SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. — Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, joined leaders in Social Circle in opposing a massive immigration detention center.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is transforming a large warehouse in Social Circle into a holding facility for up to 10,000 detainees.
Channel 2’s Tom Regan said an elementary school is about a mile from the 1-million-square-foot, newly built warehouse.
ICE paid about $128 million for the warehouse and will spend millions more to convert it into a holding facility.
Warnock arrived at the massive future migrant detention center March 2 after visiting a school nearby.
“Parents, teachers, the folks that I spoke to at the elementary school are deeply concerned and opposed to this facility,” he said.
Warnock noted that a large majority of voters in Social Circle supported president trump in the last election.
“They didn’t vote for potential boil water advisories, or sewage overflows because this administration has overstrained their resources,” he said.
The facility is expected to house anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 detainees.
The city manager says the water and sewer treatment resources needed to support that many people would be impossible.
“We simply do not have the water and sewage capacity to handled the demands which would effectively tripling the population of our city practically overnight,” said Eric Taylor, Social Circle city manager.
He said ICE officials told him, the were considering trucking in water to the facility, a million gallons a day. He did the math on that.
“Assuming water tanks will only hold about 6,000 gallons, that’s 167 trucks a day, over seven trucks every hour, going up and down this busy highway,” Taylor said.
He says he will join Sen. Warnock to fight construction of the detention center.
“Wherever you are on the president’s policy, the sense is the city didn’t sign up for this,” Warnock said.
Regan reached out to ICE for a comment. They didn’t respond Monday, but a couple of weeks ago, an official said they do impact studies to make sure a detention center doesn’t create hardship on local utilities or infrastructure.
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