McFarland police do not respond to calls at two ICE detention centers run by The GEO Group, because a 2024 agreement gave the company’s civilian administrators specific law enforcement duties at the sites. The arrangement affects both the Golden State Annex and the Central Valley Annex, and it leaves detainees inside those facilities under a system that is unusually close to private policing.
Under the memorandum of understanding between the city and The GEO Group, GEO staff are responsible for detaining people suspected of violating the law at the facilities and for processing evidence from arrests, including weapons, narcotics and currency. If GEO needs help from McFarland police in anything other than a critical incident, the company must reimburse the department for officers’ pay and overtime. The same agreement puts The GEO Group in charge of investigating sexual abuse and assault allegations at the facilities, a setup that critics say gives GEO a role in investigating itself.
The practical effect surfaced two years ago, when attorney Mario Valenzuela said he visited a client at the Golden State Annex after the man told him he had been beaten by seven or eight fellow detainees and taken to a hospital emergency room. Valenzuela said the client had a black eye and bruises on his body and wanted to report the assault to police, but a McFarland police supervisor told him the department did not respond to calls for service at the detention center. That response turned a reported assault into a question about who, exactly, has authority to act inside the city’s ICE facilities.
That question is more than procedural. Kyle Virgien said it is troubling to let The GEO Group investigate itself in that way, and Niels Frenzen said the apparent handover of police powers to civilian employees of the company has no basis in state law. A former detainee has also claimed she was sexually assaulted inside Golden State Annex, underscoring the stakes of a system that places both security and allegations of abuse partly in private hands.
The city’s deal does not answer whether any crimes or sexual-abuse allegations at the McFarland detention centers have been formally reported, investigated or resolved by public authorities. It also does not make clear whether other cities have made similar agreements that cede some police authority to private prison operators. What it does make clear is that inside these two McFarland facilities, the first call is not automatically to the police, and the last word on abuse complaints may not come from them either.
