Al Zon Media. Hi, friends, and welcome to the show. It's me James today and I'm very lucky to be joined by Sam Hamilton, who is the senior litigation staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta.
Hi Sam, Hi James, Thanks for having me.
Yeah, thanks for joining us. And we are gathered here today to talk about the new proposals that DHS has to detain people in literal warehouses. Right, if people aren't familiar, maybe you could die out by explaining what those proposals are and how they specifically relate to the areas where you're organizing in Atlanta.
Sure.
So, around December of twenty twenty five, a journalist leaked a list of about twenty different cities across the country where where ICE was intending to open new detention facilities in warehouses specifically. And this list contained the names of the cities and the expected or projected occupancy of each of these facilities. And so I live here in Atlanta, Georgia, and there were two cities on that list with warehouses contemplated.
One is located in the city of Flowery Branch, where the warehouse there is intended to detain up to one thousand, five hundred people, and the other is in the city of Social Circle, Georgia, where ICE intends to use a warehouse that is over one million square feet to detain about eighty five hundred people that fast.
Like, I think that this would dwarf the capacity of any like I'm trying to think of, there are maybe prisons sort of bigger than that.
I don't know, but like in immigration terms, I don't think there is anything.
Yeah, I mean, you know, so for the last four years or so, I've worked I've worked on various different shutdown ICE campaigns here in Georgia, and for the last four years I've been working with the campaign to shut down the Folkston Ice Processing Center, which is an ice facility in South Georgia pretty close to Florida, but it's about a five hour drive from Atlanta, and that ended.
Up expanding last summer.
But the number of beds at that facility was projected to be around three thousand, and at the time that was going to be the largest ice attention facility in the country. So to jump from three thousand to eighty five hundred is yeah, it's massive, obviously.
Yeah.
I mean people wanted like it's not fascism and left. It comes from the Fascio Rain area of Italy. Right, Otherwise it's like sparkling authoritarianism or whatever. But like unless you're looking for like a gate with our Beckmark Fry on it or whatever, like like these are concentration camps.
Like that, that is what this is. It was really interesting in twenty twenty three we had out the outdoor attention under the Biden administration, and like we didn't really have much coverage in the US media when we were participating in mutual aid there, but we'd had a lot from non US media, like folks from Japan and Singapore and Italy, and they just come and be like, oh, yeah, it's a concentration camp. And then they'd write the story
and be like they're these a concentration camps. And I think I would never have got that pasted an editor in LA or New York. To them, it seems so self evident. Now we're just doing it on an even bigger scale. I guess it's it's terrible. It's this shit. So I know you've been organizing in social circles specifically, right or part of an organizing group, I should say,
that's been opposing this detention center. So I think it'd be really instructive to people because either are all of these are going to be all over the country, and this won't be the only expansion of immigration detention we see in the next few years, I imagine, given the massive budget and the priority to the administration, can you explain a little bit about like how that campaign got started and then like the nuts and bolts of how this is being opposed.
Yeah, So before I get into that, I think providing some context on who the Social Circle community is it will be, you know, would be instructive. So it's a pretty small it's a very small city. It's got a population of about five thousand people, overwhelmingly Republican, overwhelmingly white, and pretty wealthy, Okay, And it's about an hour drive
outside of Atlanta. And in December of twenty twenty five, a news article was published in The Washington Post announcing, you know, the list of the twenty cities where these warehouses would be would be popping up. And it was that article that told the residents of Social Circle and the elected officials of Social Circle for the first time that this ice mega prison was coming to their community.
There was no notice to the city by ICE or anyone in the federal government at all, certainly no opportunity to respond, no opportunity for public input.
So they felt really blindsided.
Yeah, and I'm not from this community, and you know, I've I've met many of these people only for the first time, you know, within the last couple of months. But I think it would not be so far fetched to say that some of these people feel, you know, especially the ones who identify as Republicans or as you know, conservatives, I think they feel really betrayed by you know, by their government, by their party.
Yeah.
And so, you know, a lot of these people, I mean I've just described the demographic. I think many of them have never been involved in organizing of any kind before.
Some of them have, I think, but.
I think due to you know, their life circumstances, just might not have found themselves in a place where they've needed to organize for anything. So a bunch of these residents got together and have been holding you know, in person kind of town hall community meetings, and they held one in January where they were about you know, I think forty to fifty people in the room, and they wanted to get together and you know, just have a
public discourse about what could be done. And I was invited to this meeting because of my history of involvement with shutdown campaigns here in Georgia. I got started with shutdown campaigns in twenty when a nurse, a whistleblower who worked at an immigration detention center here in Georgia called the Irwin County Detention Center, alerted the public that there was a doctor who was contracting with ICE who had been,
you know, providing medical services to women detained in this facility. Well, he had actually been performing non consensual and medically unnecessary medical and gynecological procedures on women in ICE detention. This, yeah, and when these women spoke out about it to their family members, to journalists, to their lawyers, to members of Congress or staffers for members of Congress, they were retaliated against by being swiftly deported and I'm talking put on
planes within hours of speaking to a congressional staffer. And at the time, I was working at the University of Georgia School of Laws Fort Amendment Clinic, where we were providing you know, free legal service is to people across the state including you know, helping people with getting access to public records and suing the police and and you know and federal agents. Yeah, when they were retaliated against.
And so we represented those women. And it was through my work at Irwin and you know, connecting with the organizers there, that I got involved with shut down campaigns, or rather the shutdown Irwin campaign here in Georgia, and then from there later got involved with the shutdown folks
in campaigns. So I had been asked to speak to this group of people who I think were new to the immigrants right struggle, to talk about, you know, what it's like to try to prevent a detention center from popping up in their community.
And they can say, like, it's not a community that might traditionally be demographically the same as the people who we associate with, like migrant advocacy, migrant activism. I guess when a group like that comes into a moment like this, there are some areas of like activism. I guess civil society stuff where like white suburban folks have some experience,
right planning is one of them. Right, Like the recent bike planes only go north south in San Diego is because they think that those of us who can't afford to live by the sea don't deserve to cycle safely. Like there are many other examples of this. But what there were there like thoughts when they when they first met. I'm really interested to know that. Like, they're obviously upset and they feel abandoned and betrayed, but like, how did they want to organize to prevent this?
Well, a lot of them were upset about the decrease in their property value.
That was what was really bricating.
Yeah, that was redicalizing, mom, same with the bike lanes.
Actually, oh yeah, I bet yeah. And you know, but in addition to the property value stuff, it's also you know, the strain that this would impose on their small community.
I mean, you know, a number of the people who live.
There might be of you know, well to do means, but you know, their city police department employs a total of fourteen officers and they have two on duty at any given time. They have a fire department of you know, comparably you know, small size, and they have you know, water and sewer infrastructure that was built to accommodate about as many people as live there. Now, you know, between
four thousand and five thousand people. And it's that impact that is also you know, really maddening and activating and agitating to people. Those arguments are not new to us who have organized in South Georgia and also very red areas, a lot more rural and a lot less wealthy, you know, will try to We've canvas door to door in the city of Folkston to try to ask people how do they feel about this mega prison opening up in their community, and a lot of people, you know, we're we're against it.
Despite the fact government officials might try to bill it as you know, an economic boon, you know, an employment opportunity, a lot of people said like, hey, I mean, I don't necessarily want a prison in my backyard, but if it's bringing jobs, then you know, that's what this community needs.
That's something that I think makes Social Circle distinct from the previous shutdown campaigns I've worked on in Irwin County and in Folkston is that this isn't really an area that is starved for employment or starved for you know, economic support, Like these people are doing okay. And you know, another thing that makes it distinct is before all of this warehouse business, the vast majority of facilities in this country are formed through intergovernmental service agreements.
You know, we're iggs's for sure, it is the acronym.
But there are agreements between the federal government and the county, the local government where the local government says, yes, you can use our land or our facilities, and in exchange you pay us, I mean in the case of folks, and it's a comparably measly amount.
It's only two hundred thousand dollars per.
Year, Jesus, not much.
Yeah, even though the federal government is giving i mean fifty million dollars a year to insert your favorite private prison corporation here, you know, whether.
It's Courcivic or geogroup. Yeah, I mean your favorite. There are only two.
Really, yeah, not much of a joice.
Yeah yeah.
And so typically like we see this sort of like co opting and manipulation of the local community and the local government by the federal government, you know, coercing them economically to you know, to take on these detention centers or else. But here, I mean social like I said, Social Circle is doing fine. They're not starved for economic investment.
And I didn't you know, consult them at all. It really just like you know, in the dead of night just bought this warehouse from a private company and push this deal through. So those are some aspects that I think might throw you know, some of us who might have been involved in these similar fights before, like for a loop a little bit, because yeah, there's this assumption I think by some of the local officials that the supremacy Clause governs here and the federal government can do
whatever it wants. So there's no point in us trying to use our local zoning ordinances or what have you to try to put a stop to this, because there's nothing that we can do, right, is at least what you know, some people might be saying.
Yeah, let's take a break for advertisements. I can't think of anything mean to say, I know, buy some shit. This have come from a don't buy anything you don't need. Okay, we are back. So you were talking about this assumption that the supremacy cluse would mean that the federal government could build a mega prison in a warehouse in your town without asking you if it could do that.
First, can you explain like how.
People are able to use, like you said, like various local tools to oppose this.
Like you said, it's a huge burden.
When I first read this story, I remember thinking about, like, just like the water and sewage demands of housing eight thousand people would be crippling for the infrastructure in a lot of places, So like, how are people opposing this?
Well, it's been really inspiring for me to see these local leaders who, again many of whom have you know, never been involved in activism we're organizing before. They've been very consistent in holding demonstrations on a weekly basis at the site of this facility, and have garnered the attention of different media who have come and interviewed them. So that's been one way that they've been trying to, you know,
get their message out there. I was just talking about, you know, the residents who are concerned from you know, sort of fiscal perspective and are concerned about, you know, their own property values and things like that. But there are a fair number of people who are concerned about you know, the core human rights abuses.
And you know, sures.
Some of the lines might be well, this isn't the right place, you know, our city is not the right place for a detention center, suggesting you know, implying that there are some places that are suitable for a detention center.
But there are a fair.
Number of people in this community who who are opposed to detention centers in general. I mean they see that they see the violence that ICE is inflicting.
In broad daylight on.
Public streets, and I think they're they're horrified, and they don't want to be complicit in in something like that, you know, coming to their community. And I do think that along the way, I'm seeing more of a shift in the consciousness or at least an openness to understanding the different influences that bring us to the same table.
Yeah, it is.
It has been very cool, and we can agree that. You know, we're not going to have one hundred per unity of ideas, but we can have a unity of action, and you know, we can save these debates on you know, I mean whether someone is illegal or not, but you know, we can continue to have them along the way, as we are also identifying the very concrete ways that we can work together. And I'm thinking of one, for example, I work pretty closely with some staffers for different members
of Congress. I mean in terms of like uplifting you know, human rights and civil rights abuses that we see in detention centers because as part of my job, I go inside detention centers, immigration detention centers in Georgia pretty frequently, also federal prisons, and we'll meet with people and learn about the conditions that they're facing and will you know, fight for them to get released, and also share what I learned from them with you know, different members of Congress,
and most of our connections are with people who are aligned with the Democratic Party, you know, I mean to be to be frank, you know, I've never initiated correspondents with a Republican but I think I kind of just assumed that they wouldn't want to, that I wouldn't get anywhere with them, or.
That they wouldn't you know, that they wouldn't talk to me. But what's been effective and working.
With this coalition of residents is some of these people, I mean, yeah, like they you know, they've been card carrying Republicans for a long time and feel that they, you know, can wield influence over you know, certain Republican elected officials and yeah, yeah, and one of them, you know, I mean, well, I don't know how many of them, but a number of these local residents have gotten Republican you know, Mike Collins to come out against this ice facility.
Yeah, that's especially right now in the Republican Party, and like that that could be very difficult for them to do. And I sort of on it's not hugely sympathetic to Republican politicians, and I would still like to see them get better.
Like that's we want people to get better, that's the whole thing.
And like I think for these people whose politics may not be the same as ours, sharing the space, sharing the movement, sharing this struggle.
Like, I hope it makes people better.
I hope being exposed to people who are not of the same background as you, be like class rized, race wise, politics wise, whatever, like makes people realize that things are not quite how they're presented to them on the television or in the media they consume totally. So I'm sure that's yeah, Like I hope that it's positive. What can like a local government do or even like elected officials do,
given that the elect officials on federal level do. Given that, I mean, I suggest appears to be operating like without a great deal of oversight right now.
Yeah, I mean with each of these warehouses, there are different circumstances around each of them. I've been really inspired, honestly by the folks in Maryland who are dealing with a warehouse, maybe multiple warehouses, I'm not sure. Yeah, where you know, at both the local and the state level, they have really pushed for legislation that would effectively, yeah,
I mean, prevent these warehouses from existing at all. It is a different set of facts than what we're working with here in Georgia because there's more involvement by private actors, and so the government, you know, the local government can can regulate them more. But Maryland is certainly not the only place where where those fights are happening. And so I would really encourage folks to, yeah, to learn from Maryland. And I get you know, I'm talking about you know, legislation.
I mean, I will be the first to tell you as a lawyer that I don't think legal tools will liberate us.
You know, the law will not make us free.
Sure, Yeah, And I do think it's the people power, it's the coming together, it's the mass collective action that is, you know, that's what's going.
To do it.
And also there are multile well, you know, there are multiple tools and multiplement instruments that we can they can wield. And so right now, I mean with respect to the Social Circle warehouse, ICE is saying that they intend to detain people in their starting in April, jeez, in less.
Than two months. Yeah, and so right now, the.
Strategy truly is to use just like every tool at our disposal, identifying, Yeah, like what legislation can be filed, what litigation you know, what lawsuits can be filed, what you know, demonstrations, what kind of you know, canvassing, door knocking?
You know, you name it?
Like, how can how can people come together? How can we try to identify which companies would be supplying the labor to turn this warehouse into something, you know, where people will be detained. I mean not that, not that I think ICE gives a damn about making any type of facilit habitable for humans.
But there's gonna be there's gonna be some work that.
Needs to be done in order to you know, turn this you know, would be Amazon warehouse into a place for people. And is there work that you know, local organizers, because they're organizers.
We're all organ you know, we're all organizers.
Is there work that local organizers can do to try to unite with laborers with workers who you know might be working on this facility to try to like prevent them or like city workers, Like can they prevent city workers from like actually hooking up this warehouse to the city utilities?
Right?
Yeah, yeah, presumably Yeah, that will be a building contractor, right, Like they will want to build thousands of cells in this giant Yeah. The coll of that stuff, and especially with it happening so quickly, like you know, anything delays that will cause it to at least slow it down.
I guess.
Yeah.
I think another angle that we haven't talked about yet is the environmental angle, like with social circle, you know, this is I mean a town of five thousand, it's gonna trip. It's gonna nearly triple the number of people in this place, and I mean and also triple the amount of waste and sewage that's going to be coming out of this place.
I mean, so that's one thing.
Another thing for people to look at is, you know, what would the environmental impact of these warehouses be on local waterways for example?
And that's what you know.
Temporarily put a stop on the detention facility in the Everglades in Florida was a legal challenge in federal court under NIPA, the National Environmental Protection Act, because the federal government had failed to conduct the proper environmental impact assessments and the only thing that they actually really had to do was you know, something very procedural and you know, tick a box. And ultimately the facility ended up moving forward.
But it was a tool to buy time to figure out what other types of organizing can we do.
Yeah, and it's still like even if it's only time, right, Like harm isn't being done in that time, and it's still a good thing.
Yeah, it's like a form of harm reduction.
It reminds me a lot of the struggles here against the UA larger border wall that we've seen since twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen when Trump got elected. Like I'm thinking about how there have been ecological challenges to it, there have been social challenges to it.
Right.
The City of San Diego is currently trying to sue the FED to trest us for part of its wall construction, which like I'm not a big fan of our city govern meant, but like I'm glad they did that.
And all these different.
Tools have at least like at least in the last Trump administration I remember in the late summer of twenty twenty being out with some Kuma Yai folks who were in ceremony because the wall construction was destroying Kuma ancestors right who are buried there, and then the spaces where they are buried, And they ran out the clock on
the Trump administration. Right by using their rights as indigenous people to be in ceremony, the refusal of the workers to literally drive a dump truck through the middle of their ceremonial practices, they were able to run the clock.
Out on the Trump administration. Unfortunately, now we have another one.
But like all those different things had to work together to mean that, like in that little part of the border, somebody's great great grandparents remains weren't dynamited out of the earth, and that's still a good thing.
However we got there, that's a good thing.
Absolutely.
It makes me happy to hear that.
Like even folks who might have otherwise been politically aligned with the project were appalled by this because the idea of literally warehousing humans, like it's so fucking bleak, Like there's these big warehouses where we fill them with shit that we don't need. And now definitely them with people that apparently we don't want, Like it's it's one of the more horrific things that I know. It just it's so bleak to me.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, Like the veil has just been totally lifted, Like we know that they don't view immigrants as human. Yeah, but now they're like not even pretending anymore, just truly treating people like chattel.
Yeah again yeah again, right in the same places in this instance. Like, I guess I'm glad that even people who aren't not politically on the same team maybe like are opposed to this because it's, uh, yeah, it is repugnant.
Yeah.
I guess what if people are hearing about this for the first time, right, and will include that link to the article so people can look up where these locations are, if any of them. What advice would you have for people if you're listening to this, you click on that link, you find this one half an hour from your house or whatever, Like, what advice do you have for those people?
I think if you're already an organizer, regardless of whether you've been in the immigrants' rights fight or not, now is the time when it really is like all hands on deck. So don't be afraid to get involved. But also, you know, like we were talking about before we started, is I think guarantee that there is some immigrants rights movement in.
Your locale or somewhere close by.
And I think it's just so important to you know, approach this work not with the assumption that you are starting, you know, launching this new campaign, spearheading this you know, new, previously untapped, you know, area of work, because I guarantee you that you know, there are people who have have
worked on this before. And so I think connect with you know, connect both with people who have been doing this work for a long time, and also try to connect with people who you might not otherwise have thought to connect with. And I think it's important to call out the nimbiism, the not in my backyardism of of how, you know, some people are coming at this issue because they're you know, they're worried about their property value.
But it's also something that we can capitalize on.
Right It's energy and oftentimes it's people with capital and connections that.
You know that you might not otherwise have had access to either.
So I think, you know, the connecting you know, in the community organizing needs to go in multiple directions, but I do think it's important to move.
Yeah, it's important to move.
Fast, Yeah seriously, Like like that is a very constrained timeline, like everybody has to be, but that means it's also important to move respectfully, right, because like, if we just blow each other shit up, because yet people assume that migrant communities have somehow not been advocating for themselves in each other for centuries, then we're not going to have time to organize because we're going to be dealing with
that shit. And I've seen that so much just personally, right, Like having been involved for some time in migrant advocacy and seeing folks like pop in and tell us how to do everything. It's tiresome, and I understand that you'll want to help, but yeah, if this is something that like you're organizing around, super easy to find those organizations to be like, how can I help?
Yeah, And it's also such a good like this fight in particular is such a good vehicle for fighting.
For abolition overall.
As someone who's been saying abolish ice for years, it is amazing to see how much traction that phrase has gotten, especially over the last six months and We can't just be fighting against you know, preventing.
New ICE facilities.
We need to be fighting for shutting down all ICE facilities and for abolishing ICE as an institution. We've been around before ICE, and we will be around after ICE. As you know, as an agency, ICE has only been around since two thousand and three. Sure there was a predecessor, there was the i INS, but I mean it didn't operate in nearly the type of way that ICE does
now as this you know, law enforcement agency. And even before Trump, like ICE was still a really you know, horrible like a horrible yeah, yeah, agency, And so yeah, I think it's important to continue to you know, point these things out while also you know, welcoming people into the fight and.
Yeah, and pushing them, pushing them further.
Yeah, I think that's really it's really important. Like I think we have to rebut the assumption that this is an aberration and we can fix it and go back to normal, because normal was bad and you just couldn't see it because it wasn't on your screen, right, Like children died in outdoor attention under Biden. I saw people suffer im mentally in outdoor attention Underbiden. Like we don't
want to go back to that either. And I think it's really important that when we build these coalitions we build them with that in mind, that like, we're organizing very quickly, but also we're in this for the long horn, until everybody's free. Is there anything that you'd like to leave people with resources or a bit of advice, any like closing words to share with him?
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