Create a 10-word scroll-stopping headline for: Deborah Ross discusses Cary ICE facility | Vibe NC

This story originally published at NC Newsline.

U.S. Rep. Deborah Ross says the complaints her office receives about immigration detention rarely involve the ICE processing facility in Cary.

Instead, Ross said, concerns typically arise after people are transferred to the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, where North Carolinians can spend months in federal custody.

Ross recently toured the Cary facility with Rep. Valerie Foushee as part of a congressional oversight visit. She said the site functions primarily as a short-term processing center where people are held for only a few hours before being transported elsewhere.

NC Newsline spoke with Ross about what she observed during the visit, and why she is pushing for a congressional inspection of the Georgia facility.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Can you describe what you saw during your visit to the Cary facility?

Ross: It’s not a big processing center. It’s just a small facility. There are two things that go on in the facility, and we went through every nook and cranny. 

There’s an ICE processing facility where they bring in people who have been picked up by ICE and process them before they go to the Stewart facility in Georgia. People come in through a secure bay and then go to a processing area. There are three holding cells—one for women and two for men. One of the men’s holding cells is for people who are violent offenders because they don’t want somebody who overstayed a visa in a cell with a violent criminal. 

People stay in those holding cells only a couple of hours, and then a van picks them up and takes them to the Stewart facility in Georgia. We saw everything, including cameras that allowed us to see into the holding cells. At the time we were there, there were not many people in the cells, and there were not many people being processed. It was actually kind of a quiet situation. 

They’re equipped to process people, but those people don’t stay for a long time, so it’s not like they have beds or anything like that. 

I’ve been to processing facilities at the border in Texas. This was not anything like that. 

The other part of the building is Homeland Security. It may help ICE, but it deals with things such as drug trafficking, human trafficking and cybersecurity. We went to that part of the facility, too, and talked to the person in charge, who has worked there for five years. 

Why did you decide to visit the facility?

I wanted to see what was happening in my district. That’s not the first time I’ve been to that facility. 

Before the Trump administration, that facility was considered a friendly facility for people who had immigration issues they were trying to resolve. In the past, our area wanted a Homeland Security and ICE facility because, without one, people would have had to drive to Charlotte to do normal things such as international adoptions and visa extensions.