes it special. Plus, “That would be probably the last one I'd let go, because that's the one that started it all.”

With Halloween approaching, a women’s walking group is helping Angelenos explore the city’s spooky and historic landmarks. Their next outing is Angelino Heights — home to century-old Victorian homes and an iconic piece of pop culture history.

Los Angelistas organizes weekly walks throughout Los Angeles. October draws some of its biggest crowds, according to the group. Earlier this month, the group visited the Spadena House in Beverly Hills for a witch-themed walk and explored Los Feliz for a murder-themed tour.

Members of Los Angelistas stand in front of the "Spadena House" in Beverly Hills in 2025.

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(Jillian Goodman/Los Angelistas)

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Exploring LA’s spooky side

On Nov. 1, the group heads to Angelino Heights, a tiny neighborhood next to Echo Park known for its Victorian homes.

“It has so much history, but also really beautiful, stunning Victorian architecture,” said Jillian Goodman, one of the group’s three co-founders. “It’s such a cool place that I don’t think many people know about.”

Some of the homes have been backdrops for films and TV shows, including Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Thriller” video — which will be a stop on the tour.

Los Angelistas visit the "Charmed" house while on a walk through Angelino Heights in 2024.

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(Jillian Goodman/Los Angelistas)

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Building friendship beyond the walks

Los Angelistas began in April 2023, when Goodman and a few women who met through another social club decided to continue spending time together through walks.

The group has since grown to more than 7,000 members, Goodman said. Its organizers live across L.A., allowing them to host events in neighborhoods like Brentwood, Mid-City and Glendale.

Goodman said the walks encourage women to discover parts of L.A. they might pass by without stopping.

“Everyone thinks of L.A. as a driving city. No one ever really stops and takes a breath,” Goodman said.

For Goodman, watching members build friendships that extend beyond the walks has been one of the most rewarding parts of the group’s growth.

“They go to each other’s weddings. They go to concerts. Seeing people connect, not just in the group, but then having that extend outside has been amazing to watch,” she said.

The group has also helped members support one another during devastating times. Amid last year’s Eaton and Palisades wildfires, some members helped others find places to stay, despite having only met on walks.

“I thought that was so beautiful and wonderful that without us they wouldn’t have known each other,” Goodman said.

A slew of Medicare Advantage plans are disappearing for next year, leaving seniors in many areas with fewer options. In 193 counties across the country, no plans are offered at all.

Medicare's annual open enrollment period kicked off October 15 and runs until December 7, and seniors enrolled in those privatized Medicare plans that are closing in certain markets should carefully review their options.

Medicare Advantage means private insurers run Medicare for older Americans who choose it over traditional Medicare, where the federal government itself administers the program. More than half of the 70 million Americans in Medicare choose Medicare Advantage. It's popular because it covers services like vision and dental, often with lower premiums than traditional Medicare. It also often folds in the "Part D" drug benefit, simplifying that decision.

But a downside of Medicare Advantage is that companies can pick and choose where they offer plans. If a certain community is not profitable, a company can leave that market. And that has been happening on an increasingly large scale the last three years, according to research published in JAMA.

Who is affected

Big swaths of rural America are losing Medicare Advantage choices and so are some major metro areas.

Last year, 2.9 million seniors were in Medicare Advantage plans that closed up shop, according to JAMA. This year, an analysis of insurance company announcements by An Arm and A Leg podcast, shows at least 2 million people will be affected. Other preliminary estimates range from 3.2 million to 5 million seniors. About 35 million people are enrolled in Medicare Advantage.

According to an analysis of federal data by the health policy research organization KFF, the 193 counties that will have zero Medicare Advantage plans are mostly rural. Last year that number was about 120 counties without a plan offered.

KFF's numbers also show that there will be far fewer plans offered in some metro areas. Dallas, Minneapolis, Seattle, Houston and Portland all have between a quarter and a third fewer Medicare Advantage plans for seniors.

What happens next

If your plan is ending, and you don't choose another, the insurance company will assign you to another Medicare Advantage plan or the government will enroll you in traditional Medicare — but without a supplemental or drug plan.

If you want to switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare and your plan is ending, you can enroll in a Medicare supplemental plan — also known as Medigap — without the same restrictions that you would normally have. If you have a pre-existing condition that has prevented you from enrolling in Medigap before, that could be good news.

Another wrinkle this year is that insurance companies can cap enrollments on some of the Medicare Advantage plans that they do offer.

Which means: If you wait to sign up, a plan you want might already be full.

The companies are supposed to enroll people on a first-come, first-serve basis — and not cherry-pick customers based on health conditions, age, or demographics.

Another reason not to delay is that with so many people on the hunt for new plans, it may take longer than usual to get help.

How and where to find help

Here are some tips for navigating Medicare open enrollment this year:

• Find out if your plan is still offered: First, check your mail. Medicare Advantage plans that are closing should have sent letters the first week in October. You can also log in to your account on Medicare.gov to check your plan's status for next year.
  
• Try calling your SHIP: There's a State Health Insurance Assistance Program — known as a "SHIP" — in every state to help seniors with Medicare. The name's not easy to remember or particularly descriptive, but it's free, mandated by the federal government, and the staff and volunteers are required to give you unbiased information on all available options. Find your state in the directory at shiphelp.org. Your county may have a specific number that you can find on your state's SHIP website.
  
• Look for local Medicare counseling services: Friends, family, leaders at your place of worship, and the constituent services of your local elected officials may have the scoop on where you can get one-on-one help. The nonprofit Medicare Rights Center also has a national helpline, and a well-organized library of online guides.
  
• Brokers can be helpful, but be savvy: You want a broker who's going to talk with you about all your options — including switching to traditional Medicare and a supplemental plan. Ask if they sell plans from all available insurance carriers. And ask if they answer questions about your plan year-round, because insurance never stops being confusing.
  
• Double check what you see on Medicare.gov: Medicare's Plan Finder allows you to search plans online. But lists of doctors and drugs that are covered can sometimes be wrong. To be safe, double check with your doctor's office or a SHIP counselor, broker, or other Medicare assistor.
  
• Don't share your personal information with services you find online: Be careful where you share your personal information like your phone number. Some online agencies will sell your information, leading to spam calls and potentially even scam artists.
  
• Be mindful of the deadlines: Open enrollment for Medicare runs October 15, 2026 through December 7, 2026. The coverage starts January 1, 2027. If your plan is ending, you qualify for a "special enrollment period" to give you a little more time — until February 28, 2027. (For coverage that starts January 1, 2027, enroll by December 31.)

Emily Pisacreta is the senior producer for An Arm and a Leg, a podcast about the cost of healthcare produced in partnership with KFF Health News and distributed by KUOW, Seattle's NPR member station. 

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