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A distant view of Diamondback Correctional Facility behind a rusted white fence.
The 2,160-bed Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga. GREG CONSTANTINE
THE FRONTIER | INVESTIGATION

Oklahoma helped fast-track a massive immigration detention center. Now questions are mounting over conditions inside

The state Department of Corrections earns millions to monitor operations at the privately run Diamondback Correctional Facility for compliance with ICE standards and to “perform other administrative functions.” But the state won’t release the contract outlining its responsibilities as detainees and attorneys report problems with staffing, medical care and access to lawyers.

By Ari Fife and Greg Constantine

An empty prison in rural western Oklahoma was an ideal spot to house immigrants as part of the second Trump administration’s ambitious plan to deport millions of people.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement scrambled to buy warehouses and repurpose military bases and vacant prisons across the country in order to boost its capacity to detain people awaiting deportation proceedings.

The Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga once housed prison inmates for the state of Arizona, but had been closed for more than a decade. Its owner, the private prison contractor CoreCivic, now hoped to quickly fill the prison again as part of the growing immigrant detention business. But ICE needed help from the state of Oklahoma to get a deal done quickly.

ICE signed an intragovernmental service agreement with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections for immigration detention at Diamondback in September 2025, a process that several experts told The Frontier can help the federal government bypass competitive bidding and contracting requirements.

The Department of Corrections then outsourced facility operations to CoreCivic, which is projected to earn about $100 million a year from running Diamondback. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections gets almost $10 million a year from the federal government to monitor CoreCivic’s compliance with the state’s agreement with ICE, including federal detention standards, and to “perform other administrative functions.”

Diamondback has rapidly become one of the largest immigration detention centers in the nation since reopening late last year. Data provided by the city of Watonga indicates that Diamondback held an average of 1,923 detainees per day in August.

Prison bus traveling along a rural road near Watonga, Oklahoma.
A prison bus travels down a rural road outside of Watonga, transferring immigrants detained by ICE to Diamondback Correctional Facility. GREG CONSTANTINE

Complaints of poor conditions at the facility have already emerged. Some detainees have waited days to be entered into the detention center’s online system and assigned a cell, according to interviews with facility employees, two immigration lawyers and a former detainee. In the meantime, they’ve sometimes been confined to holding cells or slept on mats on the floor, unable to contact their families or lawyers.

Sen. Michael Brooks, D-Oklahoma City, who’s also an immigration attorney, said he’s heard concerns from family members of his detained clients that they haven’t been able to access medications for conditions like diabetes during intake.

Elissa Stiles, an immigration attorney based in Tulsa, said one of her clients at Diamondback slept on a mat on the floor for three days and was unable to access medications that she’d received at other facilities while she was waiting for intake. She also said she’s generally unable to get in touch with clients while they’re in intake processing at Diamondback. It can take a few days to a week to receive a call from them, she said.

“I think it’s hard to describe how massive the emotional and psychological impact is on people who are being detained,” Stiles said.

The Department of Corrections has an employee on site at Diamondback who has access “at all times, with or without notice, to detainees, staff and all areas of the facility” and can inspect surveillance video and other records, according to the terms of the state agency’s contract with CoreCivic.

But the Department of Corrections won’t answer basic questions about its responsibilities when monitoring CoreCivic.

At a September Board of Corrections meeting, Justin Farris, executive director of the Department of Corrections, told The Frontier the state agency monitors day-to-day facility operations. When a reporter asked him for more details, he said those standards are available in the agency’s ICE contract. Farris ended the conversation after answering a few questions and walked away.

The agency won’t provide a copy of its full contract with ICE, even though the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office said the document was a public record. The Department of Corrections has not provided a legal reason for withholding it.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections declined to answer questions on conditions at Diamondback and the process it uses to monitor CoreCivic, citing The Frontier’s pending litigation against the state agency. The Frontier and Oklahoma Voice are suing the Department of Corrections to release the full contract with ICE. The Department of Corrections has argued in court that the contract is a federal document and the state agency does not have the authority to release an unredacted copy.

ICE declined to answer questions about the Department of Corrections’ responsibilities under its agreement with CoreCivic. The federal agency said it also monitors conditions on-site at Diamondback for compliance with detention standards.

“ICE’s oversight of Diamondback remains consistent with its oversight responsibilities at other ICE detention facilities,” Sarah Loicano, a spokesperson for ICE, said in an email.

A CoreCivic spokesperson said in an email that the Department of Corrections provides “ongoing oversight” of CoreCivic’s compliance with contractual requirements.

CoreCivic said it operates its facilities in compliance with “all applicable contractual requirements and the standards established by our government partners.”

“The safety, health and well-being of the individuals entrusted to our care at the Diamondback facility are top priorities,” a spokesperson said. “Our responsibility is to care for each person safely, humanely and with dignity while their immigration case proceeds.”

A multimillion-dollar deal for detention

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was flush with cash to expand immigration detention in 2025. Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act included $45 billion over four years to grow capacity.

With the promise of millions in new federal money to house immigration detainees, Oklahoma considered opening its own version of a now-closed detention camp in Florida nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” Department of Corrections director Farris said in a Senate budget hearing in February.

Ultimately, the agency determined CoreCivic’s long-empty Diamondback prison was the best option. The Department of Corrections acted as a middleman to help cut through the bureaucratic federal contracting rules.

Located just outside the remote rural town of Watonga, Diamondback Correctional Facility is surrounded by agricultural land. GREG CONSTANTINE

“At that point, the quickest route for them to go was us,” Farris said.

Brooks, the legislator from Oklahoma City, peppered Farris with questions during the budget hearing about the Department of Corrections’ financial arrangement with ICE. He later told The Frontier that the deal is “kind of a windfall for the state of Oklahoma.”

But he has concerns about the money the federal government has spent reopening Diamondback.

“These are perhaps the political demands of the current administration, but inevitably the pendulum seems to swing the other direction,” Brooks said. “And so to be able to have this facility that is completely retrofitted, completely upgraded, and everything else, when there’s probably a very limited time of need for it, I think it’s unfortunate.”

Farris said in the budget hearing that the Department of Corrections could eventually look to purchase the facility from CoreCivic to house state prisoners.

“The ICE thing ain’t gonna last forever, but it’s gonna be very attractive, I think, definitely to the Department of Corrections and hopefully to the state of Oklahoma,” Farris told lawmakers.

The Department of Corrections used an exemption in Oklahoma law for deals with private prison operators, which excluded the agency from state competitive bidding requirements when it contracted with CoreCivic, said Christa Helfrey, a spokesperson for the state Office of Management and Enterprise Services.

The contract with CoreCivic gave the Department of Corrections the right to purchase or lease Diamondback before anyone else.

Farris said “for due diligence,” the state agency employs a monitor stationed at Diamondback to make sure CoreCivic is abiding by the federal contract.

“They monitor it just like we would any other private contract,” Farris said.

Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore professor and government contracting expert, said the Department of Corrections monitoring a private company that it could do business with is an “extremely serious conflict of interest.”

“It’s hard to tell whether the monitoring is supposed to be serious at all, or whether it’s just a way of DHS lightening its own load — and at the expense of the detainees,” Tiefer said.

Farris told lawmakers that the Department of Corrections had about $52 million in maintenance needs at aging prisons across the state. Farris said the monthly administrative fee of $833,333 that the state agency receives from ICE would help pay for things like new prison doors, locks and fence alarms.

Rep. Mike Dobrinski, R-Okeene, whose district includes Watonga, said that the new federal funding will “go a long way” in making overdue repairs and upgrades to state prisons. But he also said he was unfamiliar with what the Department of Corrections’ role in monitoring the facility would entail.

“I can certainly understand that this is something that the (Department of Corrections) was excited for, but at the same time, I certainly understand that it comes with an obligation and a responsibility there,” Dobrinski said. “And better identifying and understanding what that means is something that I’m interested in figuring out.”

The Department of Corrections said it had no records responsive to a September request submitted by The Frontier for any contract monitor reports it had completed on Diamondback. A spokesperson for the state agency told The Frontier in April that the contract monitor files any reports directly with ICE.

Intragovernmental service agreements can help federal agencies bypass rules that require them to evaluate proposals to find the best value and can also be lucrative sources of income for cash-strapped local governments, Tiefer said.

Unlike for other federal contracts, ICE is not required to formally evaluate the past performance of detention facility operators with intragovernmental service agreements.

A disability rights watchdog group raised concerns about the use of solitary confinement and inadequate health care, food and clothing at a CoreCivic-run immigration detention center in California’s Mojave Desert after an inspection in September 2025. A group of immigrants later sued the Trump Administration to improve conditions at the facility.

The U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation in 2024 into a CoreCivic prison in Tennessee that houses state prisoners after reports of staffing shortages, physical and sexual assault, murders and high staff turnover. The company said in a regulatory filing in August that it was cooperating with the investigation.

Federal agencies have flagged issues with ICE’s use of intergovernmental service agreements in the past. An oversight office within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security found in 2019 that ICE had failed to hold detention facility contractors accountable when they didn’t meet national standards.

While ICE could impose financial penalties for noncompliance, it only did so twice between October 2015 and June 2018, the report found.

The Department of Corrections denied The Frontier’s open records requests for the intergovernmental service agreement and its attachments, which include performance and transportation requirements, staffing plans and virtual attorney visitation guidelines. Part of the contract is posted on the ICE website, but some information has been redacted, and none of the attachments are publicly available. The Frontier filed a Freedom of Information Act request with ICE for the contract in October 2025 and attachments in August. Both requests are still pending.

Reports of poor conditions emerge in scramble to reopen

After the Diamondback contract was signed, CoreCivic had about 90 days to make $30 million in repairs to the facility and hire and train workers before it reopened.

The company held job fairs in and around Watonga. Job listings indicate that detention officers make $29 an hour, and maintenance workers make $25 an hour. CoreCivic previously said that Diamondback would create approximately 400 jobs. Data from the city of Watonga indicates that the facility employed 341 as of August. CoreCivic had 17 job listings for Diamondback on its website in early October, including detention officer, maintenance worker and health care positions.

A shuttered business in downtown Watonga. GREG CONSTANTINE

A CoreCivic spokesperson said in an email that like most large employers, the facility experiences “routine vacancies” caused by turnover, promotions, retirements, leaves of absence, and time required to recruit, train and get ICE clearance for new employees. Staffing needs may also change based on detainee population, post requirements and operational demands. The spokesperson said Diamondback continues to recruit locally and fill vacancies.

Diamondback passed a pre-occupancy inspection conducted by ICE in October 2025.

Preoccupancy inspections evaluate whether facilities are ready to hold detainees, but they don’t measure standards of care, said Jesse Franzblau, a director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of immigrants.

A CoreCivic spokesperson said in an emailed statement that ICE conducted another inspection of Diamondback last month to assess the facility’s compliance with 2025 federal detention standards. The facility is still waiting for the agency’s final report, the spokesperson said.

In response to questions, ICE said that it does not “publicly discuss detailed operational matters, including inspection schedules, specific oversight activities, or internal compliance communications.”

Detainees began arriving in late December.

A plumber who immigrated from Mexico as a teenager missed his son’s high school graduation after he was arrested on a job site. A Chinese immigrant was arrested by immigration authorities at a karaoke bar while visiting her boyfriend in Oklahoma City. And a college professor from Ethiopia was arrested at the Dallas airport on his way back to Maryland after winning a teaching award at a conference.

ICE shipped them all to Diamondback. Some immigrants have faced poor conditions in transit.

Three women had to be taken to a hospital after air conditioning malfunctioned on a CoreCivic bus transporting detainees from a Texas immigration facility to Diamondback in April. Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, said in an email to The Frontier that the three detainees were treated for heat-related issues and released back to CoreCivic custody.

ICE national detention standards state that the facility will take “all reasonable precautions” to protect the lives, safety and welfare of detainees, officers and the public during ground transportation. They also require detainees to be transported “in a safe and humane manner under the supervision of trained and experienced personnel.”

The bus has remained out of service as repairs to the compressor and condenser are being made, Gustin said.

Complaints from detainees have also emerged from inside the facility. Brooks said he visits Diamondback every other week to meet with his legal clients. During a visit at the beginning of October, he said one client told him facility staff were locking down entire areas of the facility for extended periods and limiting phone access because of arguments between detainees.

Brooks said he plans to refile a bill he introduced last session that would allow elected officials and religious leaders to conduct informal inspections on facilities operated by private prison contractors, with three days’ advance notice.

“If they’re going to be located in the state of Oklahoma, we need to hold them accountable and make sure that they meet humanitarian standards,” Brooks said.

ICE standards state that facilities should provide outdoor recreation for at least five hours a week. But Stiles said she’s heard that the facility doesn’t always have enough staff to supervise recreation time.

One immigrant wrote in a court filing that he was held in a two-man cell for 15 days after being transferred to Diamondback in May with no recreation time or clean clothes. Some days, he said he wasn’t given the ability to shower.

ICE’s national detention standards state that during intake, detainees must be given the opportunity to shower “where possible” and be issued “clean institutional clothing, bedding, towels and personal hygiene items.”

The ACLU and several other groups sent a letter to federal officials in September asking ICE not to process any more detainees at Diamondback until the agency could review conditions at the facility. The groups wrote that they had received dozens of reports of poor conditions at Diamondback, including inadequate food, lack of medical care, long periods of confinement to cells, and a lack of access to attorneys or the facility’s law library.

CoreCivic said it may temporarily lock down housing units “when necessary to protect detainees and staff, restore order, complete an investigation, conduct an emergency count or search, or to respond to a medical or security incident.”

The company lifts restrictions as soon as issues are resolved and “normal operations can safely resume,” the spokesperson said.

Detainees are typically offered up to four hours of recreation every day, though they have the option not to take it, the spokesperson said. During inclement weather, detainees have access to indoor recreation in the gym.

CoreCivic said that at facilities where it provides healthcare, onsite medical clinics are staffed by professionals including physicians, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists and dentists who “contractually meet the highest standards of care.”

The company also said Diamondback provides three meals a day that are regularly reviewed by a dietician.

A former maintenance worker at the facility said while some employees were able to quickly complete background checks required by ICE to work around detainees, others waited months. In the meantime, they were assigned tasks like yard work and maintenance. He said he watched some employees get tired of waiting for clearance and quit. The former worker quit in July because he didn’t like the work schedule. The Frontier is not publishing his name because he is worried about breaking confidentiality rules from his former employer.

A spokesperson for CoreCivic said staff must pass an ICE background investigation before working in areas with detainees.

“While clearance is pending, employees may perform approved work, including grounds maintenance, painting, facility preparation, inventory, training, and administrative or operational support,” the spokesperson said.

Stiles said she is sometimes told the facility doesn’t have the staff to facilitate confidential calls with clients being held there.

Mohammad Saleem, an immigration lawyer in New York, said he sometimes has to rely on secondhand information from the families of clients at Diamondback because of delays in scheduling calls through a facility portal for communicating with attorneys.

“If we just sat around and did nothing for weeks before we got an appointment to speak to them, we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs,” Saleem said.

Rep. Sam Wargin Grimaldo, D-Oklahoma City, who is an attorney at Brooks’ Oklahoma City immigration law firm, said he’s heard about his coworkers also struggling to schedule confidential calls with their clients. He said some have resorted to sharing their personal numbers with clients for calls on a recorded line instead of going through the facility’s portal. He said the process is “certainly inefficient and potentially violative of their right to counsel.”

Wargin Grimaldo also said he’s exploring possible legislation that would help ensure that people detained at immigration facilities in Oklahoma have adequate access to communication with lawyers and family, medication and hygiene.

ICE’s national detention standards state that detainees must be allowed to use law libraries for at least 5 hours per week at “a reasonable time of day.” The standards also ban listening in on a detainee’s legal phone calls without a court order.

A CoreCivic spokesperson said Diamondback provides confidential attorney access consistent with national detention standards. The spokesperson said detainees can use computers in their housing units during waking hours, and also have access to the facility’s law library.

Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, Oklahoma
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CoreCivic announced in August it made $684.9 million in total revenue in the second quarter of this year, up by 27% from the same period of 2025. The private prison company made $19 million on Diamondback alone from October 2025 through March, according to invoices, bank statements and other public records. Records also show that the Department of Corrections made $5 million in administrative fees over that same time.

CoreCivic CEO Patrick Swindle, who stepped down in September due to health problems, said in an August earnings call that federal partners like ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service made up 53% of CoreCivic’s total revenue in the second quarter of this year.

Meanwhile, payments to the Department of Corrections and CoreCivic stalled. A Department of Corrections official said at a September board meeting that the agency and the company hadn’t received any payments from ICE since April.

The Department of Corrections didn’t respond to questions about why. CoreCivic said in an emailed statement that the company doesn’t discuss the details of contractual or financial arrangements with government partners.

“Operations at Diamondback continue as required under our contract. Staffing, services and care for the individuals housed there have not changed,” a spokesperson for the company said in the statement.

-Frontier Managing Editor Brianna Bailey contributed to this report.

-Greg Constantine’s reporting was produced as part of the 2026 Bertha Challenge Fellowship.