Outrage is mounting in Georgia and across the United States as the federal government moves to dramatically expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention capacity as part of an escalating war on immigrants. In rural Social Circle, Georgia, local officials revealed that ICE intends to purchase a 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse and convert it into a massive detention complex capable of holding up to 10,000 people, a scale of incarceration not seen in the United States since the mass imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

City planning documents make clear that the project is not a temporary “surge” measure but a long-term expansion. Utility filings reviewed by local officials project more than 1 million gallons per day in wastewater demand, consistent with a multi-thousand-person detention complex operating on a permanent basis. The broader development plan encompasses more than 2.3 million square feet of approved construction and requires substantial infrastructure commitments from the city.

Facilities of this scale are not erected for short-term operations. Their construction underscores that the targeting of immigrants is only the opening phase of a broader campaign to expand police powers and institutionalize mass detention. The attacks on immigrants today form part of a wider drive by the US ruling class to entrench repressive state measures against workers and political opponents, advancing the interests of the Trump regime and the financial oligarchy it represents.

Reporting by The Guardian noted that the scale of the proposed facility has generated significant opposition among Social Circle residents, including in a community that voted overwhelmingly for Trump in the last election. Local outrage has forced the mayor and police chief to publicly express resistance to ICE’s planned purchase after details of the project became known. When the city posted the “first floor” schematics online—showing dense rows of beds representing thousands of human beings—the images circulated widely on social media. Many commenters drew historical comparisons to the cramped conditions of 18th-century slave ships and to the concentration camps established in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

Opposition is not confined to rural Georgia. Reporting by Stateline documented similar outrage in Oklahoma City, where residents learned of federal plans to convert a vacant warehouse into an immigration processing facility. Facing bipartisan opposition, the out-of-state warehouse owner ultimately abandoned negotiations with the federal government. Comparable resistance has emerged from Utah to Texas to Virginia and Mississippi, where public pressure has derailed or delayed warehouse conversions and large-scale detention projects.

The backlash comes as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) undertakes a sweeping expansion fueled by a record $80 billion multi-year congressional allocation for detention. ICE is currently holding more than 70,000 people nationwide—the highest number in the agency’s history—and internal documents outline plans for 16 processing sites holding up to 1,500 people each and eight detention centers capable of holding up to 10,000 each, for a total projected capacity of 92,600 beds. The agency is also pursuing roughly 150 new leases and office expansions across the country.

The rapid expansion of detention capacity is occurring alongside soaring profits for the private prison industry. An investigation by The Appeal found that at least one investor in CoreCivic was disappointed that the Trump administration has yet to detain 100,000 human beings.

“One of the big questions … has been the pace of detention by ICE, that it’s been below what investors thought [it] was going to be,” one caller said. “I think people thought we’d be at that 100,000 level. We’re at a little over 70,000.”

During the final quarter of 2025, CoreCivic’s revenue from ICE more than doubled compared to the previous year, rising from $120.3 million to $244.7 million. The company’s annual profits climbed to $116.5 million, nearly a 70 percent increase. The GEO Group reported similar gains. The company posted $2.63 billion in revenue in 2025 and net income of $120.1 million. GEO executives stated that the ICE population across its facilities had risen to approximately 24,000, the highest level in the company’s history. GEO expects roughly $3 billion in revenue in 2026.

GEO founder George Zoley told investors that the company is evaluating participation in warehouse conversion projects capable of holding “seven, eight, or 9,000 beds per facility,” acknowledging that such sites represent “an enormous capacity.”

Beyond detention beds, GEO’s subsidiary BI Incorporated operates the federal government’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), which relies on GPS ankle monitors. According to company executives, ISAP participants have increased from roughly 17,000 to more than 42,000 in the past year, with capacity to scale “to whatever level services ICE wants, whether it’s 100,000 or beyond that.”

Among the thousands of human beings kidnapped for profit by the US government this year is 16-year-old Sebastian, an asylum seeker from Ecuador. Reporting by the Minnesota Star Tribune detailed the case of the young person, identified publicly by his middle name out of fear from the family of further retribution by the US government.

In early January, during the height of Operation Metro Surge, Sebastian was driving alone in north Minneapolis when immigration agents seized him. Before he was kidnapped, he was able to make one call to his father, alerting him that he was being taken.

“I just was thinking, I don’t want them to take me,” he told the paper through a translator. “I asked an agent if they were going to deport me. He said they can’t deport me, but they were going to transport me to a different location.”

Despite his living in Minnesota with his father, ICE thugs deliberately misclassified Sebastian as an “unaccompanied minor” and assigned him a new alien registration number, making it virtually impossible for Sebastian’s family to locate him.

He was flown to Michigan and placed at Bridgeway, a 36-bed short-term residency program operated by Bethany Christian Services. For more than a week, his family did not know where he was. When a federal judge ordered the government to respond to a wrongful-detention petition, an ICE attorney wrote that it did not appear the petitioner was in ICE custody. Only after sustained legal intervention was Sebastian located and ultimately released.

“What was it all for?” Manuel, Sebastian’s father, asked the Star Tribune. Sara Koziol Chavez, an attorney who helped search for Sebastian, made clear the government deliberately withheld his location.

“They erased his family by calling him an unaccompanied minor, and they did this even while they were being watched,” Koziol Chavez said.