Nine dollars for an eight-ounce jar of coffee. Single bars of Irish soap for $1.50.
These are some of the prices detainees in immigration detention centers face at the commissaries inside, where prices can be as much as 50 percent higher than in grocery stores.
A bill backed by criminal justice advocates and a sheriffs’ association seeks to change that.
Senate Bill 941, authored by Chula Vista Sen. Steve Padilla, would cap all store goods at immigration detention centers at 35 percent of the vendor price. This would make items like a single notebook, which costs an average of $1.44 in private detention centers, to be closer to the 75 cents market value, according to a 2023 UCLA study.
It comes amid a nationwide backlash against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as immigration raids have swept the country — the ICE detainee population ballooned by 162 percent to more than 6,000 people in California since 2023 — and lawmakers have introduced a slew of anti-ICE bills in response.
Padilla’s bill received bipartisan support during a Senate floor vote and is supported by the Riverside Sheriffs Association. California has seven ICE detention centers, including the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego County.
Otay Mesa, like other facilities, is run by a private company that contracts with the federal government to house its roughly 1,500 detainees. It has been plagued by deaths, sexual abuse and reports of subpar medical conditions.
Six people died at ICE detention centers in California last year as the detainee population boomed and basic medical care became even more scarce.
Criminal justice advocates point to the UCLA study that shows most detainees rely on family to purchase from the commissary, as detainees typically earn no more than $1 a day for prison work. GEO Group, one of three private companies that operate facilities in California, contracts with for-profit vendor Union Supply to distribute products not provided by the jail. That includes chicken, Nutella and baking soda marked up by 22 to 58 percent compared to the average California store price, according to the study.
Supporters of the bill say, if enacted, the law would stop families that are trying to provide necessary products for their loved ones from being exploited by the companies.
“These places are taking advantage of underprivileged communities,” said Kent Mendoza, a policy director at Anti-Recidivism Coalition. Mendoza said he’d experienced the pricey hygienic products and poor medical treatment at a detention facility in 2014.
Ryan Sherman, a longtime lobbyist for law enforcement groups, said the Riverside Sheriffs Association is philosophically against private detention centers and has a long history of opposing them.
“We just think private prisons are really bad for the corrections profession,” he said, because of poorer training and lower work standards compared to state prisons.
“I truly believe that the private prison industry is a complete scam to taxpayers,” Sherman said.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is also backing the bill. It awaits a committee hearing in the Assembly.
Lawmakers have previously sought to regulate commissary markups.They voted in 2023 to cap canteen markups at 35 percent of market price in state prisons.
In Other News
Lawmakers face a key deadline next week for their bills to win approval or die. Here are some of the delegation’s biggest bills facing the deadline:
As Voice readers know, the San Diego Midway Rising Project has faced a slew of legal challenges in its effort to override the district’s zoning laws. Sen. Akilah Weber Pierson’s bill, Senate Bill 958, would exempt the 165-foot planned arena alone from the California Environmental Quality Act. It needs a floor vote in the Senate by May 29 to proceed.
Senate Bill 1016, by Encinitas Democrat Catherine Blakespear, would make it harder for those with a severe mental illness to decline treatment in CARE Court, California’s mental health program. CARE Court has helped far fewer people than initially promised, a CalMatters investigation found, and Blakespear’s proposal would let judges determine if someone is too mentally ill to reject treatment.
Companies use shoppers’ personal data in real-time, such as their location or age, to determine how much they’ll charge them in a practice known as surveillance pricing. Assembly Bill 2564 is Democratic Assemblymember Chris Ward’s second attempt at banning surveillance pricing, after a previous bill of his was watered down to only apply to grocery stores.
What I’m Reading Now
The Islamic Center of San Diego reopened after three people were killed in a suspected hate crime, KPBS explains.
Religious leaders and practicing Muslims in San Diego remain on edge in the wake of the deadly attack, from The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Utility companies are Democrats’ latest target amid rising electricity rates, Politico reports.