Detention center slips across river to Gaston.

Hey, Mecklenburg County: You snooze, you lose. Gaston County has taken center stage as the possible site of a detention center for illegal immigrants after the project's main proponent, Rep. Sue Myrick, announced that "insurmountable obstacles" were dragging out the process in her home county.

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So what, exactly, has neighboring Gaston won? A chance at hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in federal money, if other centers are anything to go by. In return for building and running the 1,500-bed center, Gaston would be reimbursed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for housing undocumented aliens detained all over the South. The nearest of the agency's 16 centers is in Lumpkin, Ga. Though it's early in the project and no details have been set, other communities have grossed $78 to $130 per person per night. A 2,000-bed center, about 500 beds bigger than the one proposed for Gaston County, brought in $954,000 its first year to the Texas community that hosted it, according to Willacy County Treasurer Ruben Cavazos.

The project also would mean jobs--between 300 and 400 based on its size--and not just for guards. Because centers are supposed to be self-contained, they employ doctors, nurses and clerical staff. It would be a welcome development for the county, which has lost more than 8,000 textile jobs in the past 10 years. "Any time you can bring in a potential of 400-plus jobs to the county, that's got to be a good thing for the economy," says Chief Deputy Tim Farris of the Gaston County Sheriff's Department, which would run the center. But the centers can come with some unforeseen costs. Though Willacy County used a bond to pay the $60 million construction tab, it fell behind on payments when the number of detainees dropped by an average of 500 a day.

And the "insurmountable obstacles"? Providing a place to lock up illegals plays much better in Gaston, where Myrick's fellow Republicans have taken a tough stance, denying illegal immigrants public services and refusing to do business with companies that hire or support them The drawn-out controversy over replacing Mecklenburg's sheriff also made her camp leery. "The current presidential administration is in favor of the project," spokesman Andy Polk says. "But with the elections coming up, we're not sure which choices the next administration will make. Our take on that is that we might have a limited amount of time."