ICE warehouses get cold shoulder — even in Trump country 

Voters in Social Circle, Ga., overwhelmingly backed President Trump in 2024. But when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased a 1 million-square-foot warehouse in the tiny city to convert it into a mega detention center for immigrants, residents and local officials pushed back hard.  

In February, the city notified Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that it had shut off water and sewage services to the property until the agency explained how it could operate “without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity.”

“We’re against it,” Eric Taylor, the Social Circle city manager, told The Hill. “Having something come in like this is just really a different dynamic than what this particular community is about.” 

Social Circle, with a population of about 5,500, is by no means an exception; it is one of two communities in Georgia that illustrate a national trend. As the DHS has embarked on a $38.3 billion plan to boost detention capacity by 92,600 beds, communities that back the president’s agenda have said no to housing immigrants in their backyard. 

New Jersey, alongside the GOP-leaning township of Roxbury, sued the DHS and ICE in March over a purchased warehouse. Residents of Surprise, Ariz., protested against a 1,500 bed facility, which the DHS and ICE reduced to 500 beds last month amid the uproar. 

In February, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) spoke out against a warehouse conversion plan in Byhalia, Miss. Separately, the Republican executive of Orange County, N.Y., told a January board meeting that “an ICE facility will create chaos and will tax our emergency management and first responders.”

“Just not in their backyard. They’re fine with it somewhere else, they just don’t want it back here,” Social Circle Council member Tyson Jackson said of the opposition in his community — a sentiment apparently shared in many other reliable red districts. 

According to a document released by ICE in February, the agency is seeking to stand up eight large-scale detention facilities that each could hold 7,000 to........

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