Not in Our Town or Anywhere: Social Circle Sues to Keep ICE Warehouse Out of Community
Social Circle, GA – The city of Social Circle, GA has filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the agency’s plans to convert a local warehouse into a massive, 10,000-bed detention site. For months, ICE has been moving to open the detention facility without complying to environmental regulations or coordinating with the town and local community.
ICE is scouting, purchasing, and retrofitting warehouses nationwide for immigration detention, which are expected to detain between 1,500-10,000 people each. These detention warehouses are a part of the Trump regime’s mass detention expansion that will put an immense strain on local infrastructure, including roads, water and sewer systems, emergency services, and other essential public resources. In Social Circle, a town of just 5,000 people, the proposed warehouse detention site would triple the town’s population, consume more than a million gallons of additional fresh water per day, and require wastewater management far beyond the town’s existing capacity.
Confining people in large-scale, makeshift detention warehouses will exponentially increase the likelihood for abuse, infectious disease, and death in ICE custody, as ICE cuts people off from their loved ones and support networks, subjecting them to conditions meant for storing products, never people.
Small towns like Social Circle are courageously taking on ICE to fight detention warehouses from entering their community and winning in Utah, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Virginia, Mississippi, and more. People are uniting together, uplifting their shared values to welcome people and keep everyone safe, calling on businesses to take a stand, and demanding ICE out of their communities.
Advocates issued the following statements:
Nery Lopez, Senior Organizer at Detention Watch Network, said:
“All immigration detention is inherently inhumane and rife with abuse, and yet the warehouse model currently being pursued by ICE is particularly horrifying. People are not commodities to be shipped, discarded, and profited off of in detention warehouses or any detention facility — full stop. Local communities are making it clear from coast to coast – they don’t want detention centers or warehouse detention, and they will fight tooth and nail to block ICE. We demand an end to Trump’s cruel mass detention expansion and that detention facilities be shut down for good.”
Priyanka Bhatt, Senior Staff Attorney at Project South, said:
“This administration’s disregard for human life has reached a new level. It is an abomination that warehouses built for manufacturing items and commercial use are being repurposed to cage thousands of human beings across the country. But we will not stay silent. We stand in solidarity with Social Circle and with all the courageous acts of resistance and resilience across the country fighting back against this administration's attack on our communities.”
Samantha Hamilton, Senior Staff Attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta, said:
“Whenever a detention center has opened up in Georgia, it has not made communities safer. Instead, it has expanded ICE’s sphere of violence from inside the facility—where people are routinely assaulted and dehumanized—to the surrounding communities outside. But the people of Social Circle have said no. ICE’s attempt to pull the wool over people’s eyes and push this warehouse plan through has been met with resistance from the start. We applaud the people of Social Circle in taking the decisive step of suing the Trump administration to stand up against ICE terror.”
Gareth Fenley, Co-Leader of Indivisible Boldly Blue, said:
“Social Circle neighbors overwhelmingly agree that a detention center is not welcome here. There’s room for many different reasons that all support the same conclusion. No one should be locked up in a warehouse, not in our community, not in our name. We call on the Department of Homeland Security to abandon the warehouse plan. It’s wrong for Social Circle and wrong for anywhere.”
Matéo Penado, Chairman of The Rainbow Collective, said:
“Detention centers are already cruel, profit-driven systems. Converting warehouses into detention facilities is flat out inhumane. The city of Social Circle suing DHS and ICE sets an important precedent, showing that cities like Oakwood can and should use every tool available - including legal action - to stop these inhumane projects. Communities across Georgia clearly oppose detention warehouses. Through organized people power, grassroots efforts have already pushed forward various local measures to block them. It is greatly encouraging to see when our local politicians stand alongside their constituents and do everything within their power to follow the will of the people - and the will of the people say no detention center in Social Circle, Oakwood, or anywhere!”
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Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI), and other marginalized communities in Georgia and the Southeast. Visit advancingjustice-atlanta.org.
Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.
El Refugio is a nonprofit organization based in Georgia. The organization accompanies immigrants at Stewart Detention Center and their loved ones through hospitality, visitation, support, and advocacy. It works toward a future without immigration detention.
Indivisible Boldly Blue is an action group of progressive people based in Walton County and surrounding areas.
Indivisible Georgia 10 empowers the residents of Georgia’s 10th Congressional District to actively engage in civic life and work toward a more inclusive democracy.
North Decatur Action is a coalition of neighbors whose mutual support will help to create and protect a safe, democratic, and just society.
North Georgia Community Action Network is a nonpartisan group of neighbors who believe in standing together to protect democracy, safeguard our rights, and ensure that our government works for all of us.
Project South, founded in 1986, the Institute to Eliminate Poverty & Genocide, is rooted in the legacy of the Southern Freedom Movement and Black Radical Tradition. Project South cultivates strong social movements in the U.S. South and the global South, powerful enough to contend with some of the most pressing and complicated social, economic, and political problems we face today.
The Rainbow Collective (TRC) is a grassroots socialist organization based in Gainesville, Georgia, working to educate, empower, and mobilize the working-class in the community and the North Georgia region. TRC does mutual aid work, political education, and organizes around local concerns. Follow on Instagram at @theerainbowcollective
50501 Georgia is a grassroots, community-driven movement created for this moment. It is non-partisan, accessible, and committed to real, tangible change.
