It is one of three Navy consolidated brigs and is the Pacific area regional confinement facility for the United States Department of Defense.

[2] The 208,000-square-foot (19,300 m2) facility has a capacity of up to 400 male and/or female prisoners and is staffed with 31 civilian and 173 military personnel.

[citation needed] In March 1996, the United States Department of Justice entered into an agreement with the U.S. Navy and a private jail firm and began to use a section of the brig for illegal immigrants who had been deported for criminal convictions, mostly drug crimes, and had been re-arrested for re-entering the United States.

Metropolitan Correctional Center, San Diego, had been overcrowded for a long period of time leading up to 1996.

[5]Within two weeks of the move,[5] on March 29 of that year, prisoners rioted, setting fires inside their housing units.

[6] The prisoners were upset over a lack of commissary privileges, and a perceived low quality of television service, so they obscured a surveillance camera with a blanket and set fire to mattresses.

Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a member of the United States House of Representatives who had opposed the housing of illegal immigrants in the facility, said that the move was a "victory for San Diegans" because putting illegal immigrants in the brig placed national security in danger.