by Leo Hohmann, Leo’s Newsletter:
Local communities, many of them caught completely off guard, are pushing back against federal concentration-camp-style facilities being located within their cities and towns.
The Trump administration is facing serious pushback against its plans to erect federal detention centers in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and several other states.
A total of 23 warehouse sites in at least 17 states have been targeted by ICE, either for purchase or lease, allegedly for the purpose of housing illegal aliens. But most of them are currently in industrial areas not zoned for residential use and not in any kind of shape for people to live in.
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One proposed site in Salt Lake City, Utah, would purportedly have been the largest of its kind to date on U.S. soil, with the capacity to hold 7,500 detainees, but the deal has reportedly fallen through after citizens protested and local government balked, causing the owner of the facility to back out of the deal with ICE.
Then there’s the issue of whether these facilities are really meant to house strictly illegal aliens. Some critics have speculated that at least some of the space could be used for some other classification of human beings that the government doesn’t want us to know about. Anti-ICE protesters? Anti-war protesters in the upcoming war with Iran?
You can find an online interactive map of all 23 proposed ICE warehouse sites across multiple states. The map was put together by Cameron Stevenson, a national correspondent at The Courier. Descriptions include current status of each site, and any response from local communities.
Many of the sites have sparked local controversies and members of Congress are starting to ask questions of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican and strongly against illegal immigration, said he has sent a formal letter to the Department of Homeland Security seeking answers regarding reports that a warehouse in the small town of Surprise, Arizona, may be converted into a large-scale federal detention center.
In a statement posted to his website, Gosar writes that reports of a “large-scale detention facility in Surprise raise legitimate questions for residents, schools, first responders, and local governments.”
He cited concerns local officials have about infrastructure, traffic, emergency services, and public safety and said “transparent consideration and empowering state and local officials in decisions that affect their communities consistently produces the most effective outcomes.”
“My goal is straightforward: immigration enforcement must be carried out effectively while respecting the legitimate interests of the communities that bear its local impacts. I am confident that DHS will provide clear answers and will work collaboratively with local stakeholders moving forward,” stated Congressman Paul Gosar.
U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan, Democrat-New York, collected 10,000 signatures in Chester, a town of just 12,000 residents, in opposition to a proposed ICE warehouse, and U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat-Georgia, launched an inquiry into DHS and ICE over their failure to consult the town of Social Circle before advancing a similar plan.
Ossoff and Social Circle Mayor David Keener said in a joint statement:
“A proposed ICE detention facility is not right for Social Circle, and the City of Social Circle does not support it. We are urging the Administration to abandon this plan, which risks overwhelming the City’s resources and more than tripling its population.”
Like most sites selected by ICE, Social Circle lacks the infrastructure needed to provide suitable living conditions for the amount of people the Trump administration wishes to fill the warehouses with. An inability to provide adequate water, electricity, sewage, and other basic necessities would create inhumane living conditions for hundreds of thousands of people.
