Atlanta Mayor Signs Order to Stop Accepting ICE Detainees at City Jail
Justin Wise, The Hill, September 6, 2018
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Thursday signed an executive order declaring that the city jail will no longer accept people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
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A spokesperson for ICE confirmed to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that all of the agency’s detainees at the Atlanta City Detention Center would be transferred by the end of Thursday.
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The newspaper noted that the order from Bottoms comes only months after she signed a similar executive order that halted the detention center from admitting any new ICE detainees.
That order was signed in June, amid opposition to President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in thousands of families being separated at the southern border.
There were 205 ICE detainees in Atlanta’s city jail in June. But that number had decreased to just five as of Wednesday, according to the AJC. The newspaper noted that the number fell because ICE has either deported, released or transferred some of the detainees.
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The order means the chief of Atlanta’s Department of Corrections must stop receiving ICE detainees.
