Until recently, this rural city about 45 minutes east of Atlanta was best known for its Blue Willow Inn cookbooks featuring recipes for Southern dishes such as baked pineapple casserole and kudzu blossom jelly. Lately, however, the community has been trying to stave off a new identity of “prison town” as it fights the opening of what could become the nation’s largest immigration detention center, holding up to 10,000 people.

Social Circle city leaders are backing a decision to keep water service shut off to a proposed federal immigration detention site.

Social Circle is barring water use by Immigration and Customs Enforcement's planned detention center for now, according to city leaders.

Communities across the country have been shocked to learn that the Department of Homeland Security wants to use warehouses in their towns for detention space amid the ongoing immigration crackdown. The small Georgia town of Social Circle is one of them.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to moving ahead with plans to purchase a warehouse in the town of Social Circle for use as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility.

Leaders in the city of Social Circle have been unable to learn anything new about the rumor that ICE has its eye on a million-square-foot warehouse in the city.