FARMVILLE – The number of immigration detainees held in Farmville, and who began arriving in August, won't begin to approach projections until the first of the year, according to Farmville Town Manager Gerald Spates.

Designed to specific federal guidelines, the building was constructed to house approximately 800 detainees.

There were 268 detainees being held in the Immigration Centers of America (ICA) facility when Spates briefed town council members this month.

And the capacity has been reduced to 584, the town manager reminded council members.

“The housing numbers, they're not up to what they're projecting. They probably won't be until some time in January,” Spates told council members during their regular monthly December meeting.

“It was build to their specifications,” he said of the design paying particular attention to federal requirements, “and it was built for 800 detainees. But after a different group (of feds) came down and looked at the building they changed the format of the building so they knocked it down to 584 people.”

The change was primarily a reconfiguration of the dormitory beds, resulting in fewer beds and, therefore, fewer detainees.

To go with the 268 detainees, Spates said, “they've got 180 people on payroll.”

The Town of Farmville, a partner in the deal, receives a dollar per day per detainee.

Spates said the September-October payments to the Town were $2,616, $5,014, and $4,959, respectively.

Council member David E. Whitus asked that a monthly report be included in council's meeting packet, to show how much revenue is being generated each month, with a running total.

“What we'll do is give you the average per day of detainees and then we'll give you the dollars total, a running total,” Spates replied.

When council member Dr. Edward I. Gordon sought clarity on the Town's lack of investment in the project, Spates said, “we have nothing invested except for that 50 acres of land that we paid $50,000 for…”

The facility is built on property that had been purchased by the Town near its water treatment plant.

The federal government's evolving immigration and immigration detention policies were noted with Dr. Gordon saying, “so the truth of the matter is that we really don't know where they're (the federal government) going right now because of the immigration (policy) isn't set in stone.”

The federal government, Spates said, “changes in the middle of the stream. This facility meets all the federal standards. Now the federal government comes back and changes in the middle of the stream.”

The federal government, Dr. Gordon continued, referring to the design of the facility and the policies followed within the ICA facility, “basically wrote this thing.”

“They wrote it,” Spates answered, “but they change…The reason they're not at full capacity is because of federal requirements about having doctors…It's one thing to have a doctor come in the facility but the doctor has to have clearance from the federal government.

“The federal government clearance probably takes 30 days to get. They check everything about you before you can go in that facility.

“So what they're looking at right now,” Spates explained, “is they're going to rent a trailer, a small office trailer, and put the doctor in that trailer on site. He does not have to have clearance because he's not in the building. And take them (the detainees) from the building into the doctor's office.

Referring to what has been described as a state-of-the-art facility, Dr. Gordon said, “the building itself, from a medical point of view, is beautiful…It's not the building at all…They still trying to fulfill the (personnel) requirements of the government…”

Which is not as easy as one might think, according to Spates.

“I'll tell you what, I don't think a lot of us could pass clearance with the federal government,” he said. “If you owe too much money on your credit card (you may not get clearance) because they thought you might be subject to bribes or stuff like that.”

But Spates was optimistic the situation would resolve itself.

“It'll get straightened out,” he said. “It's a new process.”

According to Mark Flowers, the facility's director of detention, the ICA detention facility is one-of-a-kind in the US.

Flowers, who spent the four previous years as Director of National Prison and Jail Standards for the American Correctional Association and spent 23 years in the US Army focused on military corrections, has said it will be the only detention facility in the nation that doesn't mix non-criminal aliens with criminals.

The Farmville facility will also allow visitation at any time, 24-hours a day, and there can be contact between detainees and their visitors.

The detention center will house only adult males, 18 and over, who have committed no crime other than being in the country illegally.

The operational philosophy of Flowers is to restrict the movements of detainees within the facility's perimeter as little as possible.

The average term of detention at the facility in which they will be working, according to Flowers, should be two weeks to a month, as the detainees' cases are determined. After which time they will “either be freed into the United States, as citizens,” he has told Town Council, “or they're going to be going back to their country…” Not released, he said, in Farmville.

The Farmville immigration detention facility will provide Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a detention option previously unavailable.

“I heard the term a minute ago-model facility-we are truly the one and only facility in the United States…under the criteria we have established,” Flowers told Town Council members during his presentation in March. “It's going to solve a lot of the ICE's problems.”

And, he assured them, “It's going to be a relaxed environment as long as everything works the way it's supposed to.”

The entire facility has been described by Flowers as “low, security, very low security” in terms of its detainee population and will be surrounded by a perimeter fence that uses gravity, rather than razor wire, to keep the population from leaving its confines.

There will also be a total of 99 cameras, inside and outside the buildings, and an armed security team patrolling the perimeter in a vehicle 24 hours a day.

The detainees will wear a wrist-band with a bar code needed to move from one area of the facility to another.

There are currently over 30,000 immigration detainees in the US. The Department of Homeland Security owns and operates seven of its own facilities and has contracts with some 30 privately-operated facilities and there are approximately 300 jails that also house immigration detainees.

“And, once again, the problem is they're taking the criminal and the non-criminal and mixing them,” Flowers told Town Council.

“This is the non-criminal,” he said of the Farmville facility, “and it's one-of-a-kind.”