The Department of Homeland Security just spent $1.5 billion to purchase two privately-run detention facilities in Southern California from CoreCivic, one of the country's largest for-profit prison companies. The facilities — Otay Mesa Detention Center and California City Detention Center — will still be operated by CoreCivic employees. The company will still profit from them. What changed is who owns the buildings.

That matters because California law requires privately held detention centers to be subject to oversight by local officials, state authorities, and members of Congress. Now that the federal government owns the buildings, that oversight disappears.

A civil rights attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center called it plainly: "It seems like a very clear attempt to evade oversight and accountability."

This isn't a side effect — it's the point. DHS said so itself. An agency spokesperson cited California politicians pushing accountability legislation as the reason the purchase was necessary. ICE is explicitly buying its way out of state inspection laws.

At least 21 people have died in ICE custody this year. Conditions in these facilities — inadequate medical care, forced labor, deaths behind closed doors — have generated years of lawsuits. The United Nations human rights chief this week demanded an investigation. And DHS's response is to make these facilities harder to inspect, not easier.

State Sen. María Elena Durazo, who co-sponsored California's oversight legislation, said it directly: "It is shameful for any government agency to try to sidestep basic health and safety protections for people in its custody."

Sign this petition to demand that Congress investigate DHS's $1.5 billion prison purchase and restore the right of California officials and lawmakers to inspect these detention facilities.