US Lists $24.5M Georgia Warehouses For Sale After Scrapping Mega ICE Detention Centers

WASHINGTON — The federal government has abandoned plans to turn two massive Georgia industrial warehouses into immigration detention hubs, putting both properties on the commercial auction block after years of fierce grassroots resistance and mounting fiscal scrutiny.

Both sites—spanning over 860,000 square feet combined across Douglas and Jackson counties—have been formally designated as surplus government property. The U.S. General Services Administration cleared the real estate for public sale after Homeland Security officials halted a multi-state experiment aimed at converting commercial distribution hubs into modular detention compounds.

Plans collapsed under sustained local fury. Residents, municipal planners, and congressional leaders pushed back against the secretive purchases for three years, warning that housing thousands of detainees in residential zones would swamp municipal infrastructure and permanently alter community life.

The Lithia Springs and Braselton Compounds

Federal procurement records trace the initiative to 2020, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement sought to build government-owned, expandable holding facilities away from the southern border. The agency targeted commercial logistic zones with rapid highway access.

Political leaders made the acquisitions quietly. In 2020, the federal government spent nearly $13.5 million to acquire a 360,000-square-foot warehouse in Lithia Springs, situated in Douglas County. Blueprints revealed modular interior units configured to hold up to 10,000 people at peak capacity—a facility larger than any immigration lockup operating in the United States. A year later, federal authorities spent another $11 million to snap up an even larger site: a 500,000-square-foot facility in Braselton, deep within Jackson County.

Local leaders were blindsided. Federal agents had negotiated the acquisitions without consulting county commissions or municipal utility boards, sparking immediate outrage when the ultimate purpose came to light.

Grassroots Revolt and Congressional Pushback

Opposition erupted instantly across northern Georgia. In Douglas County, commissioners passed binding resolutions barring rezoning applications and contested the site's proximity to suburban neighborhoods, public parks, and public schools.

Residents in Braselton followed suit, packing municipal town halls and zoning hearings to protest the conversion. They argued that a high-security federal site would overwhelm rural emergency services, choke arterial roads, and decimate surrounding commercial property valuations.

In Washington, U.S. Representative David Scott moved to choke off appropriations for the facilities, pressuring federal oversight committees to defund any architectural conversions in Douglas County.

Douglas County Commissioner Tarenia Carthan confirmed the formal surplus designation, hailing the public sale listing as a total vindication for neighborhood coalitions that fought the installation.

Federal Audit and Warehouse Metrics

Fiscal mismanagement sealed the program's fate. While ICE stalled on construction amid local zoning gridlock, taxpayers footed millions of dollars annually simply to maintain, secure, and climate-control cavernous, empty buildings.

A September investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office revealed that federal agencies had racked up $20 million in unrecoverable losses on abandoned warehouse purchases tied to the aborted detention expansion. Notice of the program's complete shutdown has also been delivered to municipal administrators in Oakwood and Social Circle, two other Georgia towns where federal real estate scouts had previously surveyed industrial parks.

Commercial real estate brokers will manage the open disposition process under GSA surplus asset regulations, returning both logistics hubs to private industrial tax rolls in the coming fiscal quarter.