An Immigration and Customs Enforcement or 'ICE' detention facility may be coming to Elkhart County. A company called CoreCivic has proposed the facility.

It would be located along C.R. 7 across from the Elkhart County Landfill.

Right now county commissioners don't know much about the plans, but they say it would be used for people waiting to be deported.

"This will be a decision that the community will work through," said County Commissioner Mike Yoder. "The county commissioner will be seeking input and some sort of sense whether this is a good idea for the community or not."

Current plans call for the facility to have 800 to 1,200 beds. Yoder said it would be used for people who are convicted of crimes, awaiting deportation. The average stay would be about three weeks.

According to Yoder, CoreCivic said this would be a good location for the facility because it is close to the 20 Bypass and Toll Road and just down the road from the county correctional facility.

Yoder said the facility is not supposed to be privately operated, but it will be privately built.

Immigrant support groups are showing great concern for a detention facility like this coming to town.

They said the jobs it would create pay far less than the R.V. industry. Groups believe the facility will be privately operated, despite what the county commissioners are saying and that people will no longer want to stay in Elkhart County.

"Those immigration agents will stop people that they suspect of being undocumented, it's their job," said Richard Aguirre, the founder of Elkhart County H.O.P.E. (Helping Our People Everywhere) immigrant support organization. "They're not going to turn their back if they see people they suspect of being undocumented. People are not going to feel safe and they're not going to stay around."

Aguirre said the facility would not be aesthetically pleasing and won't improve the quality of life in the county.

If the facility were to come to the area, it would create about 300 jobs, but Yoder said that's not necessary because there are many job openings.

A call to action rally will be held on Saturday outside the Elkhart County Courthouse at 1 p.m. and over a hundred people are expected to attend.

According to our reporting partners at Goshen News the commissioners would hear the proposal likely on Dec. 4 and would make a final vote on it in January.

A groundbreaking would happen in the spring and it would take about two years to build.