Oakwood, Georgia
 — 

Every weekday afternoon, dozens of kids pour out of small buses for the after-school program at a dance studio here, about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta. In a few months, more than a thousand people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be just a few hundred feet away from them.

“Are there going to be agents with guns outside?” asked Alison Woodbury, who has operated the ALICATS dance studio for 24 years.

With little notice and no public hearings, a half-million square feet of warehouse space initially intended to be commercial property is now set to become an ICE “regional processing facility,” where detainees could stay for up to a week before being transferred to another location.

“That’s just not something that you want across the street from a dance and after-school care facility,” Woodbury said. “I don’t even feel comfortable.”

The processing facility is part of a broader effort by the Department of Homeland Security to rapidly expand immigrant detention in towns nationwide. But the move is catching local officials by surprise, leaving them and their communities scrambling for answers.

The concept is straightforward: turn already existing warehouses into detention centers to hold undocumented immigrants before their potential deportation. But the push against it is far more complicated, local officials say.

In Mississippi, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker pushed back against a proposed DHS plan to purchase a warehouse for detention, citing strain on local infrastructure and economic opportunities. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem agreed to look elsewhere, according to Wicker. Maryland filed a lawsuit over similar plans. And in Arizona, local officials are concerned the warehouse-turned-center risks being a drain on the economy and local resources.

Noem — who will leave her post at the end of March — planned to proceed with four multimillion-dollar contracts to retrofit existing warehouses to detain immigrants, according to two sources familiar with the contracts. Two of those contracts have been publicly listed. The awards were expected to allow selected contractors to begin work in Surprise, Arizona; Hamburg, Pennsylvania; Tremont, Pennsylvania; and Williamsport, Maryland, according to one of the sources. It’s unclear if or when the Pennsylvania warehouses will move forward.

In a statement, DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said that “instead of relying on third party owned facilities, ICE is now purchasing properties across the country,” adding that ICE had so far signed contracts for the facilities in Arizona and Maryland.

“These facilities will be designed as full-service campuses, to include immigration hearing rooms, intake and screening, medical services, access to counsel, religious services, recreational areas, technology for virtual communication with family, food, hygiene products and full-case processing capability,” she said.

In Oakwood, the dispute over the new center is exposing the complicated political crosscurrents spurred by aggressive immigration enforcement. Hall County is part of a bright red ring around the increasingly blue political map of Atlanta’s suburbs, with 71.4% of votes in the 2024 presidential election going for Trump.

But in addition to its Republican roots, Hall County also has one of the highest Latino populations in the state, with about 30% of residents identifying as Latino or Hispanic, according to the US Census Bureau.

Business owners across the street from the Oakwood center — where unmarked vehicles now are seen entering and exiting without explanation — say they never saw it coming.

“There’s a little bit of devastation, to be honest, just because of the nature of our business,” said the owner of Iconic Barbershop, who asked that his name not be used, saying he tries to stay out of politics. “People come here to relax and get a haircut.”

At both Iconic and the dance studio, a large segment of the customers are Latino.

“I don’t know the legal status of any of my people,” Woodbury said. “That’s not my business.”

The front door of her studio now has a sign advising ICE agents are not welcome inside, an advisory that has become familiar in multiple cities that have been targeted for immigration surges by the Trump administration.

Woodbury says with ICE moving into the neighborhood, she is already making plans to find a new location.

“I think if I don’t move, I would lose over half of my clientele,” said Woodbury, “so I feel like I have to move.”

The owner of the Southern Magnolia Body Art Studio two doors down is also looking into leaving the shadow of the ICE facility, a move she says would cost her $80,000.

“Now pulling into the parking lot has a feeling of doom, frustration, and a feeling of helplessness, like my business is slipping away from me,” April Ramirez said.

Barely two years ago, the land across Atlanta Highway from the dance studio was mostly green grass with a couple of small ranch houses. Over the past year, the two massive warehouses grew up on the property, dwarfing the small car lot and pet grooming business that sit on either side.

What was billed as a commercial development — expected to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual property tax revenue for the community — is instead a key part of the DHS detention plan.

One of the small homes that was torn down to make way for the warehouses was where Betsy Robinson’s grandparents lived for almost 50 years.

“While I was sad to see them go, nothing prepared me for the gut punch I felt when I heard the news that the federal government plans to imprison people there,” Robinson said.

With plans to continue increasing arrests, DHS has sought to accelerate the construction of detention centers — an effort estimated to cost around $38 billion.

“This effort aims to meet the growing demand for bedspace and streamline the detention and removal process, focusing on non-traditional facilities built specifically to support ICE’s needs,” according to an ICE document provided to New Hampshire, which pushed back against a new detention center in the state. That planned facility was eventually scrapped.

The plan includes acquiring and renovating eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing sites, as well as existing “turnkey” facilities. The average length of stay, depending on the facility, ranges between an average of three to seven days to 60 days.

ICE said it plans to activate all facilities by the end of November.

The expedited process means that some towns have learned about ICE parachuting in only upon the sale of a nearby building.

The Oakwood warehouse facility was purchased by DHS for $68 million on February 18, according to a deed filed with Hall County, only two weeks after the city first got word of the agency’s intentions.

City officials say they aren’t sure the warehouse — which wasn’t designed to house people — has enough water and sewer service to handle 24/7 accommodations for so many detainees.

With so little time to absorb the reality of what’s planned, local activists are finding unusual alliances.

“Business leaders who hire the majority of the people in Hall County and even local government officials do not want this thing,” said Matéo Penado, founder of the Rainbow Collective and child of Latino immigrants, who is part of a coalition fighting the detention facility.

“Our workforce, our kids that go to our schools — they hear the rumors and at some point, perception becomes reality,” said Ryan Owen, vice president of the local Kubota Manufacturing plants, at a recent Chamber of Commerce event, the Gainesville Times reported. “There’s an anxiety and fear they live with.”

That concern is particularly acute for the local chicken processing industry in the neighboring city of Gainesville — which proudly calls itself the Poultry Capital of the World — where food-processing workers earn less than a thousand dollars a week on average.

“The Poultry Capital of the World cannot run if everyone is living in fear of being snatched up,” Penado said.

The Oakwood facility is not the only Georgia warehouse set to become a detention center for ICE. It’s not even the largest. A sprawling building 45 miles away in the town of Social Circle is set to go online by October, adding a million square feet of floor space to the Trump administration’s capacity to hold detainees.

“The facility in Social Circle is expected to house anywhere from 7,500 to 10,000 detainees,” the city government said last month.

The capacity of the Social Circle “mega center” — one of eight across the nation — would be about twice the town’s existing population.

Although DHS has provided documents about its plans to Social Circle, City Manager Eric Taylor told CNN no one from the agency has spoken directly to local leaders.

“We are still 100% motivated to try to stop this any way we can,” Taylor said.

Unlike the Oakwood facility, the massive warehouse in Social Circle is in an industrial area far removed from local businesses. But Taylor says their utilities can’t handle the water and sewer demands that would come from housing up to 10,000 people.

“This will be a very well-structured detention facility meeting our regular detention standards,” DHS said in a statement to CNN.

Activists who have been providing legal representation to detainees in Georgia say it’s an example of the slapdash way the administration has been attempting to hold greater numbers of immigrants.

“These buildings were not constructed for the purpose of holding human beings. They were constructed to be, like, Amazon distribution centers,” said Samantha Hamilton, staff attorney with Advancing Justice Atlanta. “It doesn’t look like anything that could remotely detain that many people.”

In a recent earnings call, GEO Group Executive Chairman George Zoley acknowledged the challenges with flipping warehouses into detention centers, saying the company was “cautiously participating” while aware of the logistical issues that could arise and the resistance on the ground.

GEO Group is one of the largest private prison companies and historically one of the go-to partners for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s unclear what, if any, warehouses they will be involved in converting.

“It is more complicated than you may think as far as the physical plant renovations of a warehouse to get it operational. It is complicated,” Zoley said.

Oakwood City Council members say they are frustrated that answers about the future of the facility aren’t forthcoming.

At a packed town meeting last week, the City Council received a standing ovation after unanimously voting to request that the federal government stop all construction at the Oakwood facility until their questions are answered.

“The City requests that DHS and ICE provide all … environmental, infrastructural, public-safety, and operational analyses, and all contractor-prepared materials, so that the City may evaluate the federal government’s compliance with applicable law,” the resolution says, suggesting a lawsuit to stop construction could still be in the future.

While the council’s decision was unanimous, the community’s response was not. A small group at the meeting holding “Stand With ICE” signs said they believe the detention center would make the area safer.

“We just want to clean up the streets,” supporter Brian Steptoe said. “I mean, shouldn’t everybody want safer communities for their families?”

Following the vote, DHS told CNN it was unmoved by Oakwood’s demand for details.

“Let’s be honest about this. This isn’t about the environment,” a department spokesperson said Tuesday. “It’s about trying to stop President Trump from making America safe again.”

“DHS aims to work with officials on both sides of the aisle to expand detention space to help ICE law enforcement carry out the largest deportation effort in American history,” the spokesperson said.

So far, the only elected official in the community who has spoken out publicly in support of the Oakwood facility is Republican US Rep. Andrew Clyde, whose district includes Hall County.

“I fully support President Trump in protecting American citizens by detaining and deporting criminal illegals from our communities,” Clyde said in a statement. “The new Oakwood ICE facility will play an important role in this fight by serving as a regional processing center.”

Clyde said the Oakwood center will “support a total of 429 jobs across the Georgia region,” bringing in $34.3 million in income and sales taxes.

But City Manager B.R. White said the federal government does not have to pay taxes, denying the city, county and school district more than $770,000 in property tax revenue they were expecting when they thought the warehouse was going to be used by a private business.

Hall County officials say what little they have heard about the plans for Oakwood have come indirectly through Clyde’s office, and they are frustrated DHS is not communicating directly with them.

“It’s our county. We should know everything that’s going to happen,” County Commissioner Gregg Poole said.

With even more recently completed warehouses dotting Atlanta Highway just a mile away from the Oakwood holding facility, local residents are concerned this may not be the end.

“We know that where ICE goes in our country, danger follows,” said Ari Mathé, a local child welfare attorney who has taken a leading role in opposing the new facility.

It’s a cause that is also personal for Mathé. Her daughter has been a student at the ALICATS dance studio across the street since she was 2 years old.

More than a hundred people came to a Hall County Board of Commissioners meeting last month where Penado and Mathé asked for a moratorium on new detention centers, an idea they acknowledged was a “hope and a prayer” attempt to slow a federal government expansion they have little legal power to stop.

“Make clear to DHS that this detention facility is not welcome here,” Mathé said in a speech to commissioners that was frequently interrupted by applause.

Before the public comment was even over, Commissioner Jeff Stowe surprised even the most hopeful backers of the moratorium.

“We are going to do that, and we’re all four in favor,” said Stowe, drawing a standing ovation from most of the crowd, along with pleasant surprise from those who had been pushing hard for it.

“Holy sh*t,” Mathé whispered with a smile.

The new moratorium cannot stop the Oakwood facility from being built, but opponents hope it will cause more local communities to follow suit.

“Chaos was the point and bullying these small towns they didn’t think would stand up to them,” Mathé said. “They were wrong.”