By Evaristo Lara
The small town of Social Circle, located in Walton County, Georgia, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for his plans to open a detention center for 10,000 immigrants.
The argument of the complaint is that the new facilities will overload the infrastructure of a population that currently has close to 6,000 inhabitants, leaving it without drinking water and with a surplus of waste spills.
Besides, It is exposed that the ICE procedure violated state and federal lawssince to begin with, $128 million dollars from taxpayers were already allocated to the purchase of a huge local warehouse with the aim of turning it into a megacenter where a number of foreigners lacking apt status that almost double the local population will remain.
The plaintiffs maintain that the reason behind having paid more than five times the previously appraised value for the property should be investigated.
It turned out that the acquisition of this warehouse is part of an ambitious ICE plan aimed at having eight large-scale detention centers, 16 new processing facilities and acquiring 10 facilities with the capacity to house 9,600 immigrants.
Although the remodeling of the warehouse acquired in Social Circle has not yet begun, ICE’s plans are that, starting next month, it will be able to begin receiving immigrants whose average detention time will be around 60 days.
To date, the largest ICE detention center in the country is known as Camp East Montana. These facilities are located in El Paso, Texas, and can house more than 2,500 people.
It is noteworthy that this week the closure of the Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention center set up in the heart of the Everglades wetland, an ecological reserve in southern Florida, was announced.
After 10 months of operations, in the natural site surrounded by swamps, alligators and other reptiles, $608 million dollars were spent to keep it open and this sum of money was considered by the government to be extremely high to continue with the project.
Keep reading:
Ron DeSantis agrees that the Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention center will be dismantled
• “Massive deportations of immigrants are coming,” anticipates Tom Homan, border czar
• Deaths and overcrowding hit ICE centers in California during the Trump generation
• DHS closes office that monitored abuses and rights of detained migrants
