Florida Counties Bid to Build Detention Centers for Immigrants

Florida City is hoping to have a new immigrant detention center built, reports say. The city is applying for a grant to build a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility that would have enough room to house as many as 2,300 detainees. Although it would cost $150 million, officials expect that it would create a large number of jobs in the area. For this reason, two other Florida counties also want to have a new immigration center built since it is estimated that it would provide job opportunities to at least 300 construction workers while creating around 600 permanent employment positions.
Broward County and Palm Beach round up the list of three counties that have applied to have a detention center built, but only one of them will actually receive the grant.

Immigration authorities have asked that the county that ends up winning the bid and gets the new facility also provide public transportation to service both employees and visitors. If it is built in Florida City, commissioners in Miami Dade have requested the county's transit department to extend public transportation services to the new facility. A spokesperson for ICE says the new facility would be used to detain immigrants who are in removal proceedings along with those that are waiting to be deported from the U.S. Both medium-security detainees and those with no criminal records could be housed in the new center.