BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
According to Starke Mayor Andy Redding, discussions between consultants and the county about hosting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainment facility have not included the city commission.
As citizen Paul Still pointed out during his comments to the city commission Feb. 3, the proposal calls for the extension of Starke’s water and wastewater lines to the Douglas Building property on U.S. 301 South. According to Still, the usage by the detention center would equal that of 1,000 new homes. While the city would reap the revenue of that usage, it would be losing the tax revenue associated with 1,000 homes.
“I think this is a really a bad deal for the city,” he said.
Valara Petteway praised the city’s responsiveness to emergencies including utility outages, but she asked commissioners to think how that could change if resources were stretched to serve such a large facility.
“Think about what you’re doing. Think about our capacity to be supportive of our citizens, to be there when they need you, to be there when that emergency happens,” she said.
Milton Baker said he hasn’t heard anything positive about ICE wherever they go.
“Do we really want that here in Starke?” he asked, mentioning face masks, mistakes and killings. “Think about that whenever that time comes when y’all — because y’all will be faced with it. So please take that in consideration that it don’t come with nothing nice. It comes with something that can really create problems for all of us.”
“Please don’t think I’m trying to be racist,” Baker continued, “but it can happen to any of us. They can make a mistake. They have done it on TV.”
Melissa Protomastro repeated concerns shared with county commissioners about Starke’s reputation, contrasting razor wire fencing surrounding a detention center with the billboards welcoming visitors to Starke. She said the 3,000 detainees would be consuming utility capacity and the 1,200 employees would be living in RVs because there is no housing.
Starke would be a critical component to the proposal, but so far, the mayor said any discussions had not included the city commission.
“I know that things are in exploratory stages and doing homework and things like that. But just for the record, we do not currently have anything on our desk,” Redding said.
Sierra Club raises questions
The Suwannee St. Johns Group of the Sierra Club has raised questions about the ICE proposal, asking how does a facility of this scale fit into the county’s long-term planning for growth, infrastructure and public services.
In a release, the group claimed, “A 3,000-bed detention center functions much like a small town. Yet unlike a town, the detained population does not generate housing demand, support local businesses or participate in civic life. Still, the facility would place constant, around-the-clock demand on infrastructure — water, wastewater, roads and emergency services. This creates population-scale intensity without community-scale benefit, a mismatch that local planning policies are meant to prevent.”
The Suwannee St. Johns Group of the Sierra Club said plans for the detention center are also out of step with the county’s economic goals.
“The town has long welcomed new businesses that strengthen the local economy while preserving its rural character. A massive internment facility does not fit that vision,” the group stated. “Communities that anchor growth to detention centers often find themselves more vulnerable, not more stable — dependent on federal contracts that can change overnight and left with specialized infrastructure that is difficult to repurpose if operations shut down. … Instead of attracting small businesses, families and long-term investment, a facility of this nature is more likely to draw protests, strain public resources and deter the kind of homegrown, mom-and-pop enterprises that actually sustain rural towns.”
The Suwannee St. Johns Group of the Sierra Club represents a 14-county area that includes Bradford, Union and southwest Clay, and its volunteer members believe in sharing and protecting natural resources. Member Joanne Tremblay shared many of these points with county commissioners on Feb. 3.
According to the group, “Expanding Bradford County’s functional population by more than 10 percent through the addition of a detention center — no matter where it is proposed — is not a sustainable or meaningful way to support this community. Our town’s future should be built on growth that strengthens families, small businesses, and civic life, not on facilities that isolate people and strain public resources. Immigrants have long been part of the success of the American experiment, contributing to our economy, culture and communities in ways that detention centers can never replicate.”
