San Diego County property tax records show the Otay Mesa Detention Center was valued this year at $168 million – about a quarter of the $739 million the federal government paid to buy it last week. The county assessor said that disparity can be explained by several factors, and because of the purchase, San Diego County will lose about $2.1 million in property tax revenue each year.
Private prison company CoreCivic announced this week that the federal government had purchased two of its facilities: the Otay Mesa Detention Center, and the California City Detention Facility in Kern County, for a combined $1.5 billion.
CoreCivic said both properties were independently appraised, and the federal government will continue to pay the company to operate the facilities. The Department of Homeland Security has not responded to requests for a copy of those appraisals, but indicated in a statement that the purchase was in response to California’s effort to ban private prisons…