INS Shifts Detainees to Long-Closed Mira Loma

The first busload of federal detainees was transferred to the long-closed Mira Loma jail on Monday as part of Los Angeles County’s new deal with the federal government, an agreement that will provide badly needed funds for the languishing Twin Towers Jail.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is paying the county $7.2 million a year to use Mira Loma to house 500 detainees. The Sheriff’s Department says leasing the detention center in Lancaster will help it meet some of the Twin Towers’ $75-million yearly operating costs.

The 40-year-old Mira Loma detention center, which was shut by county budget cutbacks in 1979 and 1993, has ironically now become a cash cow for the county while providing the federal government with badly needed jail space.

“This is a great deal for them,” said Sheriff Sherman Block. “It would cost them $100 million to go out and build a 500-bed facility and they would have to spend even more to staff it.”

Sheriff’s Department officials said sheriff’s deputies will work as guards at Mira Loma, their salaries included in the price to the federal government.

Block also said that the reopening of Mira Loma will mean more jobs for a community that protested sharply the last time it was closed. “This is one of those rare deals where everyone wins,” Block said

The idea to market the facility came as the Sheriff’s Department searched for ways to open the 4,100-bed Twin Towers Jail. “We sat down and said, ‘How can we get Twin Towers open,’ ” Block said. “We knew the federal government needed more space, and leasing Mira Loma to them was one of the ways we came up with.”

But the plan almost unraveled when federal immigration officials came close to rejecting Mira Loma, located on Avenue I, three miles west of the Antelope Valley Freeway, saying it failed to meet their standards. The deal went through when the Sheriff’s Department quickly made requested changes.

“When you have a facility like that in mothballs, things like fire extinguishers are removed,” Block said. “All that was needed was some minor adjustments.”

Eventually, INS officials plan to use Mira Loma as a holding facility for immigrants convicted of crimes, while they await deportation trials.

“Only low-risk prisoners are going to be held here,” said Lt. Errol Van Horne, the deputy in charge. “There will also be a quick turnaround. Prisoners will stay between seven and 10 days and any high-risk inmates will be shipped out.”

The inmates that arrived Monday from the INS jail in El Centro have been ordered deported and are awaiting the results of appeals, according to an INS official.