The location of a planned U.S. Department of Homeland Security national immigration enforcement call center has changed from Adams to Nashville, a federal contract database shows.
Last week, the database showed ICE had awarded a $63 million contract to Alaska-based company Koniag Government Services, and listed Adams, a rural town of about 600 people near the Kentucky border, as the location of the new facility.
But an update to USASpending.gov now lists the contract location as Nashville, with a ZIP code covering the Donelson neighborhood near the Nashville International Airport.
The planned call center is intended to function as a 24/7 support center for local law enforcement across the county who have entered into cooperative agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE.
Call center employees will “analyze data, perform database cross-checks and confirm enforcement actions in the field,” according to the contract documents.
A Koniag Services spokesperson previously told the Lookout it was “not at liberty to discuss” the contract details or the call center’s precise location. The company has over two dozen open positions listed online, with the Nashville area listed as the job location.
The Lookout reached out to ICE to ask whether the listed location on the contract was precise or meant the Nashville area in general. Adams is about 40 miles north of Nashville.
ICE did not respond.
Andrea Fanta, a spokesperson for Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, said they were still “still in the process of getting a consistent depiction of what is planned.”
ICE has previously tried to keep local officials in the dark about its project for fear of community backlash.
Earlier this year, ICE announced plans to build a detention center in Lebanon, then canceled the project after local officials and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn asked it to reconsider.
The contract documents also show Koniag will be tasked with a wider range of duties beyond a call center. The facility will track and report the locations of unaccompanied minors and find new technologies that increase the effectiveness of ICE’s work with local police and sheriff departments.
The call center expands President Donald Trump’s administration’s coordination with local law enforcement agencies. Federal immigration agreements with local enforcement, called 287(g), aren’t new but have drastically increased in Trump’s second term, as he’s made the deportation of non-citizens a top priority.
Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights, characterized the call center plans to the Lookout last week as “trying to set up shop in middle Tennessee to facilitate this terror on a massive scale.”
Anita Wadhwani contributed to this report.
Originally published on tennesseelookout.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.
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