On Thursday, city council members in the small California farm town of McFarland voted in favor of converting two privately run state prison facilities into immigration detention centers. The proposal was brought forward by the GEO Group, a publicly traded private prison company that operates prisons and immigrant detention centers. McFarland is home to 15,000 people, and about half of its residents are undocumented, many of whom are farmworkers.

GEO Group — whose previous contract with the city was terminated in the fall after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced steps to end the use of private, for-profit prisons in California — wants to repurpose the 700-bed prisons it currently operates into detention centers for up to 1,400 immigrant detainees. The law would have cost the city $1.5 million a year in taxes and other fees to be paid by GEO Group unless it could convert the prisons into immigration detention facilities, according to The New York Times.