ACROSS U.S., UPROAR OVER FEDERAL DETENTION SITES
eral immigration policies are disrupting local politics. Democratic candidates on the left who are winning primaries, such as Deb Haaland in New Mexico and Alexandria Ocasio-cortez in New York, have made defunding or abolishing ICE a central feature of their campaign platforms.
But even before the uproar this month over separations of migrant families, claims of overreach and inhumane treatment by ICE agents, including targeting immigrants outside churches, schools and courthouses, were flaring tempers in communities across the country.
“Dealing with ICE became distracting from the day-to-day operations of running our county,” said Terry Cook, a commissioner in Williamson County in Texas, a relatively conservative part of the Austin metropolitan area where Dell Computer employs thousands of people.
Cook was among the commissioners who voted 4-1 this week to end the county’s contract with ICE by 2019, an agreement under which nearly 40 mothers separated from their children have been held in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center. The facility is managed by Corecivic, a private prison operator, through an intergovernment agreement with the county.
“The federal government made their bed with its policies, so let them sleep in it,” said Cook, emphasizing that efforts to end the contract had started to gain momentum about four months ago, well before the migrant family separations made national headlines. “We did not need to be in the middle of this.”
In another sign of public concern over immigration policies, even some private companies and nonprofits are balking at potentially lucrative deals with federal immigration agencies. Two Texas entities, APTIM and BCFS, declined this month to participate in a proposed no-bid contract worth as much as $1 billion to expand a tent camp for migrant children, according to a report by Texas Monthly.
In some parts of the country, the discussions over ICE contracts seem to be widening political fissures.
Residents of Evanston, a town of 12,000 in Wyoming, have been fiercely debating for weeks a proposal by the private prison operator Management Training Corp. to build an ICE detention center near the community. The project could create as many as 150 jobs in a region with a relatively weak economy.
Some in Evanston compare the plan to the internment camps built in Wyoming for Japanese-americans during World War II. But accusations of racism and xenophobia leveled against supporters of the project have produced angry rebuttals. Jim Hissong, director of family services for Uinta County, which encompasses Evanston, said opponents of the facility were “using the same kind of divisive rhetoric that Trump uses.”
“I don’t like being called immoral and a racist,” Hissong said. “I just believe that the federal government has an obligation to uphold immigration laws, and this would be an economic boon for us.”
Indeed, some local governments are opting to remain in or even expand contracts with federal authorities for holding immigrants. Officials in California’s Yolo County voted to accept more than $2 million in additional federal money from the Office of Refugee Resettlement for holding immigrant children at a detention facility.
“We need to approach each facility on a case-by-case basis to do what’s right for the young people involved,” said David Lichtenhan, vice chairman of the Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network. “The kids are vulnerable and could end up being moved into a district that’s less favorable to immigrants than ours. That’s an outcome we sought to avoid.”
But local governments are clearly reading the political winds, amid widespread public protests over the treatment of migrant families. Some of those expressing the most concern are cities that already are home to large immigrant populations.
In Houston, the city’s leadership is urging Southwest Key, the Texas organization that has already won nearly $1 billion in federal contracts for migrant facilities since 2015, to abandon plans to put immigrant children in a former warehouse near the city’s downtown.
“I do not want to be an enabler in this process,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner, adding that he had also made a personal appeal to its owner, David Denenburg, to find another use for the building. “There comes a time when we must draw the line, and for me the line is with our children.”