The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has bought two large migrant detention centres in California for $1.5 billion, the agency confirmed to Fox News Digital. The purchase, funded through President Donald Trump's spending legislation passed the previous summer, is intended to expand US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention capacity and support the administration's mass deportation agenda. It matters because it gives the federal government direct ownership of key detention infrastructure in a state whose sanctuary policies, DHS says, seek to restrict ICE's access to detention space.

The two facilities are the 2,560-bed California City Detention Facility and the 1,994-bed Otay Mesa Detention Center, both among the largest such sites in the state. They were sold by CoreCivic, a Tennessee-based private prison company, with the deal closing earlier in the month. DHS said federal ownership removes its reliance on private prison operators, arguing that, unlike in states such as Florida and Oklahoma, ICE cannot depend on local and county partners for detention space in California, where officials continue to push legislation to make private prisons financially unviable.