SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. \u2014 Until recently, this rural city about 45 minutes east of Atlanta was best known for its Blue Willow Inn cookbooks featuring recipes for Southern dishes such as baked pineapple casserole and kudzu blossom jelly.<\/p>\n
Lately, however, the community has been trying to stave off a new identity of \u201cprison town\u201d as it fights the opening of what could become the nation\u2019s largest immigration detention center, holding up to 10,000 people.<\/p>\n
Walton County, home to this city of about 5,500, voted overwhelmingly for President Donald Trump in 2024. But, as the administration\u2019s mass deportation strategy hits closer to home \u2014 with plans moving forward to transform a more than 1 million-square-foot warehouse into a holding pen \u2014 locals say the city\u2019s infrastructure just can\u2019t handle such an influx of people.<\/p>\n
This month, Social Circle filed a lawsuit<\/a> in federal court against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The city\u2019s complaint argues that the operation of a detention facility, what it calls a \u201cmega center,\u201d would harm public health, strain the local fresh water and sewage treatment systems, and overburden emergency medical services \u201cdue to Social Circle\u2019s modest EMS capacity and DHS\u2019 nebulous plan for emergency transport,\u201d referring to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.<\/p>\n \u201cThe community is very unified,\u201d City Manager Eric Taylor said. \u201cWe want them to go away.\u201d<\/p>\n Social Circle is one of several communities across the country thrust into a charged national debate about the administration\u2019s mass immigrant deportation strategy. On the campaign trail, Trump said migrants were occupying American towns<\/a>. But local leaders, state attorneys general<\/a>, advocacy groups, and others in Arizona<\/a>, Maryland<\/a>, New Jersey<\/a>, Pennsylvania<\/a>, and Texas<\/a> claim the administration is doing the same thing by plopping detention centers into communities without the capacity to handle a surge of people.<\/p>\n Last year, Todd Lyons, who is serving as acting director of ICE until the end of May<\/a>, described a goal to have the mass deportation operate with the efficiency of Amazon.com<\/a>. Deportations would move \u201clike Prime, but with human beings,\u201d he said at a border security expo in Phoenix.<\/p>\n ICE is now putting every person they seek to deport in detention, including those with no criminal records<\/a>, without the possibility of release on bond. In January, the agency held almost twice as many people as it had that same month in 2024 under President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n However, while many supporters remain aligned with Trump\u2019s immigration stance, some locals fear their city\u2019s stability will be jeopardized. \u201cSocial Circle is not exactly flourishing, but it\u2019s making it,\u201d said Gareth Fenley, a retired social worker who ran for state Senate in 2024 as a Democrat and was not among the locals who voted for Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cIf Social Circle becomes a prison town,\u201d she said, \u201cwe\u2019re gonna lose what we have.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tSocial Circle, a city of 5,500 people located about 45 miles east of Atlanta, has filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, claiming that plans to open a massive ICE detention center could threaten the city\u2019s public health and overburden its emergency medical services.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Renuka Rayasam\/KFF Health News)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tGareth Fenley is a retired social worker who lives near Social Circle, Georgia. She ran for state Senate in 2024 as a Democrat and says the city\u2019s concerns about a proposed immigration detention facility resemble those in other communities.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Renuka Rayasam\/KFF Health News)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018I Thought It Was a Joke\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n In February, DHS purchased the 235-acre site in Social Circle for almost $129 million,<\/a> nearly five times its assessed value. It plans to house more people there than at the Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York City, and nearly triple the number of people now housed at the country\u2019s biggest immigration detention facility, which is in El Paso, Texas.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it was a joke,\u201d said John Miller, when he first read about the plans last year. He and his wife, Kathlene, have lived in Social Circle for 21 years. When they bump into neighbors, Kathlene knows their children\u2019s names, and John can cite the kids\u2019 baseball stats. Their 50-acre horse farm is less than a mile from the elementary school, and right across the street from the detention center site.<\/p>\n The Millers support Trump\u2019s stance on immigration but feel that turning the vacant warehouse into a detention center would re-create the very problems his administration is trying to solve. Whether people are concentrated in a detention center or out in the public, \u201cthey\u2019re still there,\u201d John Miller said.<\/p>\n DHS estimates that the facility would require about 1 million gallons of water daily, according to the city\u2019s suit, which alleges that volume would bleed residents\u2019 taps dry and contaminate local streams with sewage. Emergency medical calls from the detention center, the lawsuit claims, would overwhelm the city\u2019s first responders, which Taylor said clock in at 14 firefighters, 15 police officers, and two school resource officers. The city relies on Walton County for ambulance services.<\/p>\n Additionally, Social Circle would live under an ever-present threat of a major disease outbreak, the lawsuit said, adding that the federal government didn\u2019t conduct the needed environmental reviews or solicit community input beforehand.<\/p>\n Taylor said federal officials had only one meeting with local leaders and brushed off concerns about water, sewage, and emergency care, which administration officials said the site wouldn\u2019t need to use. \u201cI don\u2019t buy that,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Miller sits in his office at JK Design in Social Circle, Georgia. He and his wife, Kathlene, moved to Social Circle 21 years ago and have raised seven kids.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Renuka Rayasam\/KFF Health News)<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\tSocial Circle has filed a lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, claiming that plans to open a massive detention center could threaten the city\u2019s public health and overburden its emergency medical services.\t\t\t\t\t\t (Renuka Rayasam\/KFF Health News)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Supercharging Health Concerns<\/strong><\/p>\n Current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said he is reviewing plans made by his predecessor<\/a>, Kristi Noem, to transform warehouses like this one into detention facilities. And the department\u2019s inspector general is investigating<\/a> whether the federal government overpaid for some of the buildings. Mullin also said officials are reviewing agency policies and working with community leaders. \u201cWe want to be good partners,\u201d said Lauren Bis, a DHS spokesperson.<\/p>\n Still, the administration\u2019s swift escalation of immigrant detention has exacerbated long-standing allegations of medical neglect for those in custody across the country and led to the highest number of detainee deaths<\/a> in at least two decades.<\/p>\n Three detention facilities in Folkston, Georgia, about an hour north of Jacksonville, Florida, issued 130 emergency calls from Feb. 4, 2025, to Feb. 3, 2026, according to dispatch reports obtained by KFF Health News through a public records request. The calls from the facilities, which hold about 2,000 people, were for wide-ranging reasons, including anaphylaxis, assaults, suicide attempts, overdoses, seizures, strokes, head injuries from falls, and other health issues.<\/p>\n GEO Group, ICE\u2019s largest contractor, which runs the Folkston facility, provides \u201caround-the-clock access to medical care\u201d and relies on emergency medical services as needed, said Christopher Ferreira, director of corporate relations.<\/p>\n ERO El Paso Camp East Montana, built on a Texas military base, is currently the nation\u2019s largest detention center and holds about 2,500 people. In the five months from Aug. 17, 2025, to Jan. 20, 2026, about 130 emergency medical calls were made from the site, according to<\/a> city records. Several detainees have died at the facility; several others have tested positive<\/a> for tuberculosis, measles, or covid-19.<\/p>\n Amentum Services, which recently took over management of the facility, did not respond to questions about emergency calls.<\/p>\n Even bigger detention facilities, such as the \u201cmega center\u201d planned in Social Circle, would only supercharge those health issues and bring them to new communities, said Michelle Bran\u00e9<\/a>, who was immigration ombudsman at the Department of Homeland Security under Biden. Existing facilities already suffer from staffing shortages, poor ventilation and hygiene, and insufficient medical care, she said.<\/p>\n The proposed facilities are enormous and generally built for boxes, not people, she said. \u201cThere\u2019s no way, without extreme cost, both to the community and just in dollars, to make these safe for humans,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In the meantime, people such as Kathlene Miller said they feel that Social Circle has become \u201ccollateral damage\u201d in the larger debate over immigration. \u201cWe\u2019re like the children in a divorce,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n But Social Circle may face an uphill battle. Taylor said Walton County leaders and the state of Georgia have been silent on the center.<\/p>\n \u201cThey say it\u2019s federal issues, that they have no jurisdiction,\u201d he said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have any interest in helping us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/race-and-health\/ice-detention-center-social-circle-georgia-lawsuit-trump-stronghold\/”>article<\/a><\/a>; first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org”>KFF<\/a> Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative<\/a> Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2023\/04\/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150"<\/a>; style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n
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