The Atlanta City Council’s Public Safety Committee unanimously advanced a resolution barring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities within city limits and another requiring Atlanta police to document ICE agents’ activities when present during their operations. The full council will vote on both resolutions at its next meeting on April 20.
Dozens of Atlantans showed up at the council meeting to advocate for the two ICE-control resolutions and also to criticize Mayor Andre Dickens for refusing to sign the city’s first-ever contract with the Atlanta firefighter’ union, which the city council ratified in April 2025.
Firefighter contract dispute
The March 23 Public Safety Committee meeting was the first city council meeting since the International Association Firefighters (IAFF) Local 134 sued the city for breach of contract on March 17.
The lawsuit stems from Dickens’ continued refusal to sign the city’s collective bargaining agreement with the firefighter union.The contract establishes protocols for city-union relations and changes firefighter pay cycle from four weeks to two.
The city had been honoring the contract — except for the change in pay cycle — since the city council ratified it in April 2025 until last October, when the administration told the firefighter union’s leadership that the contract wasn’t valid, because Dickens hadn’t signed it.
It is unclear why the mayor hasn’t signed the contract. The Public Safety Committee’s vice chair, District 11 Councilmember Wayne Martin, told Atlanta Civic Circle he was “baffled” by the situation last week. Instead of saying why Dickens refuses to sign the contract, the mayor’s office, in a March 12 statement to Atlanta Civic Circle, raised concerns that the IAFF Local 134 president, Nate Bailey wasn’t properly elected last November.
When Atlanta Fire Rescue Chief Roderick Smith and Atlanta Police Department (APD) Chief Darrin Schierbaum made quarterly reports to the Public Safety Committee on Monday, none of the seven city council members on the committee asked Smith about the standoff. Only District 2 Councilmember Kelsea Bond, who attended as a non-member, asked Smith whether the two-week pay cycle required by the union contract had been implemented.
But the Atlanta fire chief declined to answer any questions related to the contract.“I’m going to have to refer you to the law department, because there’s litigation tied to it,” Smith told Bond.
Asked by Atlanta Civic Circle as he left the meeting whether he knew why the mayor wouldn’t sign the contract, Smith said, “Nope.”
The fire chief added that he was involved in the city’s original contract negotiations with the union, along with the city attorney and the mayor. “All [were] at the table in good faith,” he said.
Several Atlantans expressed support for the firefighter union during the Public Safety Committee’s public comment period.
“I want to thank those on city council who have shown support for our firefighters as they fight for better working conditions. And, for those who don’t honor these union contracts, I would question their real commitment to public safety,” said East Atlanta resident Catherine Leatherwood.
ICE controls advance to full council
Most Atlantans attended the committee meeting to support Bond’s resolution to bar ICE from establishing or operating large-scale immigration detention facilities within Atlanta, and another by District 12 Councilmember Antonio Lewis to require APD officers to document federal immigration enforcement activities when they are present.
The city can bar ICE from using industrial warehouses for immigration detention through its zoning, permitting, and land-use powers, Bond’s resolution says, noting that the city of South Fulton and others nationally have already done so.
Lewis’ resolution includes a provision requiring the APD to retain body-camera footage from officers present at ICE enforcement operations within the city of Atlanta. Lewis said his resolution mirrors legislation passed by Chicago and other cities that have experienced heavy ICE activity.
State legislature hopefuls Mathewos Samson and Jeremiah Olney attended to show their support for the ICE-control resolutions.
“Across the county we’re seeing this rise of fascist state violence from the Trump administration targeting our immigrant neighbors — but the thing is, Georgians are already fighting back and Atlanta really needs to join them,” said Samson, who is running for Atlanta’s House District 58 in the May 19 Democratic primary.
“Hastily retrofitted warehouses will only accelerate the pain and death that ICE is synonymous with,” said Olney, who is challenging Rep. Stacey Evans (D-Atlanta) in the Democratic primary for House District 57. “Are we the city too busy to hate, or are we just the city that’s too busy to fight hatred?”
“Social Circle, Georgia has shown us that it is possible to use municipal resources to reduce ICE’s ability to continue to build these camps,” Leatherwood, the East Atlanta resident said.
The small town southeast of Atlanta has refused to turn on the water for an industrial warehouse that ICE bought and plans to convert into a detention facility for 8,500 people and 2,500 staff and guards. Social Circle says it can’t provide adequate water and sewer service for the massive complex, in addition to its own 5,500 residents.
Several speakers invoked the ICE detention warehouse in Social Circle. “[ICE’s] warehousing of people, as if they were cattle, in spaces over which no oversight has been granted can only be described as one thing: concentration camps,” said Atlantan Steven Imle.
“This is not just an immigration or humanitarian issue. This is a Georgia infrastructure crisis. The proposed ICE detention facilities will place an immediate and long term strain on our roads, our utilities and our public systems,” said Kimberly Diemert, an organizer with 50501 Georgia.
The Public Safety Committee passed both Bond and Lewis’s resolutions by a unanimous 6-0 vote. (One member, Michael Julian Bond, was absent.)
“I do not believe these would have passed without public pressure. They would have been held in committee,” Kelsea Bond said afterwards in a text to Atlanta Civic Circle. Both resolutions now await approval by the full council.