Social Circle cuts water to ICE facility. How GA towns fight back
USA TODAY
As DHS plans a major ICE detention center in Social Circle, GA, officials have cut off water to site. Oakwood also passes resolution to stop center.
Two towns in Georgia are preparing to become new hubs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement sites in the southeast as the Department of Homeland Security works to retrofit industrial warehouses into detention facilities.
A smaller warehouse in Oakwood, Georgia is set to become a detainee processing facility, holding about 1,500 beds. A massive warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia is being converted to a longer term detention center where detainees will be held before deportation. As many as 10,000 detainees could be held there.
Oakwood and Social Circle are both small towns about 40 to 50 minutes outside Atlanta, Oakwood to the northeast and Social Circle to the southeast. Officials in both towns found out their properties had been selected by DHS when Washington Post reporters called to confirm documentation they had received. It was a surprise to city officials in both cases.
Residents of Oakwood and Social Circle have strongly opposed the centers, despite voting for Republicans overwhelmingly in the last few elections. Officials say the water and sewer systems can't handle the sudden influx and added capacity these facilities will need, but there has been little to no conversations between DHS officials and local engineers.
The facilities are expected to begin hosting detainees later this spring, but there is a lot of work that has to be done both to the warehouses and the towns' infrastructure before that can happen. Town officials have little to no control over the properties once they were purchased by the federal government.
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As DHS plans a major ICE detention center in Social Circle, GA, officials have cut off water to site. Oakwood also passes resolution to stop center.
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