BYHALIA, Mississippi — The county that includes this tiny town voted for Donald Trump by seven percentage points in the last presidential election, has had a Republican in the House for more than a decade, and last helped elect a Democrat to the Senate in 1989.
It seemed like an ideal location when federal immigration officials showed up in the middle of January at a 798,000-square-foot warehouse about 10 miles out of town. They liked what they saw. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) planned to purchase the warehouse and convert it into a detention center as part of a wider strategy to help the president carry out his mass deportation plans.
Byhalia and surrounding Marshall County were about to become home to one of the largest immigration facilities in the United States, with room for 8,500 detainees, nearly six times the population of Byhalia.
