22:58

News Story

Maryland sues to block ‘unlawful’ immigration detention center in Washington County

Attorney general’s suit claims ICE purchase of Williamsport warehouse failed to conduct an environmental impact study, consult with state officials

President Donald Trump participates in a walking tour on July 1, 2025, of the immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” accompanied by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. (Photo by Daniel Torok/The White House)

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block the Trump administration’s “unlawful decision” to convert a Washington County warehouse into a massive immigration detention center to hold 1,500 people.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for Maryland, charges that Immigration and Customs Enforcement bought the warehouse and has proceeded on the project without required environmental reviews, without public notice and without any discussions with state or local officials.

Brown said in a video message that the administration spent $100 million of taxpayer money on the warehouse last month “without telling anyone. No public notice. No consultation with the state. They just did it.”

He later accused ICE of wanting to operate “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings. Speed and efficiency at all costs, even if it means treating people like packages, and even if it means breaking the law.” Brown said the administration plans to buy up other property across the country for detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants.

The Maryland property — near Williamsport, a town of just 2,000 residents — lies within a half mile of Sample Run, which feeds into Conocoheague Creek and then the Potomac River. This purchase was done without an environmental review, Brown said.

“Federal law gives Marylanders the right to know when and how detention facilities are built in their communities,” he said. “That right was denied.”

[Chorus of voices grows against possible ICE detention centers in Maryland]

The suit names the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE and its director, Todd Lyons, as defendants. It claims that both agencies violated the National Environmental Policy and Administrative Procedure acts, which require an evaluation of environmental impacts and consultation with state officials, among other requirements. It said federal officials did not provide “a satisfactory explanation for their action” nor “any explanation – let alone a reasoned explanation – for their rejection, or even their consideration, of reasonable alternatives.”

A DHS spokesperson said in an emailed statement Monday that Brown’s suit is less about the legal process and more about the politics of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies.

“Let’s be honest about this. This isn’t about the environment. It’s about trying to stop President Trump from making America safe again,” the spokesperson said.

“These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” the statement said. “Every day, DHS is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe.”

The DHS position was echoed by Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler, who said Monday that the Trump administration is trying correct the “open border” policies of the Biden administration, which he blamed for 2023 rape and murder of Rachel Morin near her Bel Air home by an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant.

“It just seems like there’s more effort in lawsuits to stop us from doing what is a true public safety issue,” Gahler said. “There’s too many of those stories where people have lost their lives at the hands of people who come not to make a better life for themselves, but to prey on American citizens.”

House Minority Leader Jason Buckel (R-Allegany) said in a statement Monday that state Democrats are engaging in “virtue signaling” when it comes to ICE.

“Democrats complain about detainee conditions in Baltimore for locally based individuals being held by federal authorities. They complain when locally based detainees are sent to far flung facilities in other states to go through the deportation process,” he said. “We wish the Attorney General’s office was focused on these public safety issues rather than the constant effort to show activists how committed they are to fighting the federal government at every turn.”

The suit comes just over two weeks after Howard County officials, joined by various federal, state and local officials, signed emergency legislation to block the conversion of a building in an Elkridge office park into a privately run detention center for immigrants.

Washington County Commissioners had earlier said they were powerless to stop the detention center project. But several days after Howard County voted to block the Elkridge facility, the five members of the Washington County Commissioners, all Republicans, approved a resolution in which the board “expresses its full support for DHS and ICE, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and local municipal law enforcement agencies in their efforts to maintain public safety and uphold the rule of law.”

State lawmakers, meanwhile, continue to press ahead with bills aimed at reining in the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation agenda.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) signed emergency legislation last week to ban so-called 287(g) agreements between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement. The nine counties that have such agreements – Allegany, Carroll, Cecil, Frederick, Harford, Garrett, St. Mary’s, Washington and Wicomico – have 90 days to end them, but sheriffs in those counties are considering suing to overturn the law.

Several other bills aimed at ICE and immigration are scheduled for hearings this week. Those include a Tuesday hearing on House Bill 155, which would prohibit police, including ICE officers, from wearing a mask while on duty. A companion bill has already passed the Senate.

Senate Bill 791 and House Bill 1575, would make it harder for jail officials to ask about a detainee’s citizenship status and would prohibit them from turning over an individual based on an administrative warrant from ICE or DHS. Judicial warrants would be an exception.

Two other measures, Senate Bill 504 and House Bill 711 — scheduled for hearings on Thursday and Tuesday, respectively — would close loopholes in the state’s Public Information Act to prohibit a business from selling personal data of an individual “for the purpose of immigration enforcement.”

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.