By David Rotenstein
NKyTribune reporter
Roger Berger had a simple question for the Florence City Council at its Feb. 10 meeting. “I want to know if the council has taken a position if ICE or Homeland Security wants to build or acquire a concentration facility within the city limits?”
Berger’s question came as local jurisdictions around the nation are struggling with real estate transactions by businesses and individuals transferring land and large warehouse-like buildings to the Department of Homeland Security. The properties are slated to be used as mass detention facilities.
Some people critical of the trend compare the facilities to concentration camps.
In deeply conservative Mississippi, residents of Byhalia protested against the conversion of a large warehouse into a detention facility for 8,500 immigrants. GOP Sen. Roger Wicker then went on the record opposing the facility.
ICE is evaluating at least 23 warehouse sites throughout the United States to use as mass detention facilities. These include sites in Arizona, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas. Community opposition in places like Social Circle, Georgia, is pushing back against the plans.
Berger wants Florence to follow those communities’ lead.
Florence, as a city, doesn’t detain people on behalf of federal immigration enforcement agencies.
“We don’t work with ICE right now as far as detaining people or anything like that,” Florence Police Chief Jeff Mallery said. “So we haven’t had any discussions of them coming in or having anything like that or building anything in our building anything in the city.”
Mayor Julie Metzger Aubuchon added, “We don’t have any detention facilities here.”
But that wasn’t what Berger was asking. He compared the current policies to the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II. Berger opposes federal immigration detention policies and he doesn’t want a mass detention facility in his hometown.
“I don’t know that we can interfere with a private property sale,” Aubuchon said.
The only leverage the city might have against preventing a mass detention facility might be through its zoning code. But, there’s a catch: Kentucky state law ties the hands of local jurisdictions.
“Governmental entities are exempt from zoning regulations,” explained City Attorney Thomas Nienaber.
Undeterred, Berger pushed back. “I asked the question because of what’s going on in our country,” he said. “Other states and other cities, as I watch the news, have been able to deter, lawfully, see these kinds of facilities being built within their jurisdictions.”
Berger then asked the council to formally support an effort to lobby the General Assembly to pre-empt any future proposals to create local detention facilities.
Aubuchon instead offered to meet with Berger and provide him with a list of state legislators.
“I would suggest perhaps you draft something the way you want it to read, submit it to the administrative offices,” the mayor told Berger, who’s 84 and uses a walker. “It would be better if we had some kind of a form or a document or a letter from you asking whether council would be willing to support that.”
Afterward, Berger told the NKyTribune that he didn’t like the council’s response.
“I think the council could have could have gone on record to petition the state government to do what I requested,” Berger said. “They could have done it by their own volition rather than have a citizen, once bringing that to their attention, do all the work.”
The NKyTribune reached out to Aubuchon for comments about Berger’s request and did not receive a reply.