Dear Editor.

Yesterday, I drove past the warehouse that ICE just bought for 128 million dollars in Social Circle, GA. It is about ten miles from my house on the way to the city of Monroe where I have a store in an antique mall. Social Circle is a town of 5,000 people who didn’t want it, but got it anyway. ICE plans to hold 8,500 detainees there. I have no idea where they plan to put all their staff, there is no housing, nor is there the infrastructure or water. It is close by where they are building the Rivian truck plant that will be employing 7000 auto workers and numerous data centers which don’t need big staffs, but lots of cooling water.

ICE is making a big push to round up illegal immigrants, but they are also picking up legal immigrants (asylum seekers, refugees) and US citizens. It is a mess.

I suppose they chose this location because it’s rural and there wouldn’t be so many protesters. They bought it rather than leased it because of land use rules. What happens in three years when their funding runs out? This push by Trump’s gestapo is taking the taxpayers to the cleaners along with it. What are we going to do with the building when ICE no longer needs it?

It is something this area didn’t need or want. The county does need such facilities, if we’d had them a few years earlier there would have been facilities to hold all the asylum-seeking immigrants we had to release because there weren’t any holding places.

I know that most communities are split on ICE, and rural Georgia is largely Republican, but they won’t miss out on the protests there. There have been quite a few protests against Trump policies here. There is also a large number of preservation groups in the area and neighboring Morgan County has practically made itself undevelopable through land conservancy. This area wasn’t burned during Sherman’s March to the SEa, so there are many, many old buildings that the area is trying to preserve along with their rural heritage. It is a difficult time for our communities here as Atlanta grows it is swallowing a way of life.

I suspect that even though this new detention center is rural there will be continuing protests and thousands of new homes built putting a real stress on our communities tax wise. It is unfortunate but the area is bring brought kicking and screaming into the national spotlight. I can’t decide whether that is good or bad, but I’m thinking the latter. A way of life is passing before our eyes.

Richard King

Covington