Overview
- The city filed the suit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia to stop the conversion of a warehouse into a 10,000-bed immigration facility.
- The complaint names DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ICE Director Todd M. Lyons in their official roles and alleges violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
- City attorneys say the project would add about 2,500 staff and could triple Social Circle’s population, demanding more than one million extra gallons of water per day and producing similar wastewater.
- The lawsuit notes the site is under 1,000 feet from a residential subdivision and less than a mile from an elementary school with about 1,100 students, raising safety concerns.
- The case follows months of local pushback and comes as DHS pursues warehouse conversions for detention growth nationwide, a strategy that has drawn resistance in other towns; as of Thursday, the agencies had not commented and no hearing date was listed.