Merrillville officials don’t want a deportation processing center any more than its residents do, but if it does come, there probably isn’t much they can do to stop it.
Merrillville Town attorney Joe Svetanoff leveled the news after residents expressed their concern one will be put in Merrillville during the Town Council meeting Tuesday night. A Washington Post article included Merrillville in a graphic about a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plan to renovate industrial warehouses into a deportation network that ran on Dec. 24.
One resident, Jennifer Gross, said she’d read on a social media page that federal representatives conducted a site visit at a warehouse at 8719 Mississippi St. on Tuesday afternoon. The warehouse would hold 500 people for processing, she said.
Councilman Shawn Pettit, D-Ward 6, asserted that it didn’t happen.
“That warehouse was built by Opus, and it’s 289,000 square feet with no bathroom facilities. As your Ward 6 Councilman, I’m telling you ‘No. There’s no way (representatives were there),” Pettit said. “I live closer to that area than you do, and I watch those warehouses like a hawk. I did see a squad and two other cars out there today.”
“Well, I’m going to take your word for it, because I’m afraid I’m going to be one of those moms (out there protesting),” Gross said.
Council President Rick Bella, D-Ward 5, said the town still hasn’t heard anything from anyone that Merrillville will have to house a processing center, but that they likely will have “very little influence” to stop it if they do.
“Sometimes, we receive federal projects that we’re not allowed to refuse,” Svetanoff added. “We will exhaust all our options, but our hands may be tied. I have no concrete evidence that Merrillville was chosen; even the Washington Post article was speculative.”
The Washington Post article said the Trump administration “is seeking contractors to help it overhaul the United States’ immigrant detention system in a plan that includes renovating industrial warehouses to hold more than 80,000 immigrant detainees at a time.” Its plan, based on an unfinalized document the paper obtained, is to “speed up deportations by establishing a deliberate feeder system.”
The article outlined plans to book newly arrested detainees into 16 processing sites, holding up to 1,500 people apiece, for a few weeks before they would be transferred into one of seven large-scale warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people each, located close to major logistics hubs in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri, where they would be staged for deportation. Merrillville was on the list of smaller facilities along with Hagerstown, Maryland; Highland Park, Michigan; Salt Lake City; and others.
“The new facilities will ‘maximize efficiency, minimize costs, shorten processing times, limit lengths of stay, accelerate the removal process and promote the safety, dignity and respect for all in ICE custody,’ the solicitation said. ICE plans to share it with private detention companies this week to gauge interest and refine the plan, according to an internal email reviewed by The Post.”
ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons said at a border security conference in April that, “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” according to the Arizona Mirror, saying the ideal process would be “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”
The revelation, however, came as a complete shock, town officials said, as it also did for downstate officials. But that doesn’t mean the state will fight against it, Svetanoff said.
“With this administration (downstate), they won’t have a problem with it,” he said. “And that will include if a third-party vendor is chosen to operate it.”
Florida-based GEO Group in 2016 saw its plans for an $80 million private immigration detention center in Gary go up in smoke after nine months of wooing because at least six council members opposed it, the Post-Tribune previously reported.
Although no plans were ever revealed, GEO used to own a 40-acre site in Hobart on West 49th Avenue where there was strident opposition from residents and city officials. The Lake County Parks and Recreation Department bought that land, which is adjacent to Robinson Lake Park, from GEO a few years ago.
ICE held more than 68,000 people at the beginning of December, agency data shows, the highest number on record, according to the Washington Post. Nearly half, or 48 percent of these people, have no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, ICE data shows.
Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
