Sen. Marsha Blackburn: ICE ends plans for Wilson County immigrant detention ‘mega center’

Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn posted on X Tuesday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “will not move forward” with plans to build an immigrant detention mega center holding up to 16,000 detainees in Wilson County.

Blackburn’s post marks the fourth public reversal in a little more than a week of on-again, off-again plans to locate a detention center in Lebanon, a suburban Wilson County community of about 51,000 located 30 miles east of Nashville.

It also marks the latest successful pushback from within Republican-led states to the federal government’s plans to establish immigrant detention centers in their own backyards. 

ICE on Tuesday announced it had scrapped plans to build a detention center in New Hampshire after Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte intervened. A project in Mississippi was similarly killed after intervention by Republican Congressional leaders.

In other states, community pushback, including pressure on property owners to cancel sales to ICE, have also led to detention center project cancellations.  

Project Saltbox, which tracks ICE purchases of property for detention centers, reported 12 cancelled property sales thus far. In Democratic-led Maryland, Attorney General Anthony  Brown on Monday filed a lawsuit seeking to stop a detention center.

Blackburn, in her post, complimented Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

“I appreciate (Noem’s) commitment to finding the best possible location for a new detention center to continue ICE’s great work to apprehend, detain, and deport illegal,” she wrote.

In Wilson County, the plans drew nearly-universal opposition from local Republican leaders, including Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto, Lebanon Mayor Rick Bell, Wilson County Sheriff Robert Bryan, State Sen. Mark Pody and State Rep. Clark Boyd.

The officials were all caught off guard by news of a detention center, first reported by the Tennessee Lookout — a pattern mirrored in other states where local, state and federal elected officials learned of plans only through media reports.

A Wilson County Commission meeting last week drew hundreds of residents who, for more than two hours, lined up to speak in opposition to the plan.

On Tuesday, before Blackburn’s post, 24 of 25 members of the Wilson County Commission — an all-Republican body — signed a resolution to oppose a facility in Lebanon. 

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to a request Tuesday seeking confirmation the Lebanon plans had been scrapped.

Hutto, the Wilson County Mayor, posted to Facebook that he had “been informed that a formal announcement is expected from the agency tomorrow morning.”

At a community meeting late Tuesday, called earlier in the week to organize opposition to the proposed detention center, local advocates instead claimed a cautious victory.

“What I feel like, in this moment, is just a massive sigh of relief,” organizer Sierra Barnett said.  

“I think anybody that’s been trying to keep up has felt this tug of war and this push and pull for truth and information.” she said. “And what I can say about Wilson County is we have not stopped seeking information. We have not stopped organizing. We have not stopped researching. We’ve not stopped demanding answers, and it’s because of that, that we have the answer that we have today.”