FOLKSTON, Ga. — An agreement between Charlton County and ICE to double the size of a local ICE processing facility took a last-minute hold on Wednesday.
The agreement would have integrated the D. Ray James Correctional Facility in Folkston, Georgia, into the Folkston ICE Processing Center.
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Both facilities are owned and managed by the private prison corporation The Geo Group. Charlton County serves as the local government partner to help facilitate the flow of federal funding to the Geo Group.
Right now, the ICE processing center has capacity for a little over 1,100 beds. The addition of D. Ray James Correctional facility would increase that by more than 1,800 beds, bringing the total to nearly 3,000 beds.
This would make Folkston, Georgia, home to the largest ICE Processing center in the United States, according to Charlton County Administrator Glenn Hull.
“This is going to provide approximately 400 additional jobs in our community,” Charlton County Administrator Glenn Hull said. “This is really truly economic development in its broadest sense here for Charlton County.”
Hull told Action News Jax the agreement would have been worth more than $47 million. However, he got a call from ICE on Wednesday, saying federal policy prevents the Department of Homeland Security from entering into an agreement of more than $20 million. Until federal policy is changed, the agreement is on pause. Hull is hopeful it will come through.
“This is a big deal for Charlton County,” Hull said. ”Economic Development in Charlton County is very limited. In unincorporated areas, we don’t provide water and sewer, so that makes what we can attract very difficult.
Despite the expansion vote no longer happening Thursday, some advocacy groups are still calling for the facility to be shut down for good.
Documents obtained by Action News Jax show that in 2022, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General made an unannounced inspection of the Folkston ICE processing center, which houses suspected illegal immigrants.
The report determined:
“Folkston did not meet standards for facility conditions, medical care, grievances, segregation, staff-detainee communications, and handling of detainee property. We identified violations that compromised the health, safety, and rights of detainees.”
As a result, DHS made 13 recommendations to ICE.
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Last year, a 57-year-old detainee at the facility, Jaspal Singh, died while in custody there.
“Medical neglect is something that is unfortunately quite common in ICE detention facilities, and Folkston is no exception," Meredyth Yoon, who is working with the campaign to shut down the Folkston ICE Processing Center, said.
Yoon said the campaign started in 2022 after learning that Charlton County and the private prison corporation The Geo Group, which owns and operates the processing center, were considering expanding the facility. She believes that expansion would cause more harm than good.
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“This expansion or this proposed expansion gives ICE the infrastructure to be able to carry out this plan that we, you know, think is not only extremely xenophobic and racist, but really deeply harmful to families and communities that large,” Yoon said.
Yoon and others worry the center could still see an expansion at some point.
Action News Jax did reach out to The GEO Group to try to get a response and comment regarding the proposed expansion, but we have yet to hear back.
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