A corrections company sought unsuccessfully to buy an immigration detention center in South Georgia just a few months before confirming it is closing a separate one in Gainesville this month, court records show.
Corrections Corporation of America’s bid to buy the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla has prompted some speculation that CCA was seeking to close the facility to bolster other ones it operates in Georgia.
The Nashville-based company said its offer had nothing to do with its plans to close the North Georgia Detention Center in Gainesville. The company said it would have assessed what to do with the property in Ocilla had it been successful in buying it.
“This was solely a bid to purchase an asset. Not a bid for management,” CCA spokesman Steve Owen said in an email. “As a standard practice, CCA conducts due diligence on the merits of each individual procurement. For competitive reasons, we do not publicly elaborate on that due diligence.”
CCA bid $13 million for the Irwin County Detention Center at a bankruptcy auction in September but lost out to Miami-based CGL, a facility management company with offices in Georgia. CCA has since disclosed it is planning to shut down the facility in Gainesville by the end of this month, citing a dwindling number of detainees there.
On Dec. 3, the 502-bed detention center in Gainesville was holding just 97 immigrants facing deportation, down from 303 the year before and 393 the year before that. The reasons for the decline are unclear. But this month, the Obama administration reported a 10 percent drop in deportations between the past two fiscal years.
via Company that’s closing Gainesville detention center tried to… | www.myajc.com.
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