The immigration detention center in Adelanto, California, is flanked by industrial buildings, power lines and expansive mountain views. At its front entryway, the American flag flies alongside the banner of the Geo Group, the private prison corporation operating the facility for US immigration authorities.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) processing center in this high desert town is home to nearly 2,000 immigrants, many of whom are asylum seekers. There have been numerous allegations of detainee abuse and mistreatment at the facility, prompting investigations from several state, federal and non-governmental agencies.

A surprise inspection by the office of the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2018 reported serious concerns about conditions at the facility, including medical negligence and detainee segregation practices that were excessively punitive. Inspectors even found nooses made of bed sheets hanging in cells. At least seven detainees at the facility attempted to take their own lives between late 2016 and 2017, according to the report. And in February, a 27-year-old detainee at the center fell into a coma under unclear circumstances. José Ibarra Bucio later died at Loma Linda University Medical Center after suffering what doctors said was brain hemorrhaging.

Yet business has been good for the Geo Group, and in Adelanto, it’s expected to get a whole lot better.

A surprise announcement

Last month, in a surprise announcement, the Adelanto city manager, Jessie Flores, declared an end to the city’s agreement with Ice to manage the facility.

Such contract terminations aren’t unusual. But shrouded in secrecy, the announcement in Adelanto, which came without an opportunity for public comment or even a public vote in the city council, sparked alarm among immigrants’ rights activists.

While activists generally welcome it when cities end their participation in the immigrant detention system, the way Adelanto terminated the agreement was worrying, said Liz Martinez of Freedom for Immigrants, an advocacy group dedicated to ending immigration detention.

Martinez and other critics fear Geo is manipulating local officials and hoping to directly contract with Ice. Without a local government involved in the contract, the company could sidestep a new, strict state law that restricts and regulates the private prison industry.

That law, signed in 2017 by the then California governor, Jerry Brown, froze the expansion and growth of private for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers statewide. The bill prohibited cities and counties from entering into new contracts with private prison companies or modifying existing ones. And it gave California’s attorney general the power to oversee both public and private detention centers statewide.

Detainees eat lunch at the Adelanto facility in 2013. Critics fear the private prison company Geo is manipulating local officials. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

“If you’ve got a communication string just between Ice and a private facility, there’s obviously going to be a lot less transparency, which leads to less accountability,” said Phil Torrey, managing attorney of Harvard University’s immigration and refugee program. Torrey also noted that without the city involved in the contract, Ice and Geo would not have to comply with several disclosures required by federal and state law.

“If you remove this contract, it becomes even more difficult to create any transparency,” Torrey added.

“No one is responsible and no one has oversight over this facility. An expansion would only make things worse,” said Lizbeth Abeln of the Inland Coalition for Immigrant Justice.

A plan hatched in secrecy

Not everyone in Adelanto’s leadership agreed with the contract termination.

According to the city’s newly elected mayor pro tem, Stevevonna Evans, the plan to terminate the agreement was hatched in secrecy.

Evans told the Guardian she had walked in on a meeting between Flores, the city manager, and Dr George Zoley, CEO and chairman of the Geo Group, in early 2019.

“I was early for a meeting, so I just did what I do every other day and just walked into his office,” Evans said. “They were discussing their proposal, which was for us to sign the letter to Ice saying we wanted out of the contract.”

Flores and Zoley told Evans that the move would relieve the city of future litigation while allowing Geo to expand the facility. Evans was unsure what possible litigation they were referring to.

Evans pushed back in subsequent meetings, she said, and insisted she wouldn’t sign anything unless the new arrangement would include the establishment of an oversight committee for the detention center. Zoley got agitated, Evans recalled, and insisted she sign the letter “or I’m taking my money and I’m leaving”.

Evans did not sign the letter, and she claims Flores signed without input from the city council. Evans remains the lone dissenting voice on the council regarding the decision. Some members of the city council saw the termination as an opportunity to relieve the city of responsibility while still reaping the financial benefits of housing the facility in their town, she said, noting that Geo would continue paying the city of Adelanto an annual $1m management fee.

Flores and the Adelanto mayor, Gabriel Reyes, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

A lucrative industry

Detention of immigrants and asylum seekers has surged under the Trump administration. Ice reported 396,448 immigrants were booked into custody between October 2017 and September 2018, a 22.5% increase from the previous fiscal year. The agency holds around 40,000 detainees per day, on average, according to federal data.

The Geo group is the largest private prison company in the country working with Ice to detain immigrants, holding nearly 9,000 people a day in detention and collecting nearly $200m in federal contracts annually.

“We take the findings outlined by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General regarding the Adelanto ICE Processing Center very seriously,” Geo said in a statement. “While we believe that a number of the findings lacked appropriate context or were based on incomplete information, we have already taken steps to remedy areas where our processes fell short of our commitment to high-quality care.” The statement added that the company had already implemented corrective actions, increased oversight and compliance measures and was conducting an in-depth review with its medical services subcontractor of medical and dental services. In a separate response to the DHS findings, the company noted that the bedsheets described in the OIG report as “nooses” had been hung by detainees to provide privacy when using toilet facilities in their rooms.

Ice said in a statement it took the OIG’s findings seriously and “has agreed to conduct a full and immediate review of the center to ensure compliance with detention standards and expedite necessary corrective actions”.

‘I’d be willing to bet money it’s coming’

By early April, there was enough public outcry in Adelanto over the future of the detention facility that one city council member requested the decision be brought back for a vote.

An immigrant makes a call from a cell at the facility in 2013. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

But at a city council meeting on 24 April, the city attorney, Victor Ponto, announced that after an inquiry, Ice and Geo would not accommodate the city’s request to rescind the contract termination, in effect cementing the decision into place.

Adelanto’s contract termination is effective 90 days from the announcement, just shy of three months from now. The first clear indication that Geo plans to expand the facility would be for the company to submit land-use permits, which the city of Adelanto has the power to approve.

So far, Geo hasn’t done so, said Evans. “But I’d be willing to bet money it’s coming,” she said.

When asked about a possible expansion, the Geo Group told the Guardian in an email it would refer the inquiry to Ice.

Ice said it planned to continue to use the Adelanto detention center as long as there was a viable contract with the facility in place. “ICE will continue to explore all options to continue the use of all current facilities, however ICE operates a national system of detention bed space and will house detainees in other facilities as needed,” added the Ice spokeswoman Lori K Haley in a statement.

With possibly less accountability and less transparency in the future, the already murky process of navigating Ice bureaucracy is only bound to get murkier for detainees and their families.

“We demand a just and proper [facility] closure that ensures everyone is released and has access to legal representation,” said Martinez of Freedom for Immigrants. “The city of Adelanto can’t simply wash their hands of this. They have an obligation to answer to the community and to intervene and prevent any future permitting of an expansion.”