Trump's Trials - A town's warehouse will become an ICE detention center. The town says it wasn't asked

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

The conservative town of Social Circle, Georgia, is upset about a warehouse that is set to become an immigrant detention center. NPR's Grant Blankenship reports. Support NPR and hear every episode of��Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It's Trump's terms from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Every episode, we bring you a story from NPR's recent coverage of the 47th president, with a focus on ways he's using power like no president before him. Here is the latest from NPR. From NPR News, I'm A Martinez. The Department of Homeland Security is looking for real estate. Communities around the country have been surprised to learn that DHS wants to use

local warehouses for detention space to accommodate. the department's immigration crackdown. And that includes a warehouse in a small Georgia city that voted overwhelmingly for President Trump. Grant Blankenship of Georgia Public Broadcasting takes us there. The warehouse 50 miles east of Atlanta on Interstate 20 is not much to look at. It's really just a box, an over one million square foot gray box dotted with semi-trailer loading docks. It's built to be a distribution center. While attempts by the Department of Homeland Security to lease or buy properties like this in other states have fallen apart, this one is a done deal. A sales deed shows the federal government paid just under $129 million for the space.

Eric Taylor really wishes they hadn't. This is not something, hands down, that the city can support. Taylor is the city manager for the city of Social Circle, population about 5,000, which now includes the Homeland Security Warehouse, which will be used to hold detained immigrants. And he says politically this shouldn't be a problem. Social Circle went approximately 73% in favor of Donald Trump in the last election. This opposition is not about the immigration crackdown. It's about infrastructure. The frustration here is that they're looking at a building that was not built for human habitation.

There's nothing more than a shell of a building. He says DHS won't answer his calls. But if they did, he would tell them the city doesn't have enough drinking water. The permit we have to draw water out of the rivers, only a million gallons a day. Taylor says in the heat of Georgia summer, residents will use right up to that limit. Now toss in an ICE detention center.

Triples our population overnight. If it holds up to 10,000 people as planned. DHS did not respond to our request for comment, but that figure comes from Republican Mike Collins, social circles representative in the U.S. House, and apparently the only Georgia elected official who's managed to talk directly to DHS about their plans. And I fully support ICE 100%.

That's Collins. talking to reporters during a recent trip to the Georgia State Capitol bill. Collins is running against Democrat John Ossov for the U.S. Senate. Collins says he agrees with people, like city manager Eric Taylor, that the detention center is a bad fit for the town. But he says there's still room to make it work. I think that as long as DHS comes in there and sits down and says, this is what we've found, this is how we're going to operate this,

and takes care of any of the concerns for the local officials there to make sure that they don't impact them negatively, then they'll be able to operate that facility. Social Circle resident Riannon Townley is doubtful. Her child attends the elementary school less than a mile from the ice warehouse. Are they going to put a 16-foot barbed-bar fence up that the kids have to see every day?

And she's tired of the Told You So comments on social media about her neighbors in this heavily Republican area, like, you guys voted for this? No, a detention center next to my child's school was not on my ballot. That wasn't what I voted for. She's also a real estate agent. And the warehouse sale is already keeping her busy.

I've had calls for people wanting to sell their homes. They're worried about their property values going down. They're worried about becoming a prison town and that nobody's going to want to live in Social Circle. Representative Collins says DHS plans to detain people in the Social Circle warehouse as soon as April. Meanwhile, city officials are still waiting to talk directly to the Department of Homeland Security. For NPR news, I'm Grant Blankenship in Social Circle, Georgia. Before we wrap up a reminder, you can. find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics podcast, where you can hear NPR's

political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thank you for listening to Trump's terms from NPR.