Officials in the small Georgia town of Social Circle have filed a lawsuit against federal immigration agencies over plans for a huge immigration detention facility, arguing the project threatens to overburden local services and damage the environment.
The complaint, filed on Wednesday in US district court for the middle district of Georgia, accuses US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of moving ahead with the project without completing mandatory environmental assessments.
City officials say the agencies intend to transform an existing warehouse into what they described as an immigration detention “mega center”.
The lawsuit asks the court to pause the development while judges determine whether federal authorities violated the National Environmental Policy Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and Georgia public nuisance law.
Founded in 1869, Social Circle covers about 11 square miles in Walton county and nearby areas east of the Atlanta metropolitan region. It is a small rural town with 19th-century buildings downtown, and horse and cattle farms and hay for sale on the outskirts.
Local officials, including the town’s mayor and police chief, have all publicly opposed the DHS’s plans to open what could become one of the largest immigration detention centers in the US. Residents only learned of the Trump administration’s plans to buy the empty warehouse from a December Washington Post article, on which the Guardian previously reported.
The dispute centers on a warehouse located at 1365 East Hightower Trail. According to the lawsuit, federal officials purchased the property in February and plan to convert it into a detention complex capable of holding 10,000 detainees while employing approximately 2,500 workers.
The filing says the development would significantly burden the community’s water and sewer systems. It states Social Circle’s “already-strained utility network cannot support the planned facility, which would effectively triple the town’s population” which stands at about 5,000 residents.
“Among other harms, Defendants’ plans to imprison up to 10,000 people in a commercial warehouse would overwhelm Social Circle’s fresh water supply and sewage treatment capabilities – resulting in dry taps and raw human waste spills,” the complaint continues.
The lawsuit further claims federal agencies failed to “consider how their plans to convert the Warehouse into a detention facility will impact the safety and health of Social Circle’s residents, the town’s infrastructure and resources, and the local environment”.
ICE’s warehouse purchase in Social Circle is one of several dozen across the US in recent months. In a handful of locations – such as Ashland, Virginia and Kansas City, Missouri – local opposition appears to have successfully prevented those sales.
