Georgia warehouses purchased by ICE to turn into detention centers up for sale after plan scrapped
Warehouses in two small Georgia cities that Immigration and Customs Enforcement planned to transform into detention facilities are now up for sale.
The warehouses in Social Circle and Oakwood are part of a portfolio of properties put up for bidding by commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield. The other properties include warehouses in Salt Lake City, Detroit, El Paso, and Central Pennsylvania.
Bidding on the warehouses is set to end on Thursday. The deadline comes a little more than a month after the Department of Homeland Security officials sent letters to the cities saying that they were considering putting their properties up for sale.
DHS bought a 540,408-square-foot warehouse in Oakwood for $68.2 million in 2025, a deed shows. Oakwood officials first learned in February that the federal agency was considering converting the warehouses into an ICE detention facility. A similar warehouse on Hightower Trail in Social Circle was also purchased in February.
In documents obtained by CBS News Atlanta, the two sites were part of a plan by the federal agency to create new large-scale "hubs" across the country that would hold thousands of detainees by the end of 2026.
Social Circle's facility was expected to house between 7,500 to 10,000 detainees. Oakwood was to be designated a "processing site," where detainees would stay for some time between three and seven days. The facility was expected to house an average daily population of 1,000 to 1,500 detainees.
Officials in both cities pushed back against the plan, citing concerns over the lack of communication and fears that the large-scale projects would severely impact infrastructure like water and sewage systems. Social Circle Social Circle officials cut off water to site of planned Georgia ICE detention "mega-center" in March, saying that it wouldn't be removed until ICE showed how it would prevent the facility from exceeding its limited water and sewer capacity.
In April, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin put a pause on the $38-billion plan to scrutinize all contracts signed under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
In a report released by the Government Accountability Office in September, officials say the agency lost $20 million in unrecoverable costs purchasing the warehouses it no longer plans to use and could lose more if sold for less than it paid for them earlier this year.