Gainesville grappling with shutdown of immigration detention center
Gainesville is now grappling with fallout from the sudden news that a corrections company is closing the North Georgia Detention Center, a large employer and substantial source of financial support for the city.
At one point this year, Corrections Corporation of America employed more than 130 people at the immigration detention center with a payroll of $7 million. The Nashville-based company has also been paying the city $825,000 in annual rent, money the city needs to help pay off $8.9 million in bonds it issued partly to buy the former jail last year.
CCA plans to shut down the center by the end of this month.
“It’s going to have an impact – there is no doubt about it,” said Gainesville Mayor-elect Danny Dunagan.
Gainesville’s dilemma illustrates the risks municipalities take when they link themselves to the private corrections industry, said experts who study the issue.
Please go to myajc.com to see updates.
About the Author
Jeremy Redmon is an award-winning journalist, essayist and educator with more than three decades of experience reporting for newspapers. He has written for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution since 2005.
