On Thursday, city council members in the small California farm town of McFarland voted in favor of converting two privately runĀ 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 itsĀ residents are undocumented, many of whom are farmworkers.