DHS Secretary Mullin: ICE facility in Georgia ‘wasn’t a good fit’ for community

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — In an exclusive interview with Atlanta News First, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the department’s purchase of a massive warehouse in Walton County that was meant to house 500 undocumented detainees “wasn’t a good fit” for the community.

It echoed what residents and officials in the small town of Social Circle, where the facility sat, told Atlanta News First when Mullin’s department cancelled the plan in June.

“The truth is that it wasn’t a good fit for what we’re needing to do, logistically speaking,” said Mullin. “If it was our decision to keep it in Social Circle, we would have spent a lot of time talking with the community, making sure that they were very comfortable with what we’re doing because we would be looking for a partnership.”

The eleven facilities – including another DHS purchased in Oakwood, Georgia – will be offered up to other federal government agencies before being put up for sale on the open market.

The interview with Mullin also came just days after the killing of an undocumented man in Houston, Texas.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo died when ICE agents attempted to stop and detain him and several other men they suspected of being in the country illegally on Tuesday. Agents claimed Araujo tried to use his vehicle as a weapon, though no credible video evidence has emerged to prove that claim.

“Unfortunately the body cameras that we’ve been trying to get done for quite some time wasn’t on the officers because we went through 116-day shutdown and wasn’t able to purchase the body cameras we need,” he said. “We’re hopefully you have 100% of the ones in the field with cameras within 60 days that would have probably put all this at rest because that’s what happens.”

Mullin said as of now, around 50% of ICE agents wear body cameras in the field.

Araujo represented the22nd death in ICE custody this year so far. In 2026, the agency set a grim record with 33 detainees dying while in their custody.

The figures are a stark difference from the agency’s 12 deaths in 2024, four deaths in 2025, and three in 2022.

“Obviously we have a tremendous amount more individuals in custody than they did in ‘22 that they did in ’23 because remember, the Biden administration was letting people in, they weren’t sending people away,” said Mullin.

Mullin said the number of deaths as a percentage of the agencies arrests was less than 1%.

“Some of these people that are coming into custody have serious health issues that they’re not even aware of, sometimes it’s the first time they seen a doctor,” he said. “We don’t know their pre-existing conditions, we don’t know their heart conditions, we don’t know what illnesses they have.”