“It has come to my attention that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is in the final stages of acquiring a warehouse facility in Byhalia, Mississippi, and intends to convert it into an ICE detention center. While I support the enforcement of immigration law, I write to express my opposition to this acquisition and the proposed detention center,” writes Mississippi Republican Senator Roger Wicker in a letter to Secretary Dog Murderer in a letter oddly posted publicly.
“This site is currently positioned for economic development purposes. It represents an opportunity for job creation, private investment, and long-term economic growth in Marshall County. The county is already experiencing meaningful growth and increased interest from employers seeking to locate or expand in North Mississippi. Preserving limited, development-ready industrial sites is essential to sustaining this growth. Converting this industrial asset into an ICE detention center forecloses economic growth opportunities and replaces them with a use that does not generate comparable economic returns or community benefits,” he continues and no, this isn’t some elaborate lib prank.
So walk through it here, and well past that Wicker voted to hand ICE $100 billion, would never vote to claw it back, is on board with all the other savagery and malevolence of the MAGA Reich and so on. You’re not an undergrad at perceiving the hypocrisy and self-interest and don’t need your hand held on it because it’ll distract you from the indescribably juvenile logic of Wicker’s complaint: The fucking warehouse is empty. ICE can’t “foreclose” an “economic growth opportunity” when nobody else is taking advantage of said opportunity besides homeless squatters or maybe raccoons.
The letter doesn’t say “WTF Kristi?!? Raytheon was days away from inking a deal opening up a high tech military avionics fabrication facility on that site and create 3,000+ jobs until your team swooped in and outbid them” because there is no such deal in the works. There’s only the theoretical, possible demand for such real estate in some godforsaken wasteland in the poorest part of the poorest state in the union and Roge wants to keep it open juuuust in case Raytheon’s interested.
What a fucking loser, lol.
Continued: “The proposed conversion also raises serious feasibility concerns. Detention facilities impose substantial and specialized infrastructure demands – including transportation access, water, sewer and energy costs, staffing, medical care, and emergency services. From my understanding, the ICE detention facility would have a capacity exceeding 8,500 beds. Existing medical and human services infrastructure in Byhalia is insufficient to support such a large detainee population. Establishing a detention center at this site would place significant strain on local resources.”
Considered just changing the nouns and then doing a bait-and-switch where at the end readers would be informed that it wasn’t New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich writing this but a Republican in a deep Red State so hahaha, he sounds like such a lib, and you never once suspected it, readers!
Because goddamn he really does sound like such a lib with all that practical implications on local infrastructure shit. Hell, he was even getting close to expressing concern for nearby ecosystems.