Local officials in the dark about contract naming Adams as ICE call center site 

Officials in Robertson and Montgomery counties — the rural town of about 600 people straddles both jurisdictions — said they had received no information about the plans to establish a federal call center in the rural community. 

“We have our folks looking into it,” Montgomery County Mayor Wes Golden wrote in a Thursday email. Golden said he had learned about the existence of the contract from a media report on Wednesday. 

Chris Traughber, assessor of property for Robertson County, said Thursday there had been “lots of inquiries here but no new information.” Traughber said he had checked with the county’s planning department, which routinely assesses infrastructure capacity and property uses. They hadn’t heard anything either, he said. 

Federal contract documents show ICE 24-hour call center planned for Adams, Tennessee

Representatives of Immigrant and Customs Enforcement and Koniag Services did not respond Thursday to requests for further information. 

In a statement to the Lookout on Monday, a Koniag spokesperson declined to respond to questions about the size, precise location or workforce involved.  

“Unfortunately, we are not at liberty to discuss this very recently awarded contract at this time,” Joanie Barr, senior vice president for business operations for Koniag Government Services, said via email Monday. 

While details about the operation remain opaque, Koniag in recent days began posting job descriptions for senior- level positions at a call center operating under contract with “government clients.” 

The company by Thursday had posted 29 positions. Job listings refer to the location of performance as either Nashville or “in the Nashville area.” The positions require varying levels of federal security clearances.

Among the listings: “facility manager of an IT call center operations in support of our government clients in the Nashville, Tennessee area.” The job description says the position “oversees the design, leasing, buildout, and day‑to‑day operations of a secure, mission-critical Level II facility supporting safety, and security functions.”

The government’s description of the contract responsibilities, in a document published in November soliciting bids, said its primary function would be to operate a call center capable of handling an estimated 6,000-7,000 daily inquiries from law enforcement agencies across the nation that have entered into cooperative agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

It is not yet known whether any component of the government’s request for bids has been altered or amended. The Tennessee Lookout requested a copy of Koniag’s contract Thursday. 

The number of so-called 287(g) cooperative agreements between ICE and local law enforcement agencies have proliferated under the second Trump administration as it seeks to carry out its mass deportation aims. 

The agreements deputize local police officers, constables and sheriffs’ deputies to perform many of the functions of ICE agents, increasing the reach of the government’s immigration enforcement powers. There are currently more than 2,300 such agreements across the nation. 

The contract solicitation document describing the functions of the call center appears to more closely integrate the work of local police and federal immigration authorities. 

Another job listing on the company’s website is for an intelligence analyst ”to support critical missing persons investigative operations in Nashville, TN” and requires “knowledge of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) resources and reporting protocols” and “experience supporting task force operations or multi-agency investigative teams.”

The description posted in November describes an “integration and location cell” to locate unaccompanied migrant children as part of the contractual agreement. The document specifies that entails “provid(ing) 287(g) partners and field offices with (unaccompanied migrant children) targeting focus and material,” interpreted by immigration rights advocates as providing intelligence for immigrant children to potentially be deported.

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