FOLKSTON, Ga. – A controversial plan to expand the capacity of the Folkston ICE Processing Center in Charlton County has been put on hold as some immigrant rights advocates call for it to be shut down.
According to The Washington Post, the federal government has paused a plan to issue a $47 million contract to expand the center while the contract is reviewed by the U.S. DOGE Service. The Post said the contract was flagged for review under a federal policy that requires all Department of Homeland Security contracts worth more than $20 million to be reviewed by DOGE.
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Immigrant advocates protested outside the Atlanta ICE Field Office on Thursday.
“People should be able to go back to their communities to continue a process without being detained without being incarcerated without the need of you know having to you know go through all this process where their human dignity, their human rights are uh at risk,” Amilcar Valencia, Executive Director of El Refugio, told CNN. ”We are here demanding that the county that the, you know, the administration stops any efforts to expand the Folkston detention center, because again this is going to affect not only the community in South Georgia but the whole community throughout the state of Georgia and the Carolinas as well."
11 Alive reported that Thursday’s rally came in anticipation of a vote by the Charlton County Board of Commissioners to approve a contract modification with ICE that would greenlight the expansion. But that vote, originally set for Thursday evening, has been postponed. A new date has not been set.
The new detention contract would have created the largest immigrant detention center in the country and a potential hub for housing immigrants arrested throughout the southeast.
The Post reported it would have combined Folkston, an active ICE detention center that can hold up to 1,100 detainees, with D. Ray James, an idle former prison located on an adjacent property that can hold around 1,870 detainees, according to an agenda item posted on the county’s website.
Activists talked about years of complaints about conditions inside Georgia’s immigration detention centers.
“They are reporting overcrowded conditions at this facility. People are sleeping on the floor. People don’t have access to proper medical attention when they get sick,” Valencia said.
