Social Circle is suing ICE

SOCIAL CIRCLE — One of the Georgia towns slated to be the site of a new immigration detention center is suing ICE to stop the effort.

Since officials in Social Circle, east of Atlanta, first learned last year of the intention of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to turn a vacant warehouse near an elementary school into a detention center, they have insisted their water and sewer systems are nowhere near the task of serving the estimated 10,000 detainees ICE plans for the space the agency now owns.

Now the city of 5,000 has sued ICE in Georgia’s middle district federal court, alleging the agency has completely flouted required environmental review of the warehouse detention center project as spelled out in the National Environmental Policy Act.

While attorneys general in Arizona and Maryland have filed similar suits recently, Social Circle appears to be the first municipality to sue ICE for alleged overreach in the warehouse detention center scheme, the latest salvo as people across the country push back against plans to open immigration detention centers in their communities.

“Our position is the same as it was last month, two months ago, three months ago, in that it’s still going to cause significant problems on our water and sewer infrastructure,” Social Circle City Manager Eric Taylor said.

Taylor said the city is finally putting an upgrade on its sewage treatment plant out for bid after about a decade of preparation.

“Right now we’re at about 660,000 gallon a day capacity in sewer,” Taylor said. “Our new plant would be built to double that capacity to be able to process 1.5 million gallons a day.”

But Taylor said even that upgrade won’t leave enough headroom for the ICE detention warehouse.

“They’re talking about discharging over a million gallons a day of sewage off of that site, you know, per their own documents,” Taylor said. “That by itself exceeds our current capacity and will exceed our capacity that we’ve been working on expanding for years.”

Kristi Noem was the head of the Deparment of Homeland Security when news broke about the Social Circle warehouse. Taylor said Noem’s DHS was largely incommunicative with Social Circle.

Now the DHS is led by Markwayne Mullin, a former Republican senator of Oklahoma who has been reported by some news outlets to be reviewing the warehouse to detention center program nationally.

Taylor said for him and other officials like him, any review by Mullin has just been a rumor.

“There’ve been no conversations, so I guess in that way, they’re probably still the same as they were,” Taylor said.