Before Fernando Arciniega was detained by federal immigration agents in May 2024, he was the breadwinner of his household. Providing for his daughter, 17, and son, 12, was something he took pride in.
Now, Arciniega often finds himself relying on family for money to purchase food and other basic necessities from the commissary at Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Southern California.
“It’s hard for me to reach out to the family I’m used to supporting,” he said. “There’s been times I had to ask my own daughter for $10.”
Under the federal Voluntary Work Program, Arcienega makes just $1 per day cleaning dorms and doing work around the facility, meaning his wage alone isn’t nearly enough to purchase necessities from the commissary. While the facility provides daily meals, Arcienega said he has to supplement them with food purchased from the commissary to stay nourished.
“We’re given such childlike portions of food here,” he said, adding that detainees are forced to buy commissary items “just to keep ourselves fed throughout the day.”
Arcienega said he often has to choose between purchasing food, hygiene products or making calls to his loved ones.
Some relief for Arcienega and other California detainees may be on the horizon. State Sen. Steve Padilla (D-San Diego) has introduced a bill that is aimed at curtailing price gouging at private detention facilities, whose commissaries sell products that can cost more than twice as much as they do in retail stores. The high prices prompted detainees at two California facilities to launch a boycott earlier this month in an effort to call attention to the eye-popping price tags on commissary items, including an eight-ounce container of Folgers Crystals coffee selling for almost $20, more than double what it costs at Walmart and Target.
There are eight privately owned immigration detention centers in California that operate under contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The commissaries at these facilities are typically supplied by third party vendors under contract to the operator. Senate Bill 941, which passed the Senate by a 38 to 0 vote in May, drew support from both sides of the aisle.
“I don’t think this is a partisan issue, profiteering off detainees,” said Cameron Sutherland, Padilla’s communications director, who predicted the bill would clear the Assembly and be signed into law before the legislative session ends on Aug. 31.
The legislation builds upon a 2023 law that prohibits California state prisons from marking up commissary items more than 35% above vendor costs. SB 941 would require detention center commissaries to abide by the same price caps.
Priya Patel, an immigration lawyer at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice who’s been advocating for detainees inside the state’s detention centers, called the bill a “good start,” but hopes to “abolish ICE detention” or, short of that, “not make it a for-profit industry.”
Guillermo Medina Reyes, a detainee at the California City Detention Facility in Kern County, said the high commissary prices place an extra burden on a group of people already under stress.
“This is one of the worst situations people are going to face in their life,” said Medina Reyes, who placed blame for high commissary prices on CoreCivic, the Tennessee-based for-profit company that operates the Central Valley detention center. He said the private prison operator was “trying to squeeze every little bit of money that [detainees] may have,” adding, “That’s where taking advantage comes into play.”
Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic’s public affairs director, said that the company strives to set fair prices.
“We regularly collaborate with our outside commissary vendor and government partners to review and set commissary item pricing that is reasonable,” he said.
Gustin said that the facility puts commissary revenue into a “detainee welfare fund,” which is used “to purchase items to benefit detainees, such as electronics, recreational or educational items.”
But Medina Reyes said detainees at California City aren’t seeing the benefits of the fund.
“We really don’t know where the money’s going,” he said. “Definitely not with the food, not with the clothing, not with the hygiene [products], not with no rec equipment; we barely have rec equipment at all.”
CoreCivic recently sold California City Detention Facility, along with Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, but the company said it expects to continue to operate the detention centers under existing contracts.
California City Detention Facility is the largest immigration detention center in the state. In May, it housed more than 1,600 detainees. In November 2025, detainees sued the Trump administration over allegedly substandard living conditions at the facility.
In the lawsuit, detainees also alleged that the facility doesn’t provide them with enough food or essential supplies, forcing them to rely on the commissary.
“Just regular items that we need for daily necessities, like toothpaste, soap, they’re all very expensive,” Medina Reyes said.
According to Medina Reyes, detainees receive only limited personal hygiene items and only when inventory allows. The facility issues travel sized deodorant and shampoo, a small toothbrush and travel sized toothpaste, as well as soap and toilet paper. Everything else they have to buy from the commissary.
On a call with Capital & Main in mid-June, Medina Reyes read off prices from the commissary’s product list: $6.38 for a three-ounce Speed Stick deodorant, $20 for a 40-count box of tampons, and for an eight-ounce jar of Folgers Crystals instant coffee: $18.80. Detainees interviewed by the Los Angeles Times earlier this month quoted similarly high commissary prices.
At Walmart’s website, those items are significantly less expensive than what they cost at the California City Detention Facility’s commissary. A three-ounce Speed Stick costs $2.47, a 40-count box of generic tampons costs $6.28, and an eight-ounce jar of Folgers Crystals instant coffee costs $9.79.
After detainees submitted a grievance about price increases that took effect in mid-May to California City’s detention center staff, Medina Reyes said that they were told that CoreCivic was merely passing on the higher prices charged by Keefe Commissary Network. Keefe is a private company that supplies commissary products and technology services to detention centers and prisons nationwide.
The company has contracted with CoreCivic and Florida-based GEO Group, another large, private prison operator, for commissary services. CoreCivic’s Gustin would not confirm whether Keefe supplied the commissary at the California City Detention Center.
Keefe did not respond to a Capital & Main request for comment.
Arciniega said Keefe Group is also the commissary vendor for Imperial Regional Detention Facility, where price increases often come without warning.
“There’s never a reason given,” he said. “Sometimes they just take down the [product] list on the wall and we notice different prices.”
Imperial Regional Detention Facility is owned by Management and Training Corporation, a Utah-based private prison contractor. Emily Lawhead, the company’s director of communications, declined to speak to Capital & Main, referring questions to ICE.
Asked about how commissary prices are set at ICE detention centers, Sandra Grisolia, a spokesperson for ICE, said in an email, “We work with all our vendors to ensure that pricing is consistent with comparable local retailers, such as convenience stores.”
Grisolia also added that “being in detention is a choice,” and said ICE was offering detainees $2,600 to “self deport.”
On July 1, hundreds of detainees at California City and Golden State Annex, a detention center located in the Central Valley city of McFarland, announced an open-ended boycott of their respective commissaries to protest what they said was price gouging. Golden State Annex is operated by GEO Group.
“Their goal is to hold off for as long as they can to really try and send that message to both GEO and CoreCivic,” said Valeria Suarez, a lawyer with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.
Asked to respond to the boycotters’ claims, GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira emailed a statement almost identical to the one provided by ICE: “Commissary services at ICE Processing Centers are provided by a third-party vendor, and we work with all our vendors to ensure that pricing is consistent with comparable local retailers, such as convenience stores.”
In the meantime, detainees and their advocates hope that SB 941 can help rein in the sky-high prices charged at detention center commissaries.
“I really hope it goes through,” Arciniega said. “It’s a huge burden that’s imposed on us, on an already tough situation that we’re in.”
