U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is getting involved in a small town’s efforts to scrap a provisional plan from the Trump administration to turn an industrial warehouse into an immigration detention facility.
Late last month, leaked internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents outlined tentative plans to use a warehouse in Social Circle, about an hour east of Atlanta, to detain up to 10,000 immigrants.
It’s a move that would significantly expand ICE’s already sprawling immigration detention system in the state.
On Wednesday, Ossoff sent a letter to Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and Todd Lyons, ICE’s acting director, to elevate Social Circle leadership’s concerns over the prospective facility — and to urge the administration to answer questions from locals about the project.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
“A proposed ICE detention facility is not right for Social Circle, and the City of Social Circle does not support it,” said Ossoff and Social Circle mayor David Keener in a joint statement.
In addition to Social Circle, ICE is considering large-scale warehouses for immigrant detention in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona and Missouri according to The Washington Post, which first reported on ICE’s plan.
The prospect of an ICE facility within Social Circle city limits has rankled residents, who voiced strong opposition to the project during a Jan. 6 community meeting and a Jan. 14 protest. City leadership had told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that news of ICE’s tentative plans caught them unaware and city leadership is against the facility.
According to Ossoff, local officials have struggled to get information from the Trump administration about ICE’s future in their community.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
In his letter to the Trump administration leaders, Ossoff urged them to “promptly engage the City’s leadership to ensure that its citizens receive critical information regarding the proposed facility and its potential impacts on their community.”
Also in the letter, the Democrat reiterated city leaders’ concern that Social Circle lacks the resources to support a project that would bring an influx of people into a community of just 5,000 residents, including insufficient water and sewer infrastructure.
“We are urging the Administration to abandon this plan, which risks overwhelming the City’s resources and more than tripling its population,” Ossoff and Keener wrote in the statement.
The Department of Homeland Security has not confirmed to the AJC whether it plans to move forward with a new detention facility in Social Circle. DHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday about Ossoff’s letter.
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