Port Wentworth Imposes Six-Month Moratorium on Detention Centers

Feb. 21, 2026 – The Port Wentworth City Council unanimously approved a resolution during their Feb. 19 meeting, imposing a six-month moratorium on accepting applications for any correctional, detention, penal or related facilities within the city limits.

City Attorney Scott Robichaux said the action represents a proactive approach rather than a reaction to any specific threat or application.

“There’s been no requests, there’s been no information that anybody’s coming in looking or doing anything like that,” Robichaux said. “This is us actually being proactive, just looking at our ordinances, looking at what’s going on around, even just in the state of Georgia and just recognizing that, well, right now what we need to do is we need to make sure that our ordinances are cleaned up and as strong as it can be to make sure that it fits with the vision and everything that we want to do.”

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Robichaux confirmed to the council that the resolution will be made available online since it wasn’t part of the original meeting agenda packet.

Robichaux said the moratorium was an example of responsible governance.

“This really is us just being really good stewards of the rules and just trying to be good stewards of the community and what could possibly look to be here,” he said.

The resolution comes following the Department of Homeland Security’s $128 million acquisition of a warehouse in Social Circle, Ga. as part of an initiative to add 24,000 beds to the system by the fall, a 30% increase over current levels, as recently reported by Georgia Public Broadcasting. This model includes the acquisition and renovation of eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing sites, as well as the acquisition of 10 existing “turnkey” facilities where ICE already operates, according to recently unveiled documents detailing ICE’s plans of fully implementing the new detention model by the end of Fiscal Year 2026.

Social Circle leaders continue to claim that city utilities cannot accommodate the detention center, event after recently meeting with DHS representatives.

“We continue to have more questions than answers,” a Feb. 18 city statement said.

ICE’s warehouse purchase in Social Circle is one of several dozen across the US in recent weeks. In a handful of locations – such as Ashland, Virginia and Kansas City, Missouri – local opposition appears to have thwarted such plans, according to recent reporting by The Guardian.

Keep track of Port Wentworth meetings at Port Wentworth meeting March 5 – Savannah Agenda.

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