A draft ordinance prepared for consideration by the Washington County Commissioners on June 30 would impose a six-month moratorium on new data center projects throughout the county while officials study their impacts on infrastructure, water resources, roads, public facilities, and the environment.

The three-page draft ordinance, titled “An Ordinance to Provide for a Moratorium Concerning Data Centers in Washington County,” appears to have been prepared by the County Attorney’s Office and would temporarily halt the acceptance, review, and approval of new data center projects while county officials evaluate what the ordinance describes as the economic, social, and environmental risks associated with such developments.

According to the ordinance, county officials are concerned about high energy consumption, strain on utility infrastructure, significant water usage, environmental impacts, road and infrastructure demands, and the effects large-scale projects can have on public facilities and surrounding communities.

Ordinarily, a proposed data center moratorium would have little to do with the ongoing controversy surrounding the proposed ICE detention center in Washington County. The ordinance never mentions DHS, ICE, the warehouse, Hopewell Road, Wright Road, or the detention center itself. Yet the concerns cited throughout the ordinance closely mirror many of the same concerns residents, environmental groups, state agencies, and DHS itself have spent months debating in connection with the warehouse project.

Questions about wastewater capacity, water consumption, environmental impacts, emergency services, road infrastructure, and the strain on local resources have been central to the detention center debate from the beginning. The State of Maryland raised many of those same concerns in its lawsuit challenging the project. DHS ultimately acknowledged that the facility required a formal environmental review because of its potential impacts. Residents have spent months asking county officials to take those concerns seriously.

Now the county is arguing that similar concerns justify putting an entire category of development on hold while additional study is conducted.

That alone should be newsworthy. What makes the document particularly interesting is the context in which it appears.

Through Maryland Public Information Act requests, we at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible previously obtained a copy of the non-disclosure agreements signed by Washington County officials in December 2025 concerning a confidential land deal. Those agreements were executed just weeks before the public learned DHS was purchasing the warehouse and before county officials publicly acknowledged the project. While the County has never publicly confirmed that the NDAs were related to the warehouse transaction itself, their timing raised significant questions about what county officials knew, when they knew it, and what discussions were taking place behind closed doors during the same period. Those questions have never been fully answered.

Public records obtained through separate MPIA requests have also shown that Washington County economic development officials were actively marketing the warehouse property before DHS purchased it. Those records reveal discussions with brokers, conversations about infrastructure improvements in the Wright Road corridor, and efforts to attract major occupants to the site. More recently, the Washington County Commissioners approved a controversial consulting agreement with former County Administrator Greg Murray during a special session that generated significant public criticism. Murray’s contract specifically authorizes him to advise the county on water and sewer deficiencies, growth impacts, infrastructure concerns, and related matters affecting the warehouse corridor.

One reason that special session is so controversial is because Commissioner President John Barr cast the deciding vote after the commission deadlocked - a vote that could benefit his family considerably. That special session reinforced a growing concern that Washington County Commissioners are conducting important public business behind closed doors, limiting transparency, sidestepping meaningful public input, and creating the appearance of conflicts of interest in decisions that affect the entire community.

Taken individually, these facts may not appear connected. Taken together, however, they show county officials engaged in ongoing discussions about development, infrastructure, growth, water, sewer capacity, and land use at the same time they were conducting confidential discussions and approving consulting contracts related to those very issues. Against that backdrop, the sudden appearance of a proposed data center moratorium raises an obvious question: why are county officials concerned enough about data centers to draft legislation halting them, and what prompted that concern in the first place?

What prompted county officials to begin drafting legislation focused specifically on data centers?

Was there a particular proposal under consideration somewhere in Washington County?

Were county officials receiving inquiries from developers interested in large-scale projects?

Were county officials already discussing potential data center development somewhere in Washington County before this ordinance was drafted?

Or is the timing entirely coincidental and unrelated to any of the discussions that occurred during the NDA period?

Moratoriums rarely appear without a reason. Local governments typically do not just begin drafting legislation to halt an entire category of development unless there is development pressure, a pending proposal, inquiries from developers, or broader concerns about projects that may be on the horizon.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ordinance has nothing to do with data centers at all. It’s that Washington County’s stated justification for the moratorium is that data centers can have significant impacts on utility infrastructure, water resources, roads, public facilities, and the surrounding environment. County officials argue that those impacts deserve additional study before new projects move forward.

Now that’s rich. It is also strikingly similar to the position residents, environmental advocates, and the State of Maryland have been urging Washington County to take with respect to the proposed ICE detention center.

For months, residents have raised concerns about wastewater capacity, water consumption, infrastructure demands, environmental impacts, traffic, emergency services, and the strain a facility housing up to 1,500 detainees could place on local resources. Many of those concerns ultimately became part of Maryland’s lawsuit against DHS. DHS itself eventually acknowledged that the project required a formal environmental review.

Yet when residents raised those very concerns about the ICE detention center, county officials suddenly found no need for caution. There was no call for a pause, no proposal for a moratorium, and no insistence on further study before moving forward. Most remarkably, they denied the public any meaningful opportunity to be heard. To this day, Washington County residents still have not been allowed to comment before their elected officials on one of the most consequential projects in the county’s recent history.

Now, in the case of data centers, the Washington County is proposing exactly that.

If infrastructure demands, water consumption, environmental impacts, and public facility concerns justify halting data center development until additional analysis can be completed, why did those same concerns not justify a similar pause when DHS announced plans to convert an 825,000-square-foot industrial warehouse into a detention facility designed to hold up to 1,500 people?

The ordinance never addresses that contradiction. But once you notice it, it becomes difficult to ignore.

The ordinance does not answer every question raised by its existence. We know the warehouse was being marketed before DHS purchased it. We know county officials were discussing infrastructure improvements in the area. We know county officials signed NDAs concerning a confidential land deal just weeks before the public learned DHS was purchasing the warehouse. We know the Washington County Commissioners approved the hiring of Greg Murray to advise the county on growth, infrastructure, water, and sewer issues affecting the warehouse corridor. What we do not know is what prompted county officials to begin drafting legislation focused specifically on data centers, whether a particular proposal triggered concern, or how long those discussions have been taking place.

The answers are unlikely to come from press releases or carefully crafted public statements. They are far more likely to be found in emails, planning documents, meeting notes, communications with developers, and internal county records. The proposed moratorium does not reveal where any potential data center project might be located or whether any specific proposal exists at all. What it does do is raise new questions about why county officials suddenly believe data centers warrant a six-month pause, what discussions led to that conclusion, and whether those discussions reveal another chapter of a story the public still does not fully understand.

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For months, we at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible, alongside concerned residents from across the region, have been demanding transparency, accountability, and answers about the proposed ICE detention center in Washington County, Maryland.

Week after week, hundreds of residents have protested, attended meetings, submitted records requests, spoken to reporters, conducted research, and organized their neighbors because we believe a project of this magnitude deserves far more public scrutiny than it has received. As more information has emerged about closed-door discussions, non-disclosure agreements, infrastructure concerns, environmental impacts, and controversial decisions connected to the proposed facility, public trust in the process has continued to erode.

Many people in our community are frustrated. Many are angry. But above all, people are determined not to let a massive detention facility quietly move forward without a full public accounting of its impacts on our county.

Now, residents have an opportunity to put their concerns directly into the federal record.

As part of its environmental review process, the Department of Homeland Security is accepting public comments through July 1 on the proposed ICE detention center. Every submitted comment becomes part of the official review process and helps document the project’s potential impacts on our community, infrastructure, environment, public services, economy, and quality of life.

That is why we are encouraging everyone who cares about the future of Washington County to submit a public comment. If you agree that this project deserves careful scrutiny, you can submit a comment directly through our Action Network campaign here:

👉 https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-dhs-stop-the-ice-warehouse-in-washington-county

The federal government is asking for public input. We believe Washington County residents deserve to be heard.

And if you’re not sure what to write, we’ve done the research for you. Below are ten reasons we oppose the proposed ICE detention center and ten concerns you can use, adapt, or build upon when submitting your own public comment to DHS.

1.) Human Rights

For many residents, this is the core issue.

ICE detention facilities across the country have faced years of allegations involving unsafe conditions, inadequate medical care, abuse, neglect, family separation, and violations of detainees’ basic rights. People in Washington County have watched those stories unfold nationally and do not want their own community becoming part of that system.

In March, we wrote about growing concerns from doctors and medical professionals regarding conditions inside ICE detention facilities, including reports involving overcrowding, lack of medical care, unsanitary conditions, preventable deaths, and worsening mental health crises. In many cases, detainees are held in conditions that medical experts and human rights advocates say can have devastating long-term physical and psychological consequences. Why should Washington County help expand that system here in our own backyard?

There is a difference between enforcing immigration law and building large-scale detention infrastructure in local communities. We do not want Washington County becoming nationally associated with confinement, ICE detention expansion, and the warehousing of human beings. Many of us view remaining silent about this as a form of complicity.

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2.) Wastewater, Runoff, and Pollution

One of the most serious concerns surrounding the proposed ICE warehouse involves wastewater, pollution, and long-term environmental strain on the region.

Right now, the warehouse receives water from the City of Hagerstown and reportedly has an approved allocation of just 800 gallons per day. That could change dramatically if the facility is converted into a large-scale detention center housing anywhere from 500 to 2,000 detainees. According to findings referenced by the Maryland Department of the Environment, the proposed detention facility could generate at least 187,500 gallons of wastewater per day.

That is an enormous increase, and residents have repeatedly questioned whether local infrastructure can realistically handle that kind of demand without major environmental consequences.

In March, KVG LLC was awarded a three-year, $642 million contract to retrofit the warehouse so it can hold detainees. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown later warned in court filings that sediment runoff connected to the construction work is likely to affect Semple Run, the stream that borders the southern and western edges of the property and receives discharges from the site’s existing stormwater management system.

That matters because Semple Run is not an isolated stream. It is an important cool-water tributary of Conococheague Creek, which ultimately feeds into the Potomac River. Pollution entering Semple Run would not simply stay near the warehouse site. It could impact downstream waterways throughout the region.

We are especially concerned because Maryland’s lawsuit argues that federal officials failed to conduct the kind of full environmental review normally required under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before moving forward with the project. For many people in Washington County, that raises a larger question: if officials are confident the project is safe, why rush past the environmental review process?

Residents are also concerned about stormwater runoff, floodplain impacts, sewer capacity, and what happens if local systems become overloaded over time. People here understand that wastewater systems are not unlimited. They understand that once environmental infrastructure is strained beyond capacity, communities can spend decades paying the price for it.

3.) Public Health

Public health concerns have become one of the biggest reasons residents continue protesting outside the Washington County Commissioners meetings.

In March, we held a protest focused specifically on the public health risks tied to the proposed ICE warehouse project. The demonstration came after dozens of doctors, nurses, therapists, and healthcare professionals signed a public letter warning about the human and medical consequences associated with immigration detention facilities.

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In that letter, more than 50 healthcare professionals raised concerns about conditions that have repeatedly been documented inside ICE detention centers across the country, including overcrowding, delayed medical care, lack of adequate mental health treatment, infectious disease risks, poor sanitation, dehydration, malnutrition, and preventable deaths. The signatories warned that detention itself can create severe psychological trauma, particularly for vulnerable populations and people with preexisting medical or mental health conditions.

Residents are also worried about the broader strain a facility of this scale could place on local healthcare infrastructure. This ICE detention center would inevitably create additional demand on emergency medical services, hospitals, ambulances, and healthcare systems that are already overstretched.

At a time when Washington County families already face long waits for healthcare access and increasing pressure on local medical systems, adding a massive detention facility would create even more strain on resources the community already depends on every day. The question is simple: why would Washington County want to become part of expanding a system that medical professionals themselves are warning about?

4.) It Will Hurt Tourism

Washington County has spent years trying to promote itself as a destination for history, outdoor recreation, small businesses, local events, and scenic tourism.

People visit this region for the C&O Canal, Civil War history, hiking trails, wineries, festivals, restaurants, and the overall character of the area. And becoming nationally associated with a massive ICE detention facility would fundamentally damage that image and discourage visitors from wanting to spend time or money here.

Earlier this year, more than 120 civil rights and civil society organizations, including the ACLU and Amnesty International, issued a travel advisory ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup warning international visitors about the United States’ expanding immigration enforcement system and conditions inside ICE detention facilities. The advisory warned travelers about risks including detention, racial profiling, aggressive immigration enforcement, and what it described as “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment” inside ICE detention facilities.

That kind of international attention matters. Tourism depends heavily on perception, reputation, and whether people view a place as welcoming and safe. Communities do not spend years building tourism economies just to become nationally known for detention infrastructure and political controversy.

Residents are concerned that Washington County could increasingly become associated with ICE expansion, protests, lawsuits, and federal detention operations instead of the things that actually make this region special.

Communities develop reputations that can last for decades. Many people simply do not want Washington County’s identity tied to detention facilities, government secrecy, and national controversy.

5.) It Will Drop Property Values

Residents living near the proposed site have legitimate concerns about property values. Large controversial institutional projects often affect how nearby areas are perceived by homebuyers and investors. Increased traffic, security infrastructure, environmental concerns, industrial activity, and constant controversy can change the character of an area over time.

Recent Zillow housing forecast data suggests those concerns may already be beginning to emerge in Williamsport. While Washington County as a whole is still projected to experience modest home value appreciation, Williamsport appears to be underperforming many surrounding ZIP codes during the same period DHS is attempting to open the massive ICE detention warehouse. The data does not prove the facility is causing this trend, but it raises legitimate questions about whether the proposed detention center and the controversy surrounding it are beginning to affect buyer sentiment locally.

And there is growing research suggesting those concerns are not unfounded. A recent economics study from North Carolina State University examining correctional and rehabilitation facilities found that nearby property values declined by an average of roughly 20 percent after new facilities opened, with larger facilities associated with even greater impacts.

As one Williamsport homeowner who lives directly across the street from the warehouse recently told Tracee Wilkins of NBC 4, after living there for nearly 30 years, she now plans on moving.

For many families, their home is the single largest investment they will ever make. People are understandably worried about decisions that could negatively affect that investment and reshape surrounding neighborhoods.

6.) Increase in Taxes, Reduction in Tax Revenue

Local taxpayers will most likely eventually absorb costs connected to the project, even if the federal government is involved. As we reported in March after filing a Maryland Public Information Act request, Washington County leaders requested up to $386 million from the federal government for infrastructure improvements needed with the opening of the ICE detention center.

Large facilities create additional burdens involving roads, infrastructure upgrades, emergency services, planning, environmental oversight, and legal disputes. Communities are often promised that projects will pay for themselves, but history shows local governments frequently end up carrying unexpected costs years later.

The Department of Homeland Security’s purchase of the warehouse has also removed the property from the local tax base entirely. Once federally owned, the property becomes tax-exempt, meaning Washington County and other local entities no longer collect property tax revenue from one of the largest industrial properties in the region. According to Radio Free Hub City, this equates to the community losing two million dollars in tax revenue in 2026 and $700,000 every year afterward.

That loss matters. Property taxes help fund schools, infrastructure, public services, emergency response systems, and local government operations. When large federally owned facilities become tax-exempt, municipalities and school systems can lose significant long-term revenue while still being expected to handle the indirect impacts and infrastructure demands connected to the project.

At a time when many families are already struggling financially, residents are asking why Washington County should take on additional costs and risks connected to a controversial project that so many people oppose.

7.) Increase in Utility Costs

Water and sewer infrastructure upgrades are expensive, and somebody eventually pays for them. Large-scale facilities place enormous pressure on existing water infrastructure, especially in rural communities that rely on limited municipal systems or private wells. That kind of demand can lower water pressure, strain local supply systems, and require costly infrastructure upgrades that local households ultimately end up paying for through higher utility bills and expanded water and sewer costs.

If local systems require expansion or additional capacity to support the detention facility, those costs will eventually be passed on to ordinary households through higher utility bills.

People throughout Washington County are already dealing with rising costs for basic necessities. We do not want to see utility systems strained further by a massive detention operation.

8.) Overwhelming the Area

One of the biggest concerns is the sheer scale of the proposed project compared to the surrounding area.

Facilities like this do not quietly blend into communities. They change traffic patterns, infrastructure needs, political dynamics, public perception, and the overall character of a region. In smaller communities especially, projects of this size can completely alter the social and economic fabric of daily life.

Many residents fear Washington County could become defined by this facility in ways that would be impossible to reverse.

9.) Strain on Local Resources & Infrastructure

Projects like this place demands on nearly every part of local infrastructure.

Roads, utilities, emergency response systems, healthcare networks, environmental systems, public planning departments, and local services all face additional pressure when large institutional facilities are introduced into a community.

Residents have repeatedly asked whether county officials have honestly accounted for those long-term impacts. Many feel those questions still have not been fully answered.

10.) Safety & Community Disruption

People are also concerned about the broader disruption a facility like this could bring to the area.

That includes concerns about increased traffic, security operations, law enforcement coordination, protests and counterprotests, emergency incidents, and the tension that often follows highly controversial federal projects.

Beyond physical safety concerns, many residents are worried about the emotional impact of normalizing large-scale detention infrastructure in the community. They want Washington County known for families, neighborhoods, parks, local businesses, and opportunity. Not for becoming another detention hub.

Take Action Before July 1

The public comment period is one of the few opportunities residents have to ensure their concerns become part of the official federal record. Whether your concerns are about environmental impacts, wastewater capacity, property values, public health, infrastructure, emergency services, government transparency, or the human consequences of detention, your voice matters.

This is not just a Maryland issue. The proposed ICE detention center sits near the headwaters of waterways that ultimately flow beyond Washington County and Maryland’s borders. Any environmental impacts associated with wastewater overflows, stormwater runoff, or other infrastructure failures could affect communities downstream throughout the broader region, including Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

DHS is accepting public comments through July 1, but the deadline is approaching quickly.

If you agree that this proposed ICE detention center deserves greater scrutiny, we encourage you to submit a public comment today:

👉 https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-dhs-stop-the-ice-warehouse-in-washington-county

It only takes a few minutes, and every comment helps demonstrate the depth of community concern surrounding this project.

Together, we can ensure that Washington County’s voice is heard and that the concerns of communities throughout the region are part of the official record.

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For months, we at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible have warned that the proposed ICE detention facility in Williamsport would bring massive environmental, infrastructure, and public accountability concerns to Washington County. Now, newly released DHS documents are confirming just how extensive this project really is.

In a recently released federal notice, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it is beginning a formal Environmental Assessment process for the proposed ICE detention facility at the massive 825,000-square-foot warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland.

The announcement contains major new details about the scale of the project and the infrastructure required to support it.

Among the most alarming revelations:

• DHS invites public comments on environmental conditions surrounding the project.

• ICE has officially begun the Section 106 process, the federal historic preservation review process required when projects may impact historic or cultural resources.

• The warehouse will be designed to accommodate up to 1,500 people, which is fascinating, considering in April, DHS argued the facility would only hold 542.

• DHS plans to install a massive 750,000-gallon water storage tank onsite.

• The project will require extensive sewer and utility modifications, including potential expansion of off-site wastewater infrastructure.

• DHS also confirmed the project involves floodplain review procedures under federal environmental rules.

After months of legal fights, public pressure, and growing scrutiny, DHS is now acknowledging many of the environmental and infrastructure concerns residents have been raising since this project was first announced. DHS is describing a large-scale detention operation that will require major infrastructure upgrades, expanded utilities, new security installations, and long-term impacts on Washington County.

The plans described by DHS include perimeter security fencing, guard shacks, new generators, telecom infrastructure, secure recreation yards, cafeterias, medical rooms, and even an indoor firing range for staff.

From the very beginning, residents throughout Washington County have raised serious concerns about wastewater capacity, floodplain risks, environmental impacts, public health consequences, strain on emergency services, and the long-term effects this facility could have on our community. Now DHS itself is acknowledging many of those same concerns in federal documents.

And communities across the country are quickly learning what can happen when ICE rapidly expands detention facilities with little transparency or local accountability.

Just look at Delaney Hall in New Jersey. That facility has become the center of mounting protests, lawsuits, community outrage, allegations of unsafe conditions, and escalating conflict between local officials, advocates, and federal immigration authorities. Across the country, warehouse-style detention expansion is raising growing concerns about human rights abuses, medical neglect, environmental impacts, and the rapid privatization of immigration detention infrastructure.

We are fighting now because we refuse to allow Washington County to become the next national example of what happens when federal agencies attempt to force through massive detention projects without public trust or public consent.

That is why we are calling on residents from across Maryland and the surrounding region to join us on Tuesday, June 9, 2026 at 9:00 AM outside the Washington County Commissioners building in Hagerstown.

This rally will mark one full year without public comment at County Commissioners meetings while residents continue demanding transparency and accountability surrounding the proposed ICE warehouse.

Protest Details

What: Rally opposing the proposed ICE detention facility in Williamsport and marking one year without public comment at County Commissioners meetings

When: Tuesday, June 9, 2026 at 9:00 AM

Where: 100 W. Washington St., Hagerstown, MD

Hosted By: Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible

No community should be forced to accept a massive ICE detention complex without transparency, accountability, or public input.

Washington County deserves better.

And together, we can stop the ICE warehouse.

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That distrust was impossible to separate from the meeting itself. Residents are already questioning executive sessions, NDAs, infrastructure agreements, and the county’s handling of issues tied to the proposed DHS/ICE detention warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland. Now, layered on top of that, are growing concerns about whether Commissioner President John Barr is ignoring potential conflicts of interest and participating in votes involving projects and infrastructure decisions that would indirectly benefit his family’s business interests. By the end of Thursday’s meeting, it was hard not to feel like public trust in county leadership had deteriorated even further.

The commissioners had already spent part of the morning in executive session before the public meeting began. That’s an important detail because so much of the public frustration surrounding the warehouse project revolves around the belief that important conversations about infrastructure, development, and county decision making are increasingly happening behind closed doors.

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Then came the opening prayer from Commissioner President John Barr. Barr asked God to forgive the commissioners’ “obvious enemies” and the people “shouting about, cursing about” county officials. It was an unusually personal and politically charged way to open a government meeting, especially considering the county is already facing mounting scrutiny over secrecy, ethics concerns, and infrastructure issues connected to the proposed ICE facility.

At a time when residents are demanding more transparency and accountability, hearing the President of the Board of Washington County Commissioners publicly describe critics and constituents as “obvious enemies” during a prayer is difficult to ignore.

About fifteen minutes later, the tension became visible. Someone in the audience interrupted Barr while he was speaking, and instead of engaging with the disruption, Barr immediately grabbed the gavel, declared recess, and abruptly paused the meeting. The whole sequence was awkward and revealing at the same time. Barr had opened the meeting talking about “obvious enemies,” and moments later appeared eager to avoid any direct interaction once tensions surfaced in the room.

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The largest issue on the agenda was the GDMS consulting contract involving former county official Greg Murray. On paper, the agreement was presented as a broad consulting arrangement related to water, sewer, and long-term infrastructure planning. But anyone who has been paying attention to the fight to stop the ICE warehouse from opening in Williamsport understood why the discussion carried larger political implications.

Water and sewer infrastructure have become central to the legal and political fight over the proposed ICE warehouse outside Hagerstown. State agencies, environmental officials, and residents have spent months raising concerns about floodplain impacts, sewer capacity, infrastructure strain, and whether the surrounding area can realistically support a large detention facility.

Against that backdrop, the county’s decision to move forward with a vaguely worded consulting contract that included references to “other tasks that are as yet unidentified” naturally raised questions.

Notably, some commissioners appeared uncomfortable with the process as well. One commissioner openly acknowledged that “the optics” surrounding the contract looked bad and argued the county should slow the process down and search for additional consultants before approving anything. Another repeatedly pressed for clearer timelines and objectives. The discussion itself became increasingly disorganized, with interruptions, procedural confusion, and visible frustration between commissioners.

Things became even stranger once the vote began.

The contract appeared headed toward a deadlock, with two commissioners voting in favor and two voting against it. Based on the confusion during the exchange, it genuinely sounded like at least some commissioners believed Barr was not planning to vote, likely because of his obvious longtime connections to Greg Murray through county government and water infrastructure work.

Then Barr suddenly clarified that he had not yet made his comments “and my ruling,” prompting another commissioner to ask, somewhat incredulously, “Shouldn’t you have done that during discussion?”

Barr then launched into an extended speech about reservoirs, aging infrastructure, California wildfires, and his frustration with “talking about water” for the last twenty years before ultimately casting the tie-breaking vote himself in favor of the contract.

Technically, Barr never formally recused himself from the vote. But the confusion surrounding the process clearly created the impression that at least some people in the room believed he either intended to abstain or was not initially planning to participate until the deadlock emerged.

Given Barr’s longstanding connections to Murray, the sequence only intensified concerns about the appearance of the vote and the broader handling of the contract.

Those concerns became even more complicated when looking at the second major issue discussed that afternoon involving infrastructure improvements connected to JGBLI property at Fort Ritchie.

As Radio Free Hub City wrote,

During a special session, the Washington County Board of County Commissioners voted to approve both the water/sewer consulting contract with former County Administrator Greg Murray as well as the county agreeing to improve the sewer lines on private property owned by JGBLI, 63 acres which was given to JGBLI by the county. To further complicate matters, JGBLI currently has two open electrical contracts with Ellsworth Electric, a company currently owned by Commissioner Barr’s family. Commissioner Barr did not abstain from the vote or disclose any potential conflict of interests, despite the agreement indirectly benefiting his family business.

Radio Free Hub City further wrote:

By failing to abstain in voting for the May 21, 2026 amendment, Commissioner Barr voted to have the County absorb the massive subsurface sewer liabilities, which is the primary roadblock holding up the JGBLI subdivision. Approving this public subsidy directly ensures that the development can proceed, which in turn guarantees that Ellsworth Electric can continue to execute its active contracts on those exact lots. Commissioner Barr did not disclose any potential conflict of interests during the session.

By the end of the meeting, things boiled over completely. One attendee repeatedly interrupted proceedings, accused commissioners directly of corruption, and was eventually removed by deputies after shouting, “You’re corrupt. You know you’re corrupt and that’s why you shouldn’t be elected again.”

Regardless of how people feel about that outburst, it reflected something very real that has been building in Washington County for months now. Public distrust surrounding the warehouse controversy has spread far beyond the project itself. Increasingly, residents are viewing infrastructure contracts, executive sessions, development agreements, and county decision making through the lens of the proposed ICE facility and the perception that too much is happening outside public view.

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Meeting: Washington County Board of County Commissioners Special Meeting
When: Thursday, May 21, 2026, 8:30 AM
Where: Washington County administration building, Hagerstown
Presiding: Commission President John F. Barr
Source agenda: https://www.washco-md.net/wp-content/uploads/05212026-Open-Agenda-REVISED-PACKET.pdf

Why this meeting matters

A “special meeting” of the Board of County Commissioners is a focused session called outside the regular schedule. Tomorrow’s meeting has three open items, a closed session, and a packet that was revised on short notice. Two of the three items raise serious questions about how Washington County contracts for infrastructure work, and the closed session, as published, appears to mis-cite the Open Meetings Act in ways the statute itself addresses directly.

This guide walks through each item in plain language, then explains what’s wrong with the way the closed session is framed and what can be done if a violation occurs.

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What’s on the agenda

Item 1: A consulting contract that raises ethics concerns

The Commissioners are being asked to approve a consulting contract with GDMS, LLC, a small company whose principal is Gregory B. Murray.

Murray’s history matters here:

• He was Washington County’s Administrator until October 2017, when he was forced out under contested circumstances.

• His wife, Debra Murray, was fired at the same time over an unauthorized $250,000 loan tied to a county landfill project.

• He later became City Manager in Punta Gorda, Florida, and resigned in November 2024 after a publicly reported incident at a bar and a contested severance vote.

• Debra Murray has been CFO of Ellsworth Electric since 2018.

• Ellsworth Electric was founded by Commissioner John F. Barr, who remains chairman of the board.

So the company being awarded the contract is run by a former County Administrator whose spouse works for a business controlled by the Commissioner presiding over tomorrow’s meeting.

The contract itself includes:

• A one-sided attorneys’ fees clause requiring the County to pay GDMS legal costs in disputes.

• A broad scope allowing the County Administrator to assign additional work without formally amending the contract.

The scope overlaps with issues central to the federal lawsuit Maryland v. Noem, including sewer capacity, infrastructure readiness, and growth impacts connected to the proposed ICE detention warehouse near Williamsport.

Item 2: The County pays for sewer upgrades on private land

The second item amends a 2019 agreement involving the former Fort Ritchie property, now known as Cascade Town Centre Development.

Under the amendment:

1. The County builds sewer improvements on private property.

2. The private sewer system is transferred to the County.

3. The County operates it.

4. In return, the developer upgrades several roads and deeds them to the County.

The amendment is tied to subdividing the property into 21 lots.

The most notable issue is the staff report listing the fiscal impact as “N/A” despite the County funding sewer construction.

Item 3: A labor agreement

The third item is a five-year extension of the union contract covering multiple County departments including Water Quality, Highway, Transit, and Emergency Communications.

This item is largely routine.

The closed session

The BoCC plans to enter closed session after the open items.

The published notice states:

“To consult with counsel to obtain legal advice on a legal matter (7). Open session discussion would breach attorney/client privilege. Legal advice pertaining to statutory interpretation and potential litigation.”

The guide argues the notice raises several Open Meetings Act concerns.

Key concerns raised in the guide

1. Wrong exception cited

The notice cites exception (7), which covers obtaining legal advice from counsel.

However, the notice also references “potential litigation,” which falls under a separate exception, (8), under Maryland law.

The guide argues the Board may be relying on the wrong statutory justification.

2. Lack of specificity

The phrase “statutory interpretation” does not identify which statute is being discussed.

The guide argues this prevents meaningful public oversight.

3. Questions about Open Meetings Act compliance training

Maryland law requires public bodies to designate at least one member trained in Open Meetings Act requirements before holding closed sessions.

The guide recommends a Maryland Public Information Act request to verify compliance.

Possible enforcement mechanisms

The guide outlines three primary remedies:

• Open Meetings Compliance Board complaints

• Circuit court petitions under §3-401

• Civil penalties under §3-402

It also discusses timelines, disclosure requirements, and procedural standards under Maryland law.

Conclusion:

• The ethics concerns discussed are allegations and pattern evidence, not adjudicated misconduct.

• The legality of the closed session depends partly on what is actually said during the meeting.

• The revised packet has not yet been fully compared to the original version.

• Open Meetings Act challenges must be tied to specific procedural violations.

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A new episode of Downtown Dialogue, hosted by Tony Forame, puts a national spotlight on what Hagerstown Rapid Response, Washington County Indivisible, and our neighbors have been warning about from the beginning. Downtown Dialogue is a YouTube channel focused on political, social, and community issues, with Forame using on-the-ground reporting and long-form interviews to dig into stories that deserve more attention. In this episode, he comes to Washington County to examine the proposed ICE detention warehouse in Williamsport and the local movement fighting to stop it.

The video begins outside the massive warehouse the Department of Homeland Security wants to turn into an ICE detention center for up to 1,500 people. Before it became the center of a federal lawsuit and public outrage, this building was meant for storage and shipping. It was not built to house human beings. It was not designed for medical care, legal access, family visitation, or the basic dignity people are owed when they are in government custody.

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What the video captures so clearly is the contrast between Washington County’s people and Washington County’s power structure. Residents have marched, protested, filed public records requests, attended hearings, watched county meetings, tracked vehicles, and demanded answers. Meanwhile, the public was given almost no meaningful say before the federal government tried to drop a detention center beside a small town of roughly 2,000 people.

That is the story here. Not just a warehouse. Not just zoning. Not just politics. It is a test of whether a community can be treated like an afterthought while the federal government and its contractors attempt to build a detention machine in its backyard.

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One of the strongest parts of the video comes when Tony Forame breaks down what happened in federal court in Baltimore and why the project was temporarily stopped. Forame also walks viewers through the role of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which requires federal agencies to study the environmental impact of major projects before moving forward. The federal judge ultimately appeared deeply skeptical of DHS’ position, especially given that the agency was simultaneously planning large scale modifications involving fencing, water systems, toilets, offices, and detention infrastructure while insisting the impact would somehow be minimal. The video does a particularly effective job showing how absurd the government’s argument can sound when stripped of bureaucratic language and explained plainly to ordinary people.

The episode also zooms out, and that matters. Experts interviewed in the video explain that immigration detention is not simply a government function. It is an industry, with private contractors, subcontractors, food vendors, transportation companies, medical providers, and local governments all finding ways to profit from confinement. The warehouse model being pushed in Maryland is part of something larger, faster, and more dangerous.

This video is a reminder that this fight is about Williamsport. It is about Washington County residents who were told almost nothing, then expected to quietly accept everything. And it is about the people who could one day be locked inside a warehouse that was built for freight and storage, not human beings.

The video ends with a simple truth: this project was paused because ordinary people refused to roll over and accept it. The pressure worked. The scrutiny worked. The protests, the organizing, the public records requests, the court challenges, and the relentless attention worked. But DHS has made clear it still wants this detention center, which means this fight is far from over. Washington County residents now face a choice: allow this community to become nationally known for a massive ICE detention complex, or continue making this project so politically toxic, publicly scrutinized, and logistically difficult that the federal government is forced to rethink whether it can build this here at all.

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Earlier today, we published a story about a new confidentiality agreement surfacing inside Washington County government and the increasingly uncomfortable pattern emerging around secrecy, infrastructure planning, and the proposed ICE detention warehouse near Williamsport. The deeper we dig, the more it becomes clear that non-disclosure agreements were not some fringe theory or overblown accusation from activists. They were real, they were being used, and they were tied to discussions happening long before the public fully understood what was coming.

Last month, we broke the story that Washington County Commissioners signed an NDA tied to a major land deal just weeks before the Department of Homeland Security purchased the 54 acre property and the 825,000 square foot industrial warehouse, which they plan to turn into an ICE detention center.

After filing a Maryland Public Information Act request, Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible obtained a redacted non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement executed in December 2025 between the Washington County Board of County Commissioners and a private Maryland LLC connected to a “project to be located on the Company’s property.” The timing alone is difficult to ignore. The agreement was signed only weeks before DHS ultimately purchased the warehouse property that would later become the center of the proposed ICE detention facility controversy.

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For months, local officials insisted there was little to say publicly about the warehouse project while residents, journalists, and community groups were left trying to piece together what was happening through court filings, scattered meeting records, environmental notices, and public records requests. This document shows that while the public remained largely in the dark, formal confidentiality agreements were already in place behind the scenes.

What stands out most is how expansive the agreement actually is. This is not narrowly drafted language limited to a simple land transaction or preliminary business conversation. The NDA specifically defines confidential information to include discussions involving “facility network strategy,” “location strategy,” “economic development incentives,” and even the “existence and progress” of such plans. Those are not ordinary phrases people associate with a routine warehouse purchase. They sound like the kinds of discussions that happen when governments and private entities are coordinating around a major operational project with long-term regional implications. The agreement also prohibited disclosure of information to third parties without written permission while allowing information to be shared internally with consultants, subcontractors, advisors, agents, and others deemed to have a “legitimate need to know.” In practice, that meant conversations about the project could quietly circulate among insiders and outside consultants while the public remained excluded from the process entirely.

The signature page shows the agreement was signed on behalf of Washington County by then-BOCC President John Barr. That matters because Barr has repeatedly been one of the most visible county officials connected to the warehouse controversy and the broader handling of the project. It also matters because county leadership spent months publicly downplaying concerns about secrecy surrounding the warehouse while residents continued uncovering more evidence that significant discussions and planning efforts had already been underway long before the public was meaningfully informed. The existence of this NDA directly undercuts the idea that there was little or nothing happening behind closed doors.

To be clear, governments sometimes use NDAs during economic development negotiations or property transactions. On its own, an NDA is not proof of wrongdoing. But context matters, and the context here is extraordinary. This was not a proposal for a shopping center, distribution hub, or office park. This ultimately became a plan tied to a massive federally connected detention operation that Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown later argued in court could overwhelm existing sewer infrastructure, strain local systems, and carry substantial environmental and community impacts. Since then, the project has triggered lawsuits, protests, federal scrutiny, environmental concerns, and growing outrage over the lack of transparency surrounding how this all unfolded.

That is why this document is significant. It adds another piece to a timeline that increasingly suggests far more coordination and planning may have been happening privately than the public was led to believe at the time. The agreement itself never explicitly says “ICE” or “detention center,” and we are not claiming otherwise. But when an NDA discussing “facility network strategy” and “location strategy” is signed shortly before DHS acquires the exact warehouse property that later becomes the centerpiece of a detention center battle, people are naturally going to ask questions about what officials knew and when they knew it.

This is also why today’s earlier story about additional NDAs surfacing inside county government matters. Viewed individually, officials may try to characterize each agreement as routine or unrelated. Viewed together, they begin to paint a broader picture of a county government increasingly comfortable operating behind confidentiality walls while the public struggled to get basic answers about one of the largest and most controversial projects Washington County has faced in years.

The public still deserves straightforward answers about who requested these agreements, what discussions were taking place at the time, what role county officials played in facilitating the project, and whether the public was intentionally kept in the dark while key decisions and planning conversations were already moving forward. Because at this point, the issue is no longer just the warehouse itself. It is the growing sense that residents were never given the transparency they should have received from the very beginning.

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For months, people across Washington County have been asking why so many major decisions connected to the proposed ICE detention warehouse seem to happen behind closed doors. Between reports of non-disclosure agreements, private discussions, canceled meetings, sealed negotiations, and ongoing litigation, public trust around this project has steadily eroded. Now another confidentiality agreement has surfaced, this time tied directly to sewer infrastructure, utility planning, and future county development.

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Buried inside the Washington County Board of County Commissioners agenda packet for a May 21 special meeting is a consulting contract between Washington County government and GDMS, LLC, a private consulting company managed by former longtime Washington County Administrator Gregory B. Murray. Murray is not some random outside consultant being brought in from another state. Before becoming County Administrator, he also served as director of the County’s Water Quality Department, which makes his reappearance especially notable given that sewer and wastewater capacity have become some of the biggest unresolved issues surrounding the proposed ICE detention facility near Williamsport.

The contract gives GDMS broad authority to provide consulting and support services related to public utility adequacy, including sewer infrastructure, future growth projections, infrastructure readiness, regional service capacity, and identifying “critical areas of immediate need.” The agreement is written broadly enough that the work could potentially touch almost any major infrastructure issue the County wants reviewed. The consultant is also authorized to evaluate water and sewer deficiencies, analyze future growth impacts, coordinate with regional service providers, and even perform “other tasks not identified” if directed by the County.

What immediately caught our attention, however, was the confidentiality language embedded in the agreement. Under a section titled “Confidentiality,” the contract states that the consultant and its representatives may not “divulge, disclose, or communicate in any manner” any proprietary County information. The agreement further states that all such information must be treated as “strictly confidential,” and those confidentiality obligations continue even after the contract ends.

Under ordinary circumstances, that language might not stand out much. Governments use confidentiality clauses in consulting contracts all the time. But these are not ordinary circumstances. The proposed ICE warehouse has already triggered lawsuits from Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, protests, environmental disputes, public records fights, and growing concerns about secrecy surrounding the project. One of the central questions in the legal battle has been whether existing infrastructure can safely support a large-scale detention facility and the significant wastewater demands it could generate. Sewer and wastewater capacity have become some of the most politically sensitive aspects of the entire controversy.

That is why this contract raises so many questions. Washington County is now quietly approving a confidential consulting arrangement focused specifically on water, sewer, and infrastructure issues while those exact same issues remain at the center of the ICE warehouse fight. The agreement also allows the consultant access to County employees and County data, permits the use of subcontractors with “specific subject matter expertise,” and states that all work produced under the contract becomes the “exclusive property” of Washington County government.

The political context surrounding Greg Murray also matters here. According to publicly available reporting summarized in the history section for Fort Ritchie, Washington County officials traveled to South Korea in connection with JGBLI and ultimately transferred roughly 63 acres connected to the redevelopment project. The process became highly controversial and generated allegations involving secrecy and possible violations of Maryland open meetings laws. Murray was County Administrator during much of that period, meaning he was part of the senior leadership structure overseeing County operations and redevelopment efforts at the time. Whether fair or not, many residents still associate that era with opaque negotiations and insider-driven development politics.

Murray also has longstanding ties to current Washington County leadership, including commissioner John Barr, after years serving in senior Washington County government roles.

That is what makes the timing of this agenda packet difficult to ignore. The same packet that approves a confidential consulting contract with Murray’s company also includes another Fort Ritchie infrastructure amendment involving JGBLI and sewer improvements. In other words, Washington County is rehiring a former top official connected to one of the County’s most controversial redevelopment disputes under a confidentiality agreement to advise on sewer and infrastructure matters while simultaneously advancing another infrastructure agreement tied to the same Fort Ritchie redevelopment history.

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It also raises another obvious question: is this contract really limited to general county utility planning and Fort Ritchie infrastructure issues, or could it also position GDMS and Greg Murray to quietly work on infrastructure problems connected to the proposed ICE warehouse itself? Publicly, County officials can describe the agreement as broad county utility consulting and Fort Ritchie-related infrastructure work. Internally, however, the same consultant could potentially advise on sewer and wastewater issues tied to the detention facility without the County ever needing to issue a separate contract explicitly labeled as an ICE warehouse infrastructure project.

That possibility becomes even more notable given Murray’s background running the County’s water department, the broad scope of the contract itself, and the fact that sewer capacity remains one of the biggest legal and political vulnerabilities facing the detention facility proposal. To be clear, there is no direct evidence in the contract explicitly stating that GDMS is being hired to work on the ICE warehouse. But the overlap in timing, subject matter, infrastructure focus, and political context is difficult to ignore.

At minimum, the document confirms that County leadership is actively engaged in confidential infrastructure planning involving water, sewer, and utility adequacy while the future of the ICE warehouse project remains under intense public scrutiny. For many residents, that is unlikely to calm concerns that major decisions are still being shaped outside public view.

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For months, residents in Washington County have been warning that DHS’s plan to convert a massive industrial warehouse near Hagerstown into an ICE detention center was reckless, rushed, and lacking transparency.

Now the federal government’s own watchdog is reportedly investigating the broader warehouse detention program itself.

According to new reporting from The Wall Street Journal, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General has launched an audit into ICE’s acquisition of detention space, including the controversial warehouse-to-detention initiative championed by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and adviser Corey Lewandowski. The report states that DHS rapidly purchased vacant industrial warehouses across the country, often paying above market rates while pushing to open facilities that reportedly lacked proper zoning and plumbing infrastructure.

That mirrors exactly what residents and community groups such as Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible have been warning about for months in Washington County.

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The proposed ICE facility in Williamsport is an 825,000 square foot industrial warehouse purchased by DHS for $102.4 million. Despite reportedly having only an 800 gallon-per-day water allotment, DHS pursued plans to house up to 1,500 detainees there, something that would require more than 150 times more water for drinking, toilets, showers, laundry, cooking, and sewage operations.

Meanwhile, the county sewage system is already at capacity, local infrastructure cannot support a project of this scale without major upgrades, and taxpayers could ultimately be left paying for the consequences.

Residents repeatedly raised concerns about environmental impacts, floodplain issues, infrastructure strain, and the rushed, secretive nature of the project. Instead of listening, local officials and DHS treated concerned residents like alarmists while moving the project forward behind closed doors. The Washington County Commissioners unanimously endorsed the facility earlier this year despite these unresolved concerns.

Last month, a federal judge extended a preliminary injunction blocking the conversion and operation of the detention center while litigation brought by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown moves forward. More recently, we at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible reported that DHS emails discovered in from an MPIA request showed the agency had determined the project now requires a formal Environmental Assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act because it could result in significant environmental and community impacts requiring deeper federal review and future public engagement.

For months, we have protested every single week outside County Commissioners meetings, filed public records requests, coordinated with journalists and environmental advocates, and organized across the region to stop the project.

We intend to continue throwing sand in the gears at every opportunity until plans for this ICE detention facility are permanently canceled.

PS: Please take a second to like and follow Hagerstown Rapid Response on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and Twitter.

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On the same day hundreds of residents gathered outside the Washington County Board of County Commissioners meeting to protest the proposed ICE detention center near Hagerstown, the Commissioners quietly canceled their next scheduled public meeting.

The cancellation notice, posted to the county website on May 12, announced that the May 19, 2026 Commissioners meeting would no longer take place. No detailed explanation was provided and the timing speaks for itself.

On May 12, about 100 residents, activists, environmental advocates, and community members rallied outside the Commissioners meeting to oppose DHS’s plan to convert an 825,000 square foot industrial warehouse in Williamsport into a massive ICE detention center.

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And now, suddenly, the Commissioners don’t want to hold a public meeting next week and residents should ask themselves why. If county officials truly believe this project is safe, transparent, and supported by the public, there should be no reason to avoid facing the community after one of the largest demonstrations Washington County has seen in years.

This is is further evidence that the public pressure is working. Every protest, every public records request, every journalist asking questions, and every resident refusing to stay silent has forced this project further into the spotlight. What officials once hoped would quietly move forward behind closed doors is now facing lawsuits, environmental scrutiny, national media attention, and a reported federal watchdog investigation.

We intend to continue using every lawful tool available to delay, challenge, expose, and ultimately stop this proposed ICE detention facility until the project is permanently canceled.

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While the subject line of the email refers to the site as the “ICE Baltimore Processing Facility,” DHS officials internally describe it as the “proposed ICE detention center at 10900 Hopewell Road in Hagerstown, Maryland.”

That distinction matters because officials have repeatedly relied on terms like “processing facility” when discussing the project publicly, even as residents and advocates warned the warehouse was being developed into a large-scale detention operation.

The email also reveals that the project is still facing unresolved tribal consultation issues under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. According to DHS, one tribe requested additional information related to ground disturbance impacts, and ICE is now awaiting final design details from its contractor before continuing consultation.

At the same time, DHS says ICE has now determined the project requires a formal Environmental Assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act due to the “scope of potential impacts associated with the proposed undertaking.”

That means the federal government is acknowledging the project may carry significant environmental and community impacts requiring deeper review and future public engagement.

Taken together, the email shows the proposed Hagerstown-area ICE detention center is still far from finalized and remains under growing environmental, cultural, and public scrutiny.

Over the weekend, we reported that something was wrong with GTFOICE.org, a high-profile anti-ICE organizing site associated with Miles Taylor, who previously served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security, the same agency that oversees ICE. The project is described as a collaboration between DEFIANCE.org, Project Salt Box, and Save America Movement.

At first glance, the situation looked like a potential data breach. However, as we began to dig deeper, the picture that emerged was not one of a sophisticated hack, but of a system that may never have had meaningful protections in place to begin with.

Nearly 18,000 people entered their personal information into the platform, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes with the expectation that they would receive a playbook or be connected to local organizing efforts. Instead, that data appears to have been accessible through a publicly exposed API that lacked basic safeguards, such as authentication and rate limiting, meaning that anyone who knew where to look could potentially view and collect large amounts of sensitive information tied to anti-ICE organizing activity.

The situation escalated further when members of our team, who had signed up across multiple locations using different phone numbers, received the following message days later:

“Hi *****, Your email, phone number, location, and other information that you provided to GTFOIce have been forwarded to the authorities, including FBI, HSI, and ICE. Miles Taylor and Xander Schultz are grifters and terrible coders, and should never have been hired for security anything”

We cannot independently verify the claim made in that message, but its impact was immediate, amplifying fears about how exposed this data may have been and who could have accessed it.

In practical terms, this means the data people submitted was effectively sitting out in the open online, without real barriers preventing access and without controls to limit how much could be retrieved. The issue was not that someone broke through layers of security, but that the system itself appears to have made that data available in the first place.

To better understand what actually happened, how serious this exposure may be, and what it reveals about the risks of digital organizing tools, last night I spoke with cybersecurity researcher Scott Petty, a member of the Hagerstown Rapid Response research team, who walked us through his findings and why this situation raises concerns that extend well beyond a single website.

Below, is my interview with Scott Petty, a core member of the Hagerstown Rapid Response research team. Petty is also a Cybersecurity Researcher and Threat Analyst.

McCarthy: What appears to have happened to me regarding the GTFOice data breach is that GTFOice did not take proper security precautions to secure their API and so this hacker / curious person was able to just freely access the personal information. And this lack of basic security measures would appear to be negligence on GTFOice’s part. Scott, you are a cyber security researcher. Is this an accurate description based on what we know so far?

Petty: Correct. I looked into this a bit yesterday and came upon a Twitter post by @DataRepublican. The post contained two redacted screenshots showing a sample of the data that was leaked. At first, I suspected that they had exploited an insecure direct object reference (IDOR) vulnerability, similar to the way Weev leaked AT&T data back in 2010. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that @DataRepublican was using curl, a command line tool for interacting with servers via URLs, and passing “Authorization: Bearer <redacted token>” as a header argument.

McCarthy: So in simpler terms, I think what you are saying is that this wasn’t really a case of someone hacking their way into the GTFOice website? And instead, it looks like they somehow had valid access, and the system just handed over the data.

Petty: Exactly, they may as well have simply added a menu item for their user’s data as they were offering it freely to anyone willing to expend very minimal effort.

But without access to the live site, I can’t say for sure whether this was offered by the server, perhaps upon submitting the sign-up form. However they obtained it, that simple header was all that stood between them and the personally identifiable information of Taylor’s users, including names, email addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes.

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McCarthy: So tell me about the second incident

Petty: Later this afternoon, @DataRepublican announced a similar vulnerability in another of Taylor’s sites, undotrump[.]org, which her followers then proceeded to scrape. The screenshots from her post announcing that breach showed that no header was required in this instance, the data was available for the taking by anyone who visited the /api/reservations endpoint. This was confirmed after I found a month-old scan on urlscan.io that included a feed like that disclosed yesterday. The information exposed in today’s incident included names, emails, and messages - some of which were pretty spicy

McCarthy: Wow, so the users of undotrump.org are quite vulnerable too.

Petty: These security lapses are inexcusable and my first thought yesterday when I began looking into this was that someone had probably vibe coded this rubbish, as no competent web developer would be this careless. That suspicion was confirmed when I attempted to visit the site from today’s incident and was met with a Replit 404 “not found” page. Replit is a vibe coding platform and not the sort of thing one should use for a production website, particularly one that was storing potentially sensitive user information.

McCarthy: Yikes, those are strong words! Do you have any advice for people who have had their information compromised from this GTFOice data breach?

Petty: There’s not much you can do once your data’s out there, unfortunately that cat’s already out of the bag. Thankfully, I haven’t seen any evidence that credentials or payment information were leaked and that’s not something that would be typically exposed through the same sort of API endpoint as was scraped. I can offer some suggestions for how people can minimize such threats to their information going forward. To begin with, I recommend using a duckduck.go email alias, which can be generated on a per site basis, without ever needing to disclose your actual email address to third parties. Anything sent to the alias will be forwarded to the address you configure. Similarly, you can use a VoIP number, such as those offered by Google Voice, instead of giving out your real phone number. There is no need to use your real name unless you’re interacting with the government or making certain financial transactions. Finally, there’s the standard security basics, like using a password manager and a unique password for each site and enabling multi-factor authentication, preferably with a hardware token like a YubiKey.

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DEFIANCE.org, Project Salt Box, and Save America Movement asked people to trust them with highly sensitive personal information tied to anti-ICE organizing, telling them “Sign up to tell ICE: Get The Facilities Out at gtfoice.org.” That trust comes with a baseline obligation to protect the people who gave it. Collecting names, phone numbers, and locations without implementing even basic safeguards is not a minor oversight. It is a failure to put the safety of participants first, and that should be the starting point for any accountability moving forward.

Scott’s analysis makes clear this was not a hack in the traditional sense, not to discount the skills of the researchers who discovered the vulnerability. It was a failure to implement even the most basic protections for a dataset that never should have been exposed in the first place.

And that is the real story here. People were not just signing up for a newsletter. They were identifying themselves as part of a movement opposing ICE, often in communities where that carries real risk. That kind of data demands a higher standard of care. Care that it never received.

As more activism moves online, the question is not just who is building these tools, but whether they are capable of handling the responsibility that comes with them.

In this case, the answer appears to be no.

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Just four days ago, Project Salt Box’s Michael Wriston and Defiance.org’s Miles Taylor appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show to announce their partnership for the GTFOice website. As Rachel Maddow noted, “They’re calling it a rapid response network to stop ICE prison camps before they start.”

An apparent data breach may have compromised user information submitted to GTFOICE.org, a newly launched platform designed to organize opposition to proposed ICE detention facilities across the United States. The situation is still developing, but early signs point to a serious security failure involving sensitive user data.

GTFOICE.org was launched by Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official and self-described “security expert”, who later founded DEFIANCE.org. The site positions itself as a rapid response network that allows users to sign up for alerts about proposed ICE facilities in their communities and mobilize local opposition. Public materials on the site indicate partnerships with Project Salt Box and the Save America Movement, and its landing page describes the effort as a collaboration between those groups and DEFIANCE.org.

From the outset, we were skeptical of the platform. A site collecting personal data tied to political organizing around federal enforcement infrastructure raises obvious concerns, particularly when there is limited transparency about how that information will be stored or protected. We also viewed the project as a potential attempt by the founders of DEFIANCE.org to monetize a vulnerable group of people actively trying to stop ICE facilities in their communities. For that reason, we declined to endorse the site or promote it to the more than 670 members of the Hagerstown Rapid Response Signal group.

Three days ago, we signed up on the platform using multiple email addresses and phone numbers across several locations listed on the site, including Hagerstown and Williamsport, Maryland, as well as Salt Lake City. No confirmation emails or texts were received at the time of signup.

That changed this morning.

One of the phone numbers used during signup received a text message claiming that user data submitted to GTFOICE.org had been forwarded to federal authorities, including the FBI, HSI, and ICE. The message also included inflammatory claims about the individuals behind the project. We responded to the message but received no reply.

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Shortly after, the GTFOICE.org website appeared to acknowledge an issue. Around 6 p.m. Eastern, the site displayed a notice stating that signups were temporarily paused while a security review was completed. Within roughly twenty minutes, that message was removed and replaced with a generic “under construction” page.

It remains unclear whether the message received was the result of a confirmed breach, a malicious spoof, or another form of compromise. However, the sequence of events raises serious questions about how user data was handled and whether it may have been exposed.

GTFOICE.org is collecting highly sensitive information from individuals organizing against federal immigration enforcement infrastructure. Any compromise of that data could have significant consequences for those involved.

This website has also recently been promoted on national news networks, likely garnering hundreds - even thousands - of signups from immigration activists across the country. Many of those activists are immigrants themselves, who trusted this website not only to help them push back against ICE locally, but also to protect their information. Instead, it is now possible that these activists and immigrants have had their information shared directly with multiple three-letter agencies who, in 2026, also cannot be fully trusted. Even if the information wasn’t shared, the mere fact that the data was this easy to access by an unknown hacker is cause for serious alarm.

Washington County Indivisible and Hagerstown Rapid Response urge people not to enter their information into this or any other websites until they are fully vetted, clear about their goals and intentions with your personal information, and how they will secure it. It is unacceptable to have compromised the security of so many people who went to GTFOIce to make their communities better, and instead received a gut-punch to their already precarious sense of safety in this political climate.

This is a developing story. We will continue to investigate and provide updates as more information becomes available.

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Update May 4, 2026: Nearly 18,000 people have been affected by GTFOice’s apparent data breach. As wrote on Twitter:

17,662 people have signed up.

The sign-up data is exposed on a public REST API. No true authentication. No rate limiting. Full records: names, emails, phone numbers, zip codes, timestamps.

The man who ran the third-largest federal department (250,000 employees, $60 billion budget) who oversaw election security architecture and led counterterrorism operations, then served as Google’s Head of National Security Policy...

...can’t secure a sign-up form. But he does milk hundreds of thousands of NGO dollars on these credentials. While freeloading off his fame as the person who wrote the infamous NYT article “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”

Here’s what this means in plain English: The information people entered when signing up is basically left out in the open online. There are no real protections in place to keep it private. Anyone who knows where to look can access it, and there are no limits to stop someone from pulling large amounts of data. As a result, full personal details like names, email addresses, phone numbers, zip codes, and even when someone signed up can be easily viewed and collected.

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There is a particular kind of quiet that signals something is wrong, and in Washington County, Maryland that quiet has become impossible to ignore. For months, we have gathered week after week outside the Board of County Commissioners meetings in Hagerstown, asking basic, reasonable questions about a proposed 1,500 bed immigration detention facility planned just miles away in Williamsport, Maryland. Those questions have not been answered, and in many cases, we have not even been allowed the opportunity to ask them in a public forum.

What has taken shape instead is something more troubling than bureaucratic delay. It is a pattern of silence that follows a very specific timeline. Washington County Commissioners signed non-disclosure agreements tied to a land deal that preceded the announcement of the detention facility, and since then they have refused to explain what those agreements cover or whether they are connected to the ICE project. If those agreements are unrelated, officials could say so clearly and immediately. Their continued refusal to provide that clarity has become one of the central reasons we continue to show up.

We are now at a point where the lack of information is itself the most revealing detail.

This Tuesday, that silence becomes the explicit focus of another weekly protest organized by Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible. These demonstrations have grown steadily, driven not by new disclosures from county leadership but by the absence of them. We have filed Maryland Public Information Act requests, constructed timelines from scattered records, and attempted to fill in the gaps left by officials who have chosen not to speak publicly. At the same time, we have often been denied the ability to speak at the meetings where these decisions are being discussed, creating a feedback loop in which public participation is both necessary and restricted.

That dynamic has forced us to respond with a strategy that blends investigation, persistence, and visibility. Last week, we escalated our efforts by partnering with the national network Indivisible to install a billboard along Dual Highway that reads, “ICE Camp 5.6 Miles Ahead. Not in Our Community.” The placement is intentional. It ensures that anyone traveling toward the proposed site is confronted with a message that local officials have tried to keep abstract or obscured. What was once confined to meeting rooms, legal documents, and incomplete disclosures is now unavoidable in the daily landscape of the county.

The billboard represents more than a communications tactic. It is the product of months of frustration built on being shut out of the process. We have organized protests, applied public pressure, conducted independent research, filed public records requests, engaged with media, and now turned to physical visibility in the community itself. None of these actions exist in isolation. Together, they are forcing a level of attention that local leadership has not provided on its own.

What makes this moment particularly striking is not just the scale of the proposed facility or the $102 million federal investment behind it. It is the sequence of events that led here. A quiet land transaction. Signed non disclosure agreements. A federal purchase that followed. A public rollout that arrived fully formed, without meaningful opportunity for input. Each step might be defensible on its own, but taken together they create a pattern that is difficult to dismiss and even harder to ignore.

And while this silence has persisted, county leadership has not been inactive. Instead of communicating transparently with the public about a project of enormous consequence, the commissioners chose to vote to approve $118,000 in new riot gear to prepare for civil unrest. That decision makes clear what they are prioritizing. Rather than answering questions, they are preparing for the reaction to not answering them.

We have been left to draw conclusions from a timeline that officials refuse to explain. The result is a growing sense that something significant was set in motion before the public was ever meant to understand it. We do not need definitive proof of what the agreements contain to recognize that the sequence of events raises serious questions. A secretive land deal followed by a massive federal investment in a detention facility is not the kind of development that can or should be insulated from public scrutiny.

For months, we have continued to show up outside Washington County Commissioners meetings, asking basic questions and being denied the chance to participate in the discussion. At the same time, we have been forced to rely on public records requests simply to assemble a partial picture of what officials have not disclosed. The billboard, in that sense, is not an escalation for its own sake. It is a direct response to being excluded from the process. When transparency is denied in official spaces, it reappears in public ones.

What is unfolding in Hagerstown is not just a local dispute over a single project. It is a case study in how decisions of enormous consequence can move forward without meaningful public engagement, and what happens when a community refuses to accept that as normal. We will continue the protests. We will continue filing records requests. We will continue applying pressure. Not because we expect transparency to be offered willingly, but because we have learned that it must be demanded, documented, and, when necessary, made impossible to ignore.

Event Details:
What: Weekly protest opposing a proposed 1,500-bed ICE detention facility that the Department of Homeland Security plans to build near Hagerstown in Williamsport, Maryland and also demanding transparency from Washington County Commissioners surrounding the project.
When: Tuesday, 8:45 AM
Where: 100 W Washington St # 226, Hagerstown, MD 21740

We have said from the beginning that Washington County is ground zero in the fight against ICE’s warehouse detention expansion, and this week we made sure that reality is impossible to ignore.

Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible partnered with the national organization Indivisible to install a billboard on Dual Highway in Hagerstown, just miles before the proposed ICE detention site near Williamsport, directly in the line of sight of daily traffic heading toward the site. It simply says: Not in our community. And right below that, it gives people somewhere to go, indivisi.org/warehouse, so that anyone who sees it knows exactly what is being planned and exactly how to push back.

Early in the process, before most residents had any real understanding of what was being planned, the Board of County Commissioners rushed to unanimously endorse the ICE facility, despite intense protests for more transparency about the project. DHS purchased the 825,000 square foot industrial warehouse and 54 acres in Williamsport with the intention of converting it into a 1,500-bed detention center.

There was no meaningful effort to engage the community, no transparent process, and no indication that officials intended to slow down long enough for residents to weigh in. Instead, county leadership aligned itself with the project early and decisively, effectively putting its stamp of approval on one of the largest planned ICE detention sites in the region before the public even had a chance to understand what was coming.

Earlier this week, we uncovered that the Washington County Board of County Commissioners signed a non-disclosure agreement in early December tied to a confidential land project, just weeks before it was publicly revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had purchased the warehouse. While there is not yet definitive evidence tying the NDA to that specific property, the timeline aligns in a way that is impossible to ignore. The overlap raises serious and unresolved questions about what county officials knew at the time, what they were restricted from sharing, and whether the public was deliberately kept in the dark about a project of enormous consequence unfolding in their own community.

About a month ago, through a Maryland Public Information Act request, Ethan Wechtaluk, a key member of the Hagerstown Rapid Response research team, found something else that does not square with what the public has been told. Commissioners claimed they had no contact with DHS but records show that on February 11 they invited then–DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance. Either the public was misled, or key details were withheld in a way that makes meaningful oversight impossible.

Residents have been showing up outside Washington County Commissioners meetings again and again, organizing protests, talking to reporters, and trying to force a real conversation about what this facility means for the community. Inside those meetings, commissioners have refused to allow public comment on the ICE warehouse. People are taking time out of their lives to show up, and the door is effectively closed to them. At a moment when transparency should be the baseline, it has been treated as optional.

Not long after, the same board approved $118,000 for riot gear, framing it as preparation for potential unrest. Outside that meeting, the response from the community could not have been more different, where protesters used sidewalk chalk to draw body outlines for every person who has died in ICE and Border Patrol custody since President Trump took office. On one side, it appeared that the county was preparing to manage dissent. On the other, residents were marking the human cost of the system this facility would expand. And taken together, these decisions tell a story of information being limited, no public input, and the facility moving forward despite massive community pushback.

If officials are not going to bring this into the open, then we will do that for them. By placing a message like this directly along the route to the proposed site, we are making sure that people see what is ahead before they get there. No need to dig through documents or sit through meetings where our Washington County Commissioners will not let you speak.

This is part of a broader national campaign led by Indivisible, with similar billboards going up near detention sites across the country. But what is happening in Washington County is not just another entry on that list. We are the test case for the rest of the country. If this model goes forward here without serious resistance, it becomes easier to replicate somewhere else. But when it is stopped here, that matters just as much.

We are using every tool we have because that is what this moment calls for. Protests, public pressure, research, media, legal scrutiny, and now something as simple and visible as a billboard. None of these things work on their own. Together, they start to shift what is possible.

A large detention facility is being planned in our community and the public has been given barely any information nor any opportunities to weigh in. These consequences are real and if the expectation was that this would move forward quietly, that expectation is already proving to be wrong.

Just a reminder that this Saturday, April 25, is a National Day of Action.

Join us at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible as part of a nationwide day of action to oppose the Trump administration’s expansion of ICE warehouse detention and its attack on the due process rights of immigrants and all Americans.

We’ll gather to:

• Show visible, public opposition to ICE detention expansion and the criminalization of immigration

• Stand in solidarity with detained immigrants and the communities fighting to protect them

• Demand that our elected officials defend due process for everyone

Bring a sign. Bring your neighbors. Bring your voice. RSVP now: https://mobilize.us/s/Yb4280

If you want to understand how the United States may dramatically expand immigration detention in the coming years, you should start in Hagerstown, Maryland, where a proposed ICE warehouse facility has exposed a national strategy in real time.

This week, Rashida Tlaib is introducing the Ban Warehouse Detention Act, legislation that would prohibit the federal government from converting warehouses into immigration detention centers. The bill targets a rapidly accelerating approach by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand detention capacity by repurposing industrial buildings that were never designed to hold people. Tlaib will be joined by Delia Ramirez and Jesús G. García, alongside national advocates including Marisol Hernandez of the Detention Watch Network and Laura Spivak of Washington County Indivisible.

In Washington County, the proposed ICE facility near Hagerstown did not emerge through a transparent public process. Instead, it followed a pattern that is now becoming familiar; a land deal advanced without public visibility, local officials signed non-disclosure agreements, residents were left reacting to a project that had largely taken shape behind closed doors, and we still don’t have transparency from our local government. This seems to be a pattern that is not unique to Maryland, but a way to scale the rollout of ICE detention warehouses across the country.

ICE is actively scouting, purchasing, and preparing to convert approximately 23 warehouses into detention and processing facilities across the country. If fully realized, that expansion would increase detention capacity to roughly 92,600 beds, representing a substantial shift toward large-scale, rapid expansion of confinement infrastructure.

Supporters of the Ban Warehouse Detention Act argue that this model carries serious risks. Warehouses are designed for storage, not habitation, and converting them into detention centers can isolate individuals from legal representation, reduce access to medical care, and create conditions that increase the likelihood of abuse and preventable deaths. These concerns build on longstanding criticisms of the existing detention system and raise new questions about how quickly and at what scale the federal government is attempting to expand it.

What distinguishes Williamsport / Hagerstown is not only that it is part of this expansion, but that it has become a focal point of resistance. Local organizing, public demonstrations, and legal scrutiny have brought national attention to the project and, in doing so, have made visible a strategy that might otherwise have remained largely out of public view.

The introduction of federal legislation at this moment underscores the extent to which local pressure is beginning to shape the national conversation. It also reflects a broader shift, as communities across the country increasingly challenge both the process and the substance of new detention proposals.

That shift will be on display on April 25, when more than 150 actions are planned nationwide as part of the National Day of Action to Stop ICE Warehouse Detention. What began as a series of localized disputes has now developed into a coordinated national movement, one that is focused not only on individual facilities but on the broader strategy they represent.

For the Hagerstown area, the implications extend beyond the immediate outcome of a single project. The decisions made here, and the response they generate, are likely to influence how similar proposals are pursued and contested in other parts of the country. In that sense, this community has become an early indicator of what may come next.

The Department of Homeland Security is moving to lock thousands of people in massive detention warehouses, disappearing them from their families, their lawyers, and their communities. Join us at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible for the National Day of Action on April 25. We’re taking to the streets to make clear that stands for dignity, justice, and the rule of law.

We’ll gather to:

• Show visible, public opposition to ICE detention expansion and the criminalization of immigration

• Stand in solidarity with detained immigrants and the communities fighting to protect them

• Demand that our elected officials defend due process for everyone

Bring a sign. Bring your neighbors. Bring your voice. RSVP now: https://mobilize.us/s/Yb4280

There is a difference between protecting sensitive information and deliberately keeping the public in the dark. What we have uncovered in Washington County could point squarely to the latter.

Based on a review of official county documents and meeting records, we have discovered that the Washington County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) in early December tied to a confidential land project. While there is not yet evidence regarding which project the NDAs covered, the timeline of the now-public plan by the Department of Homeland Security to acquire a warehouse near Hagerstown for use as an ICE detention facility aligns with these NDAs.

This raises the obvious question: did The BOCC gag themselves in order to keep the public in the dark about this deeply unpopular project?

The Timeline

• On October 28, 2025, property records show that FRIND-Hopewell, LLC, a subsidiary of Fundrise, took on a new $352.7 million first-position mortgage, replacing an earlier $95 million loan. This kind of large-scale refinancing typically signals that a major transaction is imminent.

  

• On December 9, according to the county’s official agenda packet, commissioners were presented with a confidential project under a signed NDA. This is the inflection point. The Washington County Commissioners did not just receive information. They agreed, in writing, to keep it secret.

  

• On December 16, the official meeting records show the Washington County Board of County Commissioners entered a closed session to discuss the acquisition of property. This meeting occurred just one week after signing the NDA. The public was still completely in the dark. Strangely, this page with the December 16, 2025 meeting minutes was recently removed from the Washington County website, but luckily, a copy of it was found here.

  

• Then, on December 22, Representative April McClain Delaney publicly reversed her position on the Laken Riley Act, which she had previously supported. At the time, the reversal appeared sudden and unexplained. Though not a part of the Washington County Board of County Commissioners, the timing of her sudden reversal of her position is certainly interesting. In light of this timeline, it raises the question, did Delaney reverse her position because she caught wind that DHS had planned to purchase a warehouse in her district with the intention of turning it into an ICE processing facility?

• Two days later, on December 24, the Washington Post reported that DHS was planning to purchase a warehouse in Hagerstown for use as an immigration processing facility.

• On January 16, 2026, DHS completed the purchase of the 825,000 square foot industrial warehouse with the intention of converting it into a 1,500-bed ICE processing facility.

The timeline shows that there may have been a deal already in motion before the public knew anything.

The most straightforward explanation is also the most concerning: Washington County officials knew in mid-December that this project involved DHS and an ICE detention facility, and they had already agreed not to disclose it.

It would explain why basic questions from residents have gone unanswered. It would explain the delays and resistance surrounding Maryland Public Information Act requests. It would explain why officials have consistently avoided giving clear, direct answers about the warehouse.

Because they may have signed an agreement not to.

The NDA Playbook: From Big Tech to ICE Warehouses

What happened in Washington County does not exist in a vacuum. The use of non-disclosure agreements by local officials to shield major projects from public scrutiny follows a well-established playbook, one that has been used repeatedly by large tech companies building data centers across the country.

In those cases, local governments are asked to sign NDAs before being briefed on “confidential economic development projects.” Elected officials are brought into closed-door presentations, bound by legal agreements that prevent them from disclosing details to the public, even as decisions with long-term consequences begin to take shape. By the time residents learn what is being built, the key decisions have already been made.

The way the county has been handling public records requests helps to explain how it works in practice with these agreements. As Radio Free Hub City documented, the county’s approach to public records requests has gone beyond routine delay into something more deliberate. Requests have been slow-walked, narrowly interpreted, and met with just enough compliance to avoid outright rejection while still limiting what the public can actually learn. As they put it, “it has now become clear that the county intends to delay or deny as many records requests related to this as is legally possible.” Paired with the NDAs signed by county officials, this begins to look less like dysfunction and more like a system designed to control what the public is allowed to know.

If DHS or its contractors are using NDAs to brief local officials before detention facilities are publicly announced, it raises serious questions on whether this same model is being used in other communities. Washington County may not be an outlier – it may be a blueprint.

This approach has clear advantages for the agencies and businesses who make use of them by securing local cooperation before public scrutiny begins. It limits what elected officials can disclose. Most importantly, it delays community opposition until projects are approved or already underway.

While non-disclosure agreements may be standard in private sector deals, their use in government deal-making is far more troubling because it allows for elected officials to keep their own constituents in the dark about a project with massive implications for the community. If opened, this ICE processing facility will impact public health systems, infrastructure capacity, and fundamental human rights.

And since the public was cut out of the conversation from the start, questions now are unavoidable.

Who asked the commissioners to sign the NDA? Was it the Department of Homeland Security or a private contractor acting on its behalf? What exactly were they told on December 9? And why did they believe it was acceptable to withhold that information from the people they were elected to represent?

Most importantly, what else are they still hiding from the public?

This is no longer just about the warehouse. It is about whether Washington County residents can trust their own government to tell them the truth.

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Related Reading: Washington County Invited Trump, JD Vance to Tour Hagerstown ICE Warehouse Amid Local Backlash
One of two stories we broke this week, and it raises serious questions about what officials knew and when after reading the documents we received through an MPIA request.

Today was one of those days that reminds you exactly why we organize.

This morning, hundreds of us gathered outside the federal courthouse in Baltimore to send a clear message: Washington County will not quietly become the site of a new ICE detention warehouse. We came from Hagerstown, Baltimore, Montgomery County, Frederick, and communities across Maryland. Faith leaders stood beside immigrant rights advocates. Longtime organizers stood beside people who are joining this fight for the first time. The energy outside the courthouse was unmistakable. People understand what is at stake, and they are showing up.

Then, just hours after the rally, came the news we had all been waiting for.

A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in the lawsuit brought by the State of Maryland, finding that the state has standing and is likely to succeed in its case against the federal government. In plain English, the court recognized that Maryland’s arguments are strong and that this case deserves to move forward. For everyone who has spent months organizing, researching, protesting, filing public records requests, speaking to the press, and demanding accountability, today’s ruling was a major early victory.

What made the moment even more striking was the judge’s own language in court. At one point, Judge Brendan Hurson told DHS attorneys that their arguments “don’t pass the laugh test.”

Read that again.

After months of officials trying to downplay what is happening near Hagerstown, after carefully worded statements and procedural maneuvers designed to obscure the reality on the ground, a federal judge openly signaled skepticism toward the government’s defense. That moment captured what so many in this community have felt from the beginning: this project has been pushed forward on a flimsy foundation, both legally and morally.

At the same time, we want to be very clear that this is not the end of the fight.

The court’s order does not currently halt HVAC renovations inside the warehouse or the installation of an eight-foot security fence around the perimeter. Those details matter. They are not minor. They are visible signs that work connected to this project is still continuing, and as long as construction continues in any form, our work continues too. This ruling is a major blow to DHS and ICE, but it is not yet the final word that this warehouse will never open as an ICE facility.

What today also proved is that Washington County has become ground zero in the fight against ICE warehouse expansion.

What started as a local fight has become something much larger. Over the past several months, our community has built a blueprint that other communities can use when federal agencies attempt to move detention infrastructure into their neighborhoods. We have shown what it looks like to combine rapid response organizing with sustained weekly protests, legal pressure, media scrutiny, public records requests, and coalition building. This is no longer just a Washington County story. It is a roadmap for resistance.

Today’s rally reflected that growth.

We were proud to stand alongside Allies for Democracy, the Baltimore Rapid Response Network, CASA, Cat Ladies for America, the Central Atlantic Conference of the United Church of Christ, Community Witness, Congregation Action Network, Doctors for Camp Closure, the Greater Baltimore Democratic Socialists of America, the Indivisible Maryland Coalition, Jews United for Justice, the Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps, the Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective, Never Again Action DC, Thriving Commons, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick, the Washington County NAACP, and the Western Maryland Immigrant Rights Collective, among many others.

That coalition did not come together by accident. It is the result of people recognizing that what happens in Hagerstown and Washington County has consequences far beyond county lines.

Today proved that people power and legal pressure are working.

But let’s be honest: this was an early ruling, not a final victory. We are encouraged, energized, and deeply proud of what this community has built, but we are not done. We will continue showing up every Tuesday. We will continue pushing for transparency. We will continue making noise in the courts, in the media, and in the streets until it is formally ruled, in writing, that this warehouse will never open as an ICE detention facility.

Today was a major step forward.

Tomorrow, the fight continues.

Yesterday morning, outside the Washington County Commissioners meeting in Hagerstown, we covered the sidewalk in 82 chalk body outlines. Each outline represented a person killed by the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and Border Patrol since January 2025, according to the running count published by The American Prospect. What began as an act of memorial quickly became something more than protest theater. It was an attempt to force our county leadership, our neighbors, and anyone passing by to confront the human cost that sits behind the bureaucratic language surrounding the proposed ICE detention warehouse near Hagerstown. The federal government and local officials may prefer to speak in terms like “processing capacity” and “facility conversion,” but the reality we wanted to place in plain sight was far more concrete: lives lost, families shattered, and a detention system whose consequences are written in blood long before steel doors ever close.

The contrast between what happened outside and what took place inside the meeting room could not have been more revealing. As residents gathered peacefully with signs, chalk, and even a bubble machine, three Washington County commissioners voted 3-0 to approve nearly $118,000 in riot gear for civil unrest. That juxtaposition said more than any prepared statement ever could. Outside, the community was grieving and bearing witness. Inside, county leadership was preparing for confrontation. In a single morning, the priorities of those in power became unmistakably clear. WYPR’s coverage of the vote captured the same stark contrast, noting that residents were drawing body outlines outside as commissioners approved the equipment inside.

For months now, Hagerstown has become ground zero in the national fight to stop ICE warehouses from opening. What began as a local organizing effort in Western Maryland has rapidly evolved into one of the most consequential community resistance movements against detention expansion anywhere in the country. The proposed facility, an 825,000-square-foot warehouse near Hagerstown that DHS and ICE intend to convert into a detention center capable of holding up to 1,500 people, is no longer just a local flashpoint. It has become a national test case for whether communities can intervene before industrial spaces are transformed into sites of mass detention.

That is why what happens here matters far beyond Washington County.

Across the country, DHS has moved to acquire warehouses and industrial properties as part of a broader detention expansion effort. But nowhere has resistance coalesced as visibly, persistently, and effectively as it has in Hagerstown. Through weekly protests, public records requests, legal advocacy, media pressure, and relentless organizing, this community has forced the issue into statewide and national view. Hagerstown is not simply reacting to federal policy. Hagerstown is writing the playbook for how communities fight back.

That sustained pressure is already having an effect. County leadership delayed the riot gear vote for two weeks after public backlash intensified. A federal judge previously paused construction activity after Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown sued DHS and ICE over the project’s lack of environmental review and public consultation. These are not isolated developments. They are evidence that organized community pressure, combined with legal action, is slowing what federal officials hoped would move forward quietly.

Today, the struggle moves from the sidewalks of Hagerstown to the steps of the federal courthouse in Baltimore, where we will stand alongside Washington County Indivisible and a broad coalition of civil rights, immigrant justice, faith, and community organizations as a judge hears Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s landmark lawsuit seeking to block the proposed ICE detention warehouse from opening. Joining today’s rally are Allies for Democracy, the Baltimore Rapid Response Network, CASA, Cat Ladies for America, the Central Atlantic Conference of the United Church of Christ, Community Witness, Congregation Action Network, Doctors for Camp Closure, the Greater Baltimore Democratic Socialists of America, Hagerstown Rapid Response, the Indivisible Maryland Coalition, Jews United for Justice, the Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps, the Montgomery County Immigrant Rights Collective, Never Again Action DC, Thriving Commons, LLC, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Frederick, Washington County Indivisible, the Washington County NAACP, and the Western Maryland Immigrant Rights Collective.

The breadth of this coalition reflects what Hagerstown has become: the epicenter of the national fight over whether ICE can quietly build a new network of detention warehouses across the country. Tomorrow, the judge is expected to rule, and that decision may determine whether this proposed warehouse moves forward or remains halted, at least for now.

What is happening today is no longer merely a local protest or a county political dispute. It is a national test case for whether organized communities can stop detention infrastructure before it hardens into permanence. Yesterday we made the human cost visible in chalk on the sidewalk. Today we carry that same urgency to the courthouse. And tomorrow, the court’s ruling may determine whether Hagerstown remains the place where this movement proved that communities still have the power to stop one more warehouse from opening.

There are moments in local politics when the abstractions fall away. Policy language, procurement votes, talking points about “public safety” and “economic development” suddenly collide with the human reality those phrases are designed to obscure. Tuesday morning in Hagerstown promises to be one of those moments.

As the Washington County Commissioners arrive for their meeting, they will be met not by another stack of public comments or another wave of testimony they can politely absorb and then ignore, but by the unmistakable visual language of death itself: chalk body outlines spread across the sidewalk outside the Board of County Commissioners building, one for every person who has died in ICE custody this year. The demonstration, organized by Washington County Indivisible and Hagerstown Rapid Response, is intended as a memorial, but it is also something more unsettling and, for county leadership, far more politically inconvenient. It is an act of forced proximity.

For months, officials have attempted to discuss the proposed ICE detention warehouse in the Williamsport and Hagerstown area as though it were merely a matter of zoning, federal process, or local economic logistics. The language has been managerial, antiseptic, and carefully stripped of consequence. But the proposed facility has always been about consequence. It has always been about bodies, confinement, illness, and, in the worst cases, death. Tuesday’s protest is designed to drag that reality out of the realm of distant headlines and place it directly at the feet of the people who would help enable it.

Laura Spivak of Washington County Indivisible distilled that moral shift with devastating clarity: “If this facility opens, those deaths will no longer be someone else’s tragedy happening somewhere else. It will be here, in our backyard, with our county’s blessing.” Her point is not rhetorical flourish. It is a direct challenge to the political convenience that allows local officials to imagine federal detention as someone else’s problem. The argument advanced by Tuesday’s action is that geography does not absolve responsibility. Once the facility is here, so too are its consequences.

The timing of the protest makes the symbolism even harder to ignore. Commissioners are set to revisit an agenda item authorizing the purchase of riot gear for local law enforcement, a vote that had originally been scheduled for March 31 but was postponed after protests outside the commissioners’ meeting drew substantial public attention and media coverage. Since that delay, the cost of the proposed purchase has risen sharply, from $94,592.99 to $118,639.

That escalation in cost is not merely a budgetary detail. It has become a political symbol in its own right. While residents continue to plead with county leadership not to align Washington County with an ICE detention warehouse, county officials appear increasingly preoccupied with the infrastructure of suppression: riot gear, crowd control, and the optics of maintaining order in the face of public dissent. The contrast is as revealing as it is grim. On one side of the sidewalk, a memorial to lives lost in custody. On the other, a rising taxpayer bill for the equipment needed to manage the community’s outrage.

Patrick Dattilio of Hagerstown Rapid Response captured the dissonance with unusual bluntness. “What makes this moment so chilling is that while our community is asking county leaders to reckon with the deadly realities of ICE detention, they are simultaneously moving to spend even more taxpayer dollars on riot gear. The message could not be clearer: instead of listening to the people, they are preparing to police the people.”

That sentence lands because it names what so much local governance attempts to conceal: the state’s reflex, when confronted with moral opposition, is too often not reflection but reinforcement. The instinct is not to reconsider the policy, but to fortify the response to those protesting it.

Kate Rader of Washington County Indivisible made the purpose of the action explicit. “When the commissioners enter this meeting, we want them to see the lives that are at stake. If this detention facility moves forward, these deaths are no longer distant headlines. This becomes a moral responsibility for Washington County.”

That phrase, moral responsibility, is doing the real work here. Tuesday’s demonstration is not simply about opposing a detention facility. It is about forcing local leadership to confront the moral architecture of the choices before them. The proposed warehouse cannot be separated from the detention system it would serve, nor can county leaders plausibly claim innocence if they choose to facilitate it.

Heather Tapley of Hagerstown Rapid Response described each outline as “a warning.” That is precisely what Tuesday’s protest represents: a warning not only about the human cost of detention, but about the political and ethical legacy Washington County is in the process of writing for itself.

By Tuesday afternoon, the chalk will eventually wash away. Rain, time, and traffic will do what they always do. But the question the protest poses will remain stubbornly in place: whether Washington County intends to become a place that merely hosts the machinery of detention, or a place willing to confront what that machinery does to human beings once the doors close.

Protest Details:
WHEN: Tuesday, April 14, 2026 and gathering begins at 8:30 AM; commissioners meeting starts at 9:00 AM
WHERE: Outside the Washington County Board of County Commissioners, 100 W. Washington St., Hagerstown, MD

Just a reminder, on Wednesday, April 15 the court will hear this landmark case and we will be rallying outside the courthouse in Baltimore. Need a ride? We got you! We have a bus going from Hagerstown to the rally.

In response to growing community protest, on February 23, Maryland’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit to block ICE’s plan to convert a 825,000-square-foot warehouse outside Hagerstown, which it purchased for $102.4 million, into a concentration camp.

Join us and our allies at Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps and ACLU for a rally and to pack the courthouse!

WHEN: Wednesday April 15, 9 am rally, 10 am observe the court hearing or attend the interfaith vigil outside
WHERE: Garmatz Federal Courthouse, 101 West Lombard St, Baltimore MD 21201

We need to show our opposition to this concentration camp. A ruling against the ICE camp would be a powerful victory not just for communities in Maryland but for everyone fighting back against the administration’s racist, cruel and lawless attacks!

Please RSVP here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/save-the-date-rally-at-the-courthouse-no-camps-in-md