SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California State Senate passed Senate Bill 941, a measure aimed at limiting profiteering in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities by capping excessive markups on products sold to detainees and their families.
The bill, authored by Sen. Steve Padilla, who represents California Senate District 18, would prohibit excessive markups on products sold at private detention facilities.
Padilla said, “California corporations are profiting off of families during the hardest moments of their lives, while detainees, who include US citizens, are subjected to horrendous conditions. Corporations are using President Trump’s mass incarceration spree to exploit working-class families. We cannot allow this kind of opportunistic profiteering to continue unchecked.”
Currently, every ICE detainee in California is held in one of seven private detention facilities. These facilities are operated by private corporations on private property under government contracts. According to advocates and researchers, corporations operating the facilities have marked up items for sale by as much as 300% above vendor costs.
The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, in collaboration with other advocacy groups, reported these upcharges of up to 300% for basic necessities such as canned food. The report found markups including soap at 75%, ramen noodles at 100%, and Colgate baking soda and peroxide products at 139%. UCLA researchers reported that these markups highlight a disparity between detainee wages and commissary pricing, with wages covering only a small fraction of expenses.
The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy also reported that, following anonymous interviews, many detainees’ wages covered as little as 7.2% of their expenses. Researchers said this was one of many issues contributing to broader concerns about detention conditions.
To address those prices, SB 941 would prohibit the sale of commissary items in private detention facilities at markups exceeding 35% above vendor costs. The proposal builds on previous commissary price protections established under SB 474, also known as the BASIC Act, which prohibited canteen markups above 35%.
Senate Bill 941 states: “Existing law requires the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to maintain a canteen at its active facilities, and until January 1, 2028, prohibits the sale prices of the articles offered for sale in a canteen from exceeding a 35% markup above the price of the articles paid to the vendors. Existing law, commencing on January 1, 2028, requires the sale amounts of the articles to be offered for sale to be fixed by the secretary at amounts that will render each canteen self-supporting. This bill would prohibit the sale price of an article offered for sale in a commissary, as defined, at a private detention facility, defined as a detention facility that is operated by a private, nongovernmental, for-profit entity, and operating pursuant to a contract or agreement with a governmental entity, from exceeding a 35% markup above the amount paid to a vendor for that article.”
SB 941 passed the California Senate on May 4, 2026, by a 38-0 vote and now moves to the Assembly for consideration.
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Breaking News Immigration State of California
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California Legislature commissary markups ICE Detention Centers Immigration Detention SB 941 Steve Padilla