We’ve witnessed this before. In Minnesota, Chicago, Los Angeles, and many many other communities across this country. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly normalized. Masked federal agents beating protesters with clubs, spraying them in the face with chemical weapons, illegally spying on them and orchestrating a campaign of terror and cruelty on communities all across America - only to then falsely cite the very violence they perpetrate against them as the pretext they need to justify their ever-expanding police powers. To view the events in Frederick as an accident or as an isolated abuse of power by a rogue agency is to completely misread the moment we are living in. To borrow a phrase from political author Adam Serwer, “the Cruelty is the point.” What occurred in Taskers Chance wasn’t an accident, it is one data point in a highly calculated strategy by the Department of Homeland Security and ICE: Namely, the steady, legalistic erosion of constitutional rights under the guise of national security and immigration enforcement.

Robert Paxton and Legalistic Fascism

In his foundational work, “the Anatomy of Fascism”, political scientist Robert Paxton outlined how fascism rarely arrives via a sudden, chaotic coup. Instead, it takes root through an infiltration of an existing institutional framework. One of its most dangerous phases he points to is the weaponization of the legal system—using statutory authority, executive mandates, and administrative loopholes to systematically strip away civil liberties while maintaining a veneer of legality.

When ICE agents refuse to meet the basic legal requirements expected of local law enforcement regarding the production of a judicial warrant—an established restriction on police powers designed to force conformity to the Fourth Amendment’s protection against illegal searches and seizures—they are not acting outside the system. Nor are they acting merely as a rogue, lawless, and untrained police force - though evidence supports these characterizations. They are exploiting a parallel system of unchecked administrative power. By using administrative warrants to bypass the Fourth Amendment, federal immigration enforcement demonstrates how the state can legally shield itself from accountability, transforming residential neighborhoods into zones of military-style occupation.

A crucial tool giving rise to this legalistic corrosion of civil liberties stems from the weaponization of Federal code, 18 U.S.C. § 111, a statute which is ostensibly designed to protect federal officers from assault or impedance. In reality, under the purposefully broad and ambiguous interpretation of “impeding” or “interfering” with a federal agent, the law itself becomes a tool for political repression and state-sponsored violence. When a community member demands to see a judicial warrant, links arms and passively forms a human chain, or films agents to document abuses, their peaceful exercise of constitutional rights can be legally reclassified as a federal felony - creating a permission structure for state sponsored violence. Recent investigative reports from The New York Times corroborate this practice, highlighting how such tactics have become increasingly commonplace within the agency.

While this represents a clear connection to the writings of Robert Paxton, this stark warning about the rise of fascism is shared by many scholars specializing in the study of authoritarianism. In fact, in June of 2025, over 400 intellectuals, historians and experts on fascism - including Jason Stanley and Ruth Ben-Ghiat - signed a letter warning the public about this precise trend.

The shifting Overton Window

The violence in Frederick does not exist in a vacuum. It is a single data point in a broader fascist playbook designed to shift the Overton window—the boundary of what the public accepts as normal governmental behavior. This normalization relies on a series of interlocking mechanisms that slowly condition society to accept absolute executive control:

• Palingenetic Ultranationalism and the “threat from within”: By promoting fear of “the other” and promising a return of a mythic past (e.g., Make America Great Again), the fascist state convinces the public of their need to make carve-outs exempting immigrants, minorities, and different ideologies (Islam) from the constitutional protections afforded to all of us, manufacturing consent to become a weapon against our neighbors.

• Masked Raids & Mass Deportation: Deploying unidentified, poorly trained and wholly unaccountable tactical federal forces into domestic communities desensitizes the public to high-visibility militarization, transforming local neighborhoods into active enforcement theaters, creating an environment of fear.

• Institutional protection and qualified immunity: Documented abuses of power get laundered into standard business practice and use of force qualifications by the state. This might be most prominently seen through the public statements from Kristi Noam and Gregory Bovino in the immediate aftermath of the Alex Pretti and Renee Good killings, and in the effort to circle the wagons around their officers and block local and state investigators after the fact.

• Concentration Camps & Detention Infrastructure: The expansion of mass detention facilities relies on arbitrary legal designations to strip individuals of due process, establishing a precedent that human rights are conditional rather than inherent.

• Flock Cameras & Total Surveillance: The integration of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) and mass surveillance networks removes the expectation of privacy in public spaces, creating a permanent dragnet that tracks dissent and movement alike.

• NSPM-7: The activation of National Security Presidential Memo-7 establishes a framework that explicitly labels political dissent, mutual aid, and anti-fascist community organizing as national security threats. By targeting the civil society networks and non-profits that defend marginalized groups, it criminalizes the exact type of community defense seen in Frederick.

• “Election Security” Safeguards: Policies enacted under the guise of protecting the ballot box frequently serve as tools to restrict voting rights, purge registration rolls, and justify federal interference in local elections. Plans to execute these policies using the very same authoritarian measures creates confusion and a chilling effect around our democratic process.

The Frog in the Pot

Just as Hitler once famously suggested he would “use the constitution to destroy the constitution…”, each of the above tactics are intentionally designed to fit within a fascist legal framework, whereby the state is shielded from any immediate judicial restriction or injunction, while fundamentally undermining the spirit of the Constitution the system itself is based upon. By incrementally advancing these policies, the federal government alters the baseline of acceptable state power.

The 40-hour siege of Taskers Chance wasn’t simply an example of “bad immigration enforcement”, it was yet another test on the guardrails of democracy. It tested how far federal agents could go in terrorizing a community, threatening local citizens, and dismissing local police forces before facing structural pushback. If the public accepts the premise that “national security” and “immigration enforcement” demands the suspension of basic rights for one group of people, this very same legalistic framework will serve as a glide path to the suspension of those rights for everyone else. Fascism does not break the law; it rewrites it until the law itself becomes an instrument of terror and authoritarianism.

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The facility’s utility needs have been a major concern from the beginning. Before DHS conducted its court-ordered environmental review, which never provided the studies for how they came to the conclusion that the facility would not have a noticeable impact on the environment or the environment, the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) estimated that a 1,500-person detention facility could produce about 200,000 gallons of wastewater per day. MDE said that estimate, based on existing prisons, was more than seven times the projected wastewater flow from the warehouse’s prior commercial use.

The report was filed by the State of Maryland and the federal defendants in the ongoing case challenging DHS’s plan to convert the warehouse. In April, Judge Brendan Hurson issued a preliminary injunction barring construction and renovation at the warehouse for the purpose of operating it as a detention and processing facility while the lawsuit is pending. The order allows certain security and maintenance work to continue.

The new filing lists contractor work involving security cameras, network activity, cabling, a survey for a second fiber-optic circuit, an underground-conduit survey, landscaping, and work on government vehicles. It also says contractors were on site during the weeks of August 31 through September 4 and September 6 through 11 supporting “daily operations” as well as security-camera and network activities.

The County Administrator identified in the filing is Michelle A. Gordon. Before Washington County hired her as Chief Financial Officer in 2022 and elevated her to County Administrator in 2023, Gordon worked as Finance Director for the City of Hagerstown and later as Finance Director for Jefferson County, West Virginia. Her departure from Hagerstown followed allegations that she had misused funds, and the episode became a source of controversy when Jefferson County hired her. Gordon’s 2021 resignation from Jefferson County also followed disputes with elected officials who accused her of overreaching into their budget authority. She later sued Jefferson County officials, alleging defamation, whistleblower retaliation, and invasion of privacy; the claims against the Jefferson County Commission and sheriff were dismissed, and the dismissal was affirmed on appeal in 2025.

So naturally, Washington County then hired her as their chief financial officer.

Gordon also played a direct role in earlier County outreach around the ICE detention warehouse. In a February 11, 2026 letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Gordon said it was “imperative” for Washington County to open a dialogue with DHS about the facility’s infrastructure and operational needs, invited Noem and President Trump to meet with County administration, and wrote that the County looked forward to “partnering and working with DHS” on the project. The letter also described the warehouse’s sewer-capacity constraints and said the Wright Road Pump Station would require DHS to fund infrastructure improvements estimated at $750,000 to $1 million. The underlying County records are here, and our earlier reporting is here.

Washington County Commissioners have barred public comment related to the ICE detention center, depriving residents of the opportunity to publicly ask questions about a project that could affect the County’s utilities, infrastructure, waterways, emergency services, and ratepayers. Yet the County Administrator is now confirmed to have met with contractor personnel and local utility representatives about the facility’s requirements.

The public deserves to know which utilities were represented, what requirements were discussed, whether any County infrastructure could be affected, and why the Commissioners believe residents should be silenced while County officials continue meeting with the people working on DHS’s detention warehouse plan.

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Earlier this month, we broke the story that the Washington County Commissioners signed an NDA and met privately with Diversified Capital, the developer connected to the Martin Farm project, in December 2025. We discovered that meeting after Commissioner Jeff Cline returned campaign contributions from people tied to the project roughly ten months after receiving them, shortly before the County was set to vote on its data center moratorium. Now that farm may be annexed into the City of Hagerstown, which would put planning and zoning decisions in the City’s hands and potentially outside the County’s moratorium. And now CBRE is hiring for data center work in Hagerstown. That history is worth keeping in mind as we look at another site where the Commissioners were pushing incentives for development while data center brokers were already asking questions: Mount Aetna Technology Park.

For two years, the Washington County Commissioners supported legislation creating a special sales and use tax exemption for development at Mount Aetna Technology Park, a large technology park off Yale Drive near Hagerstown Community College and Meritus Medical Center. By January 2026, the Commissioners were telling state lawmakers that “several international corporations” had expressed interest in locating significant operations there. A few months later, the public learned that data center brokers had been asking about that same property.

The effort started at least as early as 2025, when the Commissioners unanimously supported Senate Bill 698. The legislation would have exempted certain construction materials and warehousing equipment purchased for development at Mount Aetna from Maryland’s sales and use tax. In a February 13, 2025 letter to the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee, the Commissioners wrote that the Board “unanimously supports the passage of SB 698.”

Their letter also explained what they hoped the tax break would accomplish. The Commissioners said Mount Aetna had remained “undeveloped and underutilized” since Yale Road was constructed in 2016 and argued that the exemption could attract a “technology or research focused company.” They dismissed the potential loss of sales tax revenue as relatively insignificant compared with attracting a “major taxpayer who will support the State for decades to come.”

The Maryland Department of Legislative Services’ analysis of SB 698⁠ confirms that the proposal would have provided qualifying purchases at Mount Aetna with a state sales and use tax exemption for 10 years. State Sen. Paul Corderman, who sponsored the legislation, said in his written testimony supporting SB 698⁠ that the legislation was intended to make Mount Aetna “more attractive to potential investors” and help attract “high-tech industries, research centers, and manufacturing operations.”

Senate Bill 698 did not become law in 2025, but the proposal returned during the 2026 legislative session as Senate Bill 193. The Commissioners supported it again, and their 2026 letter contained a detail that looks considerably more interesting now: “Recently, several international corporations have expressed interest in locating significant operations within MATP.” The Commissioners argued that the tax exemption “could be the catalyst” needed to bring those operations to Washington County. The General Assembly’s records for SB 193⁠ list the Washington County Board of County Commissioners in support, along with CHIEF, the Washington County Chamber of Commerce and the Greater Hagerstown Committee.

The Commissioners’ support was also put to a public vote. At their February 3, 2026 meeting, County Administrator Michelle Gordon presented the previously transmitted letter supporting SB 193 for ratification, and the Commissioners voted 4-0 to support it, according to the official February 3 meeting minutes⁠.

This time, they got the tax exemption they wanted. The Senate passed SB 193 by a vote of 45-0, the House passed an amended version 136-0, and Gov. Wes Moore approved the legislation on May 26. It became Chapter 731 and took effect July 1, 2026. The official legislative history for SB 193 and Chapter 731⁠ documents the votes, approval and final law.

The exemption is broader than simply providing a tax break on construction materials. The law formally designates Mount Aetna Technology Park as a “target redevelopment area” and provides a 10-year sales and use tax exemption for qualifying construction materials and warehousing equipment purchased solely for use there. The eligible property is specifically defined as Mount Aetna Technology Park, accessible from Robinwood Drive, Mount Aetna Road and Yale Drive and located within an Office, Research and Industry zoning district. Perhaps most relevant given the data center interest in the property, the equipment covered by the exemption specifically includes computer systems and equipment.

During reporting on Washington County’s data center moratorium, Greg Snook, chairman and CEO of the Hagerstown-Washington County Industrial Foundation (somehow, also known as “CHIEF”), acknowledged that brokers representing potential data centers had contacted him about Mount Aetna Technology Park. According to reporting on the Washington County data center moratorium⁠, those brokers wanted to know how much land was available, how the property was zoned and what utilities were available.

Snook’s role here is also worth noting. He isn’t simply someone who happened to receive inquiries from data center brokers. Snook is a former President of the Board of County Commissioners of Washington County, and is the current chairman and CEO of CHIEF, which has been involved in the development of Mount Aetna for years, including the Yale Drive extension project that helped open the property for development. He also has a longstanding business relationship with Commissioners President John Barr. Hagerstown City Council records identify Barr, Snook, and local developer Paul Crampton together as representatives of Hager 5, LLC during the company’s development of property on West Washington Street. Snook also told the Herald-Mail that approximately two years earlier he had commissioned a power study to determine what electrical upgrades Mount Aetna would need for various potential uses, including a data center.

There is another wrinkle here that makes Mount Aetna particularly interesting. Washington County’s data center moratorium says the County’s zoning ordinance does not currently address “data centers.” But Mount Aetna is zoned Office, Research and Industry, or ORI, and that district already lists “Computer and data processing services” as a principal permitted use. The same district separately permits “structures and equipment that are required to support international and domestic telecommunications and technology.” Meanwhile, the moratorium defines a data center as a facility used primarily for the “storage, management, processing, and transmission of large amounts of digital data.”

That creates an obvious question about how those existing permitted uses interact with the County’s new definition of a data center. It is especially relevant at Mount Aetna because SB 193 applies specifically to qualifying development in this ORI-zoned technology park and expressly includes “computer systems and equipment” among the equipment eligible for the tax exemption. The words “data center” never appear in the law, but the combination of the existing zoning language, the computer equipment tax exemption and the confirmed interest from data center brokers makes Mount Aetna considerably more relevant to the County’s data center debate than the Commissioners’ public discussion of the moratorium might suggest.

The tax exemption itself does not establish that Mount Aetna was specifically designated for data centers. Jamison Door Company and its parent company BMP Group have already announced a major manufacturing project at the park involving approximately 58 acres and a planned 355,000-square-foot facility. The Commissioners also approved a separate $2 million County tax incentive over five years for that project, according to the announcement detailing Jamison and BMP Group’s Mount Aetna development⁠.

But the timing is certainly peculiar. By January 2026, the Commissioners knew that several international corporations were interested in significant operations at Mount Aetna, and they were actively asking the General Assembly to approve a tax break that they believed could help attract those projects. We also know that brokers representing potential data centers were asking about Mount Aetna’s available acreage, zoning and utilities before the Commissioners voted on June 30 to pause new data centers while Washington County studied their impacts.

What we don’t know is whether those two groups overlap. The Commissioners never identified the “several international corporations” referenced in their letter. We don’t know when the data center brokers first approached CHIEF, which companies they represented, whether County officials knew about those conversations, or whether data centers were among the potential Mount Aetna projects officials were discussing while lobbying for the tax exemption.

That matters because the Commissioners have presented the June 30 moratorium as an opportunity for Washington County to study data centers before deciding how they should be handled. But if brokers representing potential data centers were already evaluating Mount Aetna while the Commissioners were lobbying for special tax treatment intended to attract major development there, there is an obvious question about how much the Commissioners already knew about data center interest in Washington County before they voted for that moratorium.

Washington County residents deserve more than vague assurances after decisions have already been made and important details have been kept from them. The Commissioners spent two years supporting special tax treatment for Mount Aetna, told state lawmakers that several international corporations were interested in the property, and then voted for a data center moratorium after brokers representing potential data centers had already been asking about the site. Given this Board’s record of shutting residents out of the ICE detention center discussion and signing NDAs with developers, the unanswered questions here matter. The public deserves to know who was interested in Mount Aetna, when the Commissioners learned about that interest, and exactly what they knew about the data center industry’s interest in Washington County before they began telling residents they needed a moratorium to study it.

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Just ten days after we uncovered a planned data center project at the Martin Farm property on Burkholder Lane, data center job listings appeared online for Hagerstown. According to listings on Indeed, LinkedIn, and its own website, CBRE is hiring building and maintenance employees for a data center.

So, is CBRE hiring for the data center project we uncovered at Martin Farm, or is another data center project already moving forward in Hagerstown?

On June 30, Washington County Commissioners passed a one-year moratorium on data centers, saying they needed time to study their effects. But the County’s own draft moratorium ordinance spelled out the concerns they said required a pause: enormous electricity use and strain on utility infrastructure; noise from cooling systems and backup generators; substantial water use; hazardous materials and electronic waste; and incompatibility with rural and agricultural land. The Commissioners also said they needed to study effects on homes, environmental resources, roads, and public infrastructure.

At the same time, Commissioners had already met privately with Diversified Capital, the developer connected to Martin Farm, in December 2025. We discovered that secret meeting after County Commissioner Jeff Cline returned campaign donations from people tied to the project roughly ten months after receiving them, shortly before the County was set to vote on the moratorium.

Now the Martin Farm property may be annexed into the City of Hagerstown, where planning and zoning decisions would no longer be controlled by Washington County and where the County’s moratorium may not apply. And now CBRE is hiring for data center work in Hagerstown.

The public deserves an answer: are these jobs for the Martin Farm data center project we uncovered, or is Hagerstown preparing for another data center while Washington County tells residents it is still studying them?

Join us Tuesday, September 15 at 9 a.m. outside the Washington County Commissioners meeting, 100 W. Washington St. in Hagerstown, and tell the Commissioners that we know about their secret meetings with the Martin Farm data center developer, their NDAs, and their attempts to keep the public in the dark. They do not get to claim they are protecting the County from data centers while one may be moving forward right in front of us.

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Last Friday night, people in Frederick stood outside a neighbor’s home and linked arms as ICE agents refused to tell them if they had a warrant and moved in. This came after nearly two days of ICE camped out in their neighborhood, intimidating residents, threatening people who were watching them, and telling people they knew where they lived.

Then things turned violent.

ICE agents drove vehicles onto the sidewalk toward witnesses, threatened people with arrest, and eventually approached the home where protesters had linked arms. Agents began beating them. People were injured. People were screaming for help. Frederick Police officers were right there and watched it happen without stepping in to stop it.

We’ve since learned something else that makes the entire situation even more disturbing: ICE also refused to tell Frederick Police whether they even had a warrant. Frederick Police Chief Kevin Meyer said his department asked ICE about a warrant. The response from ICE, according to Meyer, was: “We’re not gonna discuss that with you.”

So ICE wouldn’t tell the local police department whether they had a warrant, proceeded toward the home anyway, and then beat people outside while Frederick Police stood by. Some of the people injured that night are now dealing with the aftermath, including significant medical bills and recovery costs.

These are people who showed up because their neighbors needed them, and now they need us.

Help the Protesters Beaten by ICE

A fundraiser has been set up to help cover medical bills and recovery costs for the community members injured that night. Any money raised beyond those costs will go toward helping local immigrant families in need.

Please give what you can and share the fundraiser.

Click here to help with the medical bills of Frederick protesters beaten by ICE

Help Local Families Impacted by ICE

There are also immigrant families in the community dealing with the fear, disruption, and financial consequences of ICE activity. Western Maryland Immigrant Rights Coalition is organizing mutual aid for people who need help.

Click here to support mutual aid for people impacted by ICE

You can drop them off at either of these locations:

• Eliza’s House located at 35 North Potomac Street, Hagerstown, MD 21740

• Hub City Brewery located at 25 W Church St, Hagerstown, MD 21740

We’re Donating 100% of Our Substack Revenue This Month to Both Causes

For the month of September, Hagerstown Rapid Response is donating 100% of the money we receive from paid Substack subscriptions to both of the causes above. The money will go to help cover the medical bills and recovery costs of the protesters beaten by ICE in Frederick and to support mutual aid for people and families impacted by ICE.

If you’ve been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber, this is a good month to do it. Your subscription will help support both of these causes while also helping us continue getting this information in front of as many people as possible.

If you have the ability to donate directly, please do. If money is tight, share these links instead. The people who showed up for their neighbors that night should not be left to deal with the physical and financial consequences of what ICE did to them on their own.

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According to Frederick Police Chief Kevin Meyer, his officers asked. During his September 9 interview on WFMD’s The Morning News Express, Meyer said ICE’s response was, “We’re not gonna discuss that with you.” So while people outside that home were being treated as interfering with a law enforcement operation, the agents carrying it out would not even discuss their warrant with the local police.

Most of ICE’s vehicles had no license plates. Their windows were completely tinted, the agents wore masks, and residents watched them drive onto sidewalks and into people’s yards. Meyer confirmed that reports of ICE vehicles running people off the sidewalk were what brought FPD to the scene. Does anyone see a problem with adding “won’t discuss whether they have a warrant” to that list? Residents were apparently supposed to accept that these people were federal agents acting within their authority, even as they concealed their identities and refused to answer local officers’ questions. What is supposed to stop a group of random people from claiming to be ICE and doing the same thing?

Meyer said federal agents “have no requirement to show us even anything” and that FPD could not compel them to do so “because they’re federal authorities.” In the discussion about identifying agents, he described officers being able to ask but unable to make them comply. We should not have to guess what Frederick Police verified before accepting that the people approaching this home were entitled to do so. If ICE would not discuss a warrant, what information did officers have, and who decided that was sufficient?

Meyer was much more definite when describing his department’s responsibility to residents. “Our job is to keep the peace, maintain some semblance of order, and make sure that everybody is safe,” he said. He also said, “If we see something unsafe, we have to step in and do something about it.” Yet Frederick Police did not intervene to stop the beatings shown in our videos. Meyer said officers were initially speaking with people in the street and that the confrontation calmed when they reached the house. He also acknowledged that an ICE agent stopped striking someone when an FPD officer arrived with a body camera, calling the timing “awfully coincidental.” His account needs to be compared with the footage, including what officers could see and hear before they approached.

After acknowledging a duty to intervene, Meyer questioned what would happen if an armed municipal officer put hands on an armed federal officer, and how dangerous that could become for everyone nearby. Nobody is suggesting that confronting an armed agent is a casual undertaking. But people were already being hurt, and explaining the danger to officers does not answer what those officers were supposed to do for the people being beaten. Meyer then said FPD could not investigate the federal officers’ excessive-force claims and directed complaints to Homeland Security, the department that oversees ICE. That leaves the people who were hurt being told to ask ICE’s own department to investigate.

Residents were expected to stay out of the way and trust that ICE had the authority to do what it was doing, even as agents refused to answer local police asking about a warrant. People who were beaten are now being directed to complain to the department that oversees the agents who hurt them. Meyer says FPD’s job is to keep everybody safe, but what does that promise mean to someone crying out for help while officers stand nearby? ICE’s refusal does not prove it lacked a warrant, but it gives residents every reason to question whether one existed. If agents had a warrant authorizing what they were doing, why refuse to confirm that to local police? The people demanding everyone else’s compliance should not get to dismiss questions about their own authority with “we’re not gonna discuss that with you.”

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People injured during Friday’s ICE violence in Frederick are now facing medical bills and recovery costs. They showed up for their neighbors, and they need us to show up for them. Please donate what you can and share this fundraiser. Funds raised beyond those costs will support local immigrant families in need.

You can support them here: https://chuffed.org/project/200514-support-frederick-community-members-assaulted-by-ice

and here: https://linktr.ee/westernmdirc

What happened Friday did not begin when ICE agents started beating people. For nearly two days, federal agents camped out in a Frederick neighborhood, frightening and intimidating the people who lived there. Residents and witnesses documented ICE agents driving through the neighborhood and making threats, including telling people, “We see you, we know where you live, we have your license plate,” and, “We know where you live, we’re going to go to your house, we’re going to show up, we’re going to come arrest you.”

On Friday night, the situation escalated dramatically. ICE vehicles without license plates drove onto a public sidewalk toward witnesses and protesters, while agents ordered people to leave and threatened them with arrest. When ICE agents later approached the home they had been targeting, peaceful protesters linked arms in front of the property. ICE agents responded with violence. Video taken at the scene shows federal agents grabbing, shoving, striking, and beating protesters with batons. We also have video showing what appears to be an ICE agent pointing a gun at people laying on the ground after being beaten with batons.

Frederick police officers were there. As shown and heard in the video below, Frederick PD watched it happen while victims screamed in agony for their help and witnesses shamed them.

That cannot simply be brushed aside as a confrontation between ICE and protesters. Local police have a responsibility to protect people in their community. When federal agents are using force against people in front of local law enforcement, the public deserves to know what Frederick police officers were instructed to do, why they did not intervene, whether anyone requested their assistance, what communications occurred between Frederick PD and ICE before and during the incident, and whether Frederick PD believed federal agents were permitted to assault people without intervention simply because they carried federal badges.

Not only did Frederick PD fail to protect people who were being beaten or make any apparent effort to de-escalate the situation, video appears to show an officer arriving at the scene with two canisters of mace and handing one to another officer standing just feet from witnesses and people who had just been beaten. Given that Frederick PD had just stood by while ICE agents beat people with batons, it is difficult to believe that the mace was brought out to protect those witnesses or the already-injured victims from the people who had just attacked them. If Frederick PD was not prepared to use force to stop ICE from beating people, the obvious question is: Who exactly were they preparing to use that mace against?

We are calling for an immediate investigation into both agencies. The actions of the ICE agents involved must be investigated, including their use of force, threats against residents and protesters, operation of vehicles without visible license plates, conduct on the public sidewalk, and the legal authority under which they were attempting to approach or enter the targeted property. Frederick PD’s response must be investigated separately, including what officers witnessed, what orders they were given, what coordination occurred with ICE, and why officers stood by while people were being beaten.

We are also calling for an investigation into the incident when ICE drove vehicles, without license plates, onto the public sidewalks directly at witnesses, and threatened them with arrest while exercising their constitutional right.

There is extensive video of what happened Friday night. This is not a situation where the public has to rely solely on competing accounts of what occurred. People can watch it.

No federal badge should place someone above the law, and no local police department should get a pass for standing by while people in its community are being hurt. The people of Frederick deserve answers, accountability and an independent investigation into exactly what happened Friday night and why.

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We also encourage everyone who is able to help the local families impacted by ICE who need our support now more than ever by donating to the Western Maryland Immigrant Rights Collective (WMD-IRC): https://linktr.ee/westernmdirc.

Please read and share Western Maryland IRC’s statement on what happened in Taskers Chance:

“The Western Maryland Immigrant Rights Collective (WMD-IRC) condemns the violence ICE perpetrated against the Taskers Chance community September 3–4, 2026. They targeted and terrorized our immigrant neighbors. We are also aggrieved that FPD turned their backs to the brutality of ICE against protesters. We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms and reiterate our call to abolish ICE.”

We started with two campaign refunds. What we found was a much bigger story. On June 12, 2026, Washington County Commissioner Jeff Cline returned $500 to Moshe Rubin and $250 to Chris Shank, nearly ten months after both men had contributed to his campaign. Cline’s campaign gave the same explanation for each refund: “Candidate decided to decline contribution.”

That would be interesting on its own. It gets a lot more interesting when you learn that Rubin and Shank later sat across from Cline and the other Washington County Commissioners as members of the same confidential “Project Team,” pitching a development project the County still has not publicly identified.

And that is where this starts to get quite interesting.

The December 9 Closed Meeting

Earlier this year, we reported that on December 9, 2025, Washington County Commissioners went behind closed doors for a project presentation involving a secret land project. The public was locked out and the Commissioners signed nondisclosure agreements covering the project. Just one week later, the official meeting records show the Washington County Board of County Commissioners then entered another closed session to discuss the acquisition of property.

We filed a Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) request to get the NDA signed by the County Commissioners, only to receive an unhelpful, redacted version. But the County’s own meeting minutes tell us who was in the room, even if they still refuse to tell us exactly what was being pitched. Along with every County Commissioner, County Administrator Michelle Gordon, and Jonathan Horowitz, the County Business and Development Director, the closed-door presentation included:

• Moshe Rubin, COO of Diversified Capital, a New Jersey-based commercial real estate investment and management company that says it invests in “localized data center development initiatives.” Washington County planning records identify Diversified Capital as the developer behind the Martin Farm/Burkholder Lane project at 12440 Burkholder Lane. The County minutes identify Rubin as part of the “Project Team.”

• Chris Shank, a former Washington County state senator and Hogan administration official with extensive lobbying and government-relations experience. The County minutes also identify Shank as part of the “Project Team.”

• Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, now an attorney with Davis, Agnor, Rapaport & Skalny (DARS). The County identifies Rutherford as the project’s land-use attorney.

• Connor McManus, a civil engineer with Dynamic Engineering, a land-development consulting firm with data center experience. Dynamic Engineering also worked with Diversified Capital on the Martin Farm/Burkholder Lane project.

• Zack Fritz, COO of Sage Policy Group, a Baltimore economic and policy consulting firm that has produced multiple studies making the economic case for data center development in Maryland.

At the time of the secret December, 2025 meeting, Cline’s campaign had already been holding Moshe Rubin’s $500 contribution and Chris Shank’s $250 contribution for more than three months.

Who Is Chris Shank?

Chris Shank previously represented Washington County in the Maryland Senate and later served in senior roles in Governor Larry Hogan’s administration, including chief legislative officer and deputy chief of staff. In other words, he knows how government works, who makes decisions, and how to move an issue through the political process. His appearance as part of the confidential “Project Team” makes this look a lot less like a routine warehouse presentation and a lot more like a serious government-relations effort.

Moshe Rubin and Diversified Capital

Commissioner Cline’s campaign finance report supplied an especially useful clue about the importance of Moshe Rubin in all of this, listing his occupation as “Real Estate Investment” and his employer as Diversified Capital.

Diversified Capital was not difficult to connect to Washington County. The company was already tied to one of the County’s biggest industrial development proposals.

Washington County planning records identify Diversified Capital as the developer of the Martin Farm/Burkholder Lane project at 12440 Burkholder Lane in Hagerstown. The proposal involved roughly 242 acres of Planned Industrial land and about one million square feet of development. More importantly, Diversified Capital’s own public profile describes the firm as a Lakewood, New Jersey family office with a portfolio that includes a “data center development project in Washington County, Maryland.”

Zack Fritz and Sage Policy Group

Then there is Zack Fritz. His presence becomes much more interesting once you look at what Sage Policy Group had been doing just a few months before the secret meeting.

Washington County’s minutes identify Fritz, Sage Policy Group’s chief operating officer, as present during the confidential presentation with the Commissioners, Rubin, Shank, Rutherford, and McManus. The County labels Rubin and Shank as the “Project Team,” Rutherford as the land-use attorney and McManus as the engineer. It says nothing about why Sage was there.

Sage Policy Group is a Baltimore-based economic and policy consulting firm specializing in economic-impact studies, economic development, forecasting and legislative analysis. Just four months before Fritz appeared in Washington County’s secret presentation, Sage prepared a strongly pro-data center economic report for the Maryland Tech Council, the same organization whose directory says Diversified Capital has a data center development project in Washington County.

The report says Maryland “cannot afford to sit on the sidelines” while other states compete for data center investment and argues that Maryland should welcome responsible data center development before the opportunity goes elsewhere.

According to the Sage report, data centers are attractive to governments because they generate large amounts of tax revenue while using relatively few public services. The report describes them as requiring “exceedingly few government services,” producing little traffic and waste, placing relatively low demands on emergency services, and requiring minimal public infrastructure beyond electricity and internet connectivity.

That sales pitch is especially interesting in Washington County, given the county’s recent data center moratorium ordinance, which cites enormous electricity demands, substantial water use, strain on utility infrastructure, noise from cooling systems and generators, impacts on roads and public facilities, hazardous materials, electronic waste, and effects on nearby residential and agricultural properties.

So the economic consultant sitting in Washington County’s secret December meeting worked for a firm that had recently been making the statewide case for the very industry Washington County would soon say needed to be paused while its impacts were studied. Funny how much a data center can change depending on whether you are writing the sales brochure or the zoning ordinance.

Sage’s data center work was not limited to that statewide report. It also prepared studies for the Maryland Tech Council on the Quantum Frederick data center project and the economic and fiscal impacts of data centers in Prince George’s County.

What Was Former Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford Doing There?

Another person in the room deserves a closer look: former Maryland Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford.

Washington County’s records identify Rutherford as the project’s “Land Use Attorney.” He was sitting with Cline and the rest of the Board of County Commissioners, Rubin and Shank from the confidential Project Team, McManus from Dynamic Engineering, and Fritz from Sage Policy Group.

After leaving office, Rutherford joined Davis, Agnor, Rapaport & Skalny (DARS), where his work includes government relations, lobbying, government contracting and real estate. The firm describes his role as helping clients navigate the “crossroads of politics, government and law” and work with elected officials, appointed officials and regulatory agencies.

That makes the “Land Use Attorney” label worth paying attention to. DARS represents developers and investors through property acquisition, land-use planning, zoning, rezoning, permitting, development agreements and other approvals. Put another way, this was not a room full of people casually brainstorming what to do with an empty field.

Boyd Rutherford’s Support for Data Centers Goes Back Years

Boyd Rutherford’s appearance as the land-use attorney in Washington County’s secret December 9 presentation is even more interesting when you look at his record while he was Maryland’s lieutenant governor.

Rutherford was part of the Hogan administration when Maryland made a deliberate push to become more competitive for data center development. In February 2020, the Maryland Department of Commerce submitted official testimony supporting Senate Bill 397, legislation designed specifically to lure data centers to Maryland with major tax incentives. The testimony is issued on Department of Commerce letterhead identifying Larry Hogan as Governor, Boyd Rutherford as Lieutenant Governor, and Kelly Schulz as Secretary of Commerce.

SB 397 offered qualifying data centers a 10-year exemption from Maryland sales and use taxes on equipment and allowed counties and municipalities to reduce or eliminate business personal property taxes on qualifying data center equipment. Commerce’s explanation was refreshingly straightforward: Maryland needed the incentives because data center operators were shopping between states, and jurisdictions offering tax breaks were more attractive places to build.

The Hogan-Rutherford administration was not talking about data centers as something Maryland should merely tolerate. Commerce said the state should compete to attract a significant portion of the industry, specifically pointing to Maryland’s proximity to Northern Virginia’s enormous data center market as a selling point. The testimony concluded that the legislation would provide “a foundation for Maryland counties to build upon” and said the Department of Commerce looked forward to working with interested counties to attract these businesses and jobs.

Five years later, Rutherford turns up in a closed Washington County development meeting, this time not as lieutenant governor but as the project’s land-use attorney, sitting alongside a Diversified Capital executive whose company says it has a data center development project in Washington County, an engineer already connected to the Martin Farm project, and an economic consultant whose firm was actively promoting data center development across Maryland.

Jonathan Horowitz and Washington County Business Development

Washington County Business Development Director, Jonathan Horowitz, has been promoting data center development for years. On February 4, 2020, on behalf of the County’s Business Development department, Horowitz sent the Maryland Senate Budget and Taxation Committee a letter saying Washington County “fully support [sic] Senate Bill 397” because it would encourage data centers to locate in Maryland by exempting them from both sales and property taxes. Horowitz wrote that the bill would give Maryland “a competitive place in the market for data center attraction.”

Fast-forward to the Martin Farm property. Horowitz is listed as a Washington County Business Development contact on sales brochures for the property. The brochure does not just list a generic County office. It lists both Horowitz’s office number and cell number, indicating that Washington County was not exactly keeping its hands off the marketing effort.

Martin Farm Was Being Marketed for Data Centers

Washington County planning records originally described the Burkholder Lane proposal as a warehouse project, but the people marketing the property clearly had a wider menu in mind.

A commercial real estate listing posted in June 2024 advertised 12440 Burkholder Lane as “Ideal for Data Center.” A later January 2025 listing described the proposed million-square-foot facility as suitable for automated warehousing, cold storage, e-commerce distribution, and data centers.

The marketing materials also highlighted electrical power, city water, and city sewer, three things a large data center tends to care quite a bit about.

And the pitch did not stop there. Multiple websites have marketed the property as suitable for data centers, with one description saying the facility features a “proposed data center with ample utilities.”

So before Rubin ever appeared in the confidential meeting, the massive industrial property connected to his employer was already being marketed for data center development. That does not prove the December 9 presentation was about the Martin Farm, but it does make the overlap awfully hard to ignore.

And Now the Property Is Conveniently Being Annexed Into Hagerstown

The Burkholder Lane property is also caught up in an annexation moving through the City of Hagerstown, and that matters because Washington County currently has a moratorium on new data center applications. Hagerstown does not.

Property records show that Lawayne Martin sold 12440 Burkholder Lane to Burkholder Lane Acquisitions LLC for $2.231 million in 2023. County planning records identify that same address as the Martin Property where Diversified Capital pursued the million-square-foot industrial development. Burkholder Lane Acquisitions LLC is now seeking annexation into Hagerstown as part of the Burkholder-McDade annexation, which covers nearly 172 acres of mostly undeveloped industrial land.

Why does that matter? Washington County’s Commissioners adopted a 12-month moratorium that prevents the County from accepting, processing, reviewing or approving new data center applications conveniently until after November election. Hagerstown has its own zoning and permitting authority, so land annexed into Hagerstown could fall outside the reach of Washington County’s data center moratorium.

The timeline for all of this deserves scrutiny. Diversified Capital was behind the original Martin Farm development. Connor McManus and Dynamic Engineering worked on it. Rubin and McManus later appeared together in the December 9 confidential presentation. Washington County then imposed a moratorium on new data center applications. Now land connected to the Burkholder project is being annexed into a jurisdiction where that County moratorium would not apply.

There are still facts we need to pin down, including exactly which portions of the original roughly 242-acre Martin property are included in the approximately 172-acre annexation, when annexation discussions began and whether Washington County officials participated in those discussions.

Most importantly, we want to know whether a data center has been discussed as part of the current plans for this property and whether the County moratorium ever came up in conversations between the developer, Washington County and the City of Hagerstown.

These are not complicated questions and someone involved should be able to answer them.

Why Did Washington County Commissioner Jeff Cline Return Shank and Rubin’s Money While the County Was Preparing a Data Center Moratorium?

Now we get back to those campaign refunds, because the timing is hard to miss.

On June 12, 2026, Cline returned $500 to Moshe Rubin and $250 to Chris Shank. Both contributions had been made on August 25, 2025. Both men later appeared before Cline as members of the confidential Project Team on December 9.

And Cline returned the money while Washington County was preparing to temporarily stop new data center applications.

We learned about the proposed moratorium while reviewing County records ahead of the Commissioners’ June 30 meeting. Buried in the agenda packet was a public hearing and a three-page draft ordinance explaining why the County believed data centers posed enough of a problem to justify refusing new applications while officials studied the issue.

We published the draft ordinance on June 18 because almost nobody knew this was happening. For a policy with enormous consequences for development in Washington County, the County had done remarkably little to make sure the public noticed. And the ordinance is especially revealing now because of the County’s own description of data centers.

Washington County called them “high energy consumers, significant noise generators and substantial water users.” The County raised concerns about electricity demand, strain on utility infrastructure, cooling water, generator and cooling-system noise, hazardous materials, electronic waste, roads, public facilities and impacts on nearby homes and farms, and thus enacted to implement a one-year moratorium on data centers in the county.

This is a strikingly different response from the one residents got over the ICE detention center. For months, residents raised concerns about water, wastewater, roads, emergency services and environmental impacts from a detention facility designed for as many as 1,500 people. The Commissioners would not pause that project. With data centers, suddenly hitting the brakes was considered prudent government.

Which raises a pretty obvious question: what scared them?

There was no publicly announced data center proposal before the Commissioners. Yet County officials had already reached the point of drafting legislation to stop new applications while they figured out what rules they needed.

When we first found the moratorium, we did not yet have Rubin’s contribution in front of us. We had not connected Rubin to Diversified Capital, Diversified Capital to Martin Farm, or Martin Farm to the listings advertising the site as “Ideal for Data Center.”

Now put the dates in order.

August 25, 2025: Rubin and Shank each contribute to Jeff Cline’s campaign.

December 9, 2025: Rubin and Shank appear before Cline as members of the same confidential Project Team. Connor McManus of Dynamic Engineering is there too. McManus had already represented the Diversified Capital-backed Martin Farm project.

June 12, 2026: Cline returns both contributions.

June 18, 2026: we publish the County’s proposed data center moratorium.

June 30, 2026: the Commissioners hold the public hearing. County staff say even the proposed six-month pause is not enough and recommend 18 months. The Commissioners ultimately approve a 12-month moratorium. And strangely, on the same day, the owners of the Martin Farm also filed a petition for the farm to be annexed by the city of Hagerstown.

So why June 12?

Cline held Rubin’s money for almost ten months. He kept it for roughly six months after Rubin appeared before him as part of a secret development team. Then, while the County was preparing legislation aimed specifically at data centers, he decided he no longer wanted Rubin’s contribution. On the very same day, he returned Shank’s money too. Maybe there is a perfectly innocent explanation. If so, Cline should have no trouble providing it.

The records that could answer this are obvious. When was the moratorium first discussed internally? Who asked the County Attorney to draft it? When did Commissioners receive the first draft? What prompted the County to believe a moratorium was necessary? Had anyone approached County officials about a data center? Was Martin Farm or Burkholder Lane part of those discussions?

Those questions matter even more because land tied to the Burkholder project is now moving toward annexation into Hagerstown, where Washington County’s moratorium would not control the zoning.

Washington County needs to explain what prompted the moratorium, what Cline knew when he returned the contributions and what Rubin, Shank and the rest of that December development team were pitching behind closed doors.

Commissioner Cline’s campaign was holding money from two members of the Project Team while that December, 2025 secret land development meeting happened. Six months later, while the County was preparing a moratorium aimed at data centers, he returned both contributions on the same day. The relevant question is no longer whether Cline crossed paths with this development team. He did. The question is what he knew, when he knew it and why the money suddenly became unacceptable.

There’s Still One Big Missing Piece

We still want to know exactly what Rubin, Shank, Rutherford, McManus, and Sage Policy Group were pitching to Washington County on December 9.

If the secret presentation concerned Diversified Capital’s Washington County data center project, then Commissioners were privately hearing about a data center months before the public learned the County believed the industry posed enough risk to justify a moratorium.

If it was unrelated, that raises another question: What other Washington County development project was important enough to bring this particular group together behind an NDA?

Either way, the public still does not know what was being discussed in that room. And Washington County officials have not explained why it needed to be kept secret.

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A note to other news outlets: You’re welcome to republish this reporting. We just ask that you credit Kyle McCarthy and Laura Spivak as the original authors and include a link back to this article.

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Earlier this month, we published an analysis estimating that the proposed ICE detention center in Williamsport could wipe as much as $22.3 million off the value of nearby homes. The estimate was based on a peer-reviewed national study published by MIT Press that found home values declined around newly opened prisons, with the largest declines occurring closest to the facilities. Since publishing that analysis, I spoke with someone who was actually under contract to buy property in Williamsport but then heard the news of the proposed ICE detention center.

Chris, who asked that we only use his first name because he is concerned about harassment, had been planning to move with his family from the Baltimore area to western Maryland, where they could buy some land and build a house. They found a property in Williamsport and were under contract by late March. While the land itself was relatively inexpensive, building the house would not have been, and Chris said the family’s total investment would have been more than $1 million. “This is the most amount of money that we have ever invested in anything,” he told me.

Around the same time they were under contract, Chris and his family learned about the proposed ICE detention center DHS wants to open in Williamsport. The location was particularly difficult to overlook because they would have regularly driven directly past it on the way to their new home. “Each time we would get off the highway we passed the warehouse. We would have had to pretty much drive by it to get down to where we were all the time,” he said.

The family ultimately walked away from the Williamsport property, with Chris describing the proposed ICE facility as the “final straw.”

“We were under contract when the news of the detention center broke. It wasn’t the only reason we pulled out of the contract, but it was the final straw. We don’t want to support a local government who allows human rights violations and won’t protect their constituents.”

Instead of building in Williamsport, the family bought property in Allegany County. Chris estimates they would have put more than $1 million into the Williamsport property, with much of that money going toward construction of the house. “That would have created a lot of construction jobs for that single house and it’s still on the market,” he said. “A loss of investment that went to another county instead.”

Chris’s story also isn’t the first time we’ve heard from someone whose decision about where to live has been affected by the proposed ICE facility. In March, NBC Washington interviewed Nica Sutch, who bought her home near Williamsport almost 30 years ago and told the station that she had expected to remain there for the rest of her life. The proposed detention center, which would be within sight of her home, changed that. “I definitely am planning to move,” Sutch told NBC Washington. “I won’t stay here in the future.”

We now have one family telling us the ICE jail helped convince them not to move to Williamsport and a longtime resident saying it has convinced her to leave. All of this is happening before the facility has even opened. Their stories indicate that the ICE facility is already factoring into real decisions people are making about whether they want to live in this part of Washington County.

In Chris’s case, his family had already chosen Williamsport, found the property, and signed a contract. They were preparing to invest more than $1 million into buying the land and building their home before ultimately deciding to put that money into another county instead. At the same time, a Williamsport resident for almost three decades and who once thought she would remain in her home forever now says she plans to leave.

The proposed ICE jail hasn’t opened yet, but for at least these two families, it has already changed where they want to live. The effect on housing demand isn’t complicated: if people don’t want to live near something, fewer people will want to buy homes near it. We already have one family that chose not to move in and a longtime resident who says she wants to move out.

Read our original analysis: Washington County ICE Jail Could Wipe $22.3 Million Off Local Home Values and check out our new tool to see if your home value could be impacted if the proposed ICE jail opens at ICEJailTax.com.

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In February, Washington County’s commissioners unanimously endorsed a plan to turn a massive industrial warehouse in Williamsport into an ICE detention center capable of holding up to 2,000 people. They offered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) their “full support” and pledged not to use their positions as elected officials to oppose or hinder the agency. The commissioners have since gone even further by refusing to allow any public comment about the ICE detention center at their meetings, shutting residents out of the discussion entirely.

County commissioners and DHS have touted the jobs that the proposed ICE detention facility will bring to Washington County, yet neither has informed residents what it could mean for nearby home values, water and sewer systems, roads, emergency services, or the environment. One of those risks could be thousands of dollars stripped from the value of nearby homes.

The impact on local home values

A peer-reviewed national study published by MIT Press in The Review of Economics and Statistics examined 305 prison openings across the United States. The author, economist Janjala Chirakijja, compared communities where prisons opened with similar communities where they did not. The study found that median housing values fell 1.8 percent in the neighborhoods within 2.49 miles of a new prison and 3.4 percent when within 1.24 miles.

Both broader estimates remained statistically significant, suggesting that the potential impact could reach every home in Williamsport and extend into neighboring towns such as Hagerstown, Halfway, Kemps Mill, Pinesburg and Wilson-Conococheague. Based on the findings of the study, across the full 2.49-mile area, residential property values could decline by as much as $22.3 million. This shows the scale of the risk DHS has failed to analyze publicly: even a modest percentage decline could shift millions of dollars in costs onto nearby property owners.

A separate 2025 working paper from North Carolina State University found even larger reductions. Economist Allyson Emblom-Hooe analyzed repeat sales of single-family homes near correctional and rehabilitation facilities across the southeastern United States and estimated that newly opened detention facilities reduced nearby property values by an average of approximately 20 percent. Because this is a working paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed and it uses different definitions of “nearby” for urban and rural areas, we are not applying its 20 percent estimate to the Williamsport properties. Its findings do, however, provide additional evidence that opening a large detention facility can impose substantial costs on neighboring homeowners and that DHS has no basis for simply assuming those costs will not exist.

They can call it a “processing facility”, but home buyers will still see a jail

DHS and Washington County Commissioners have tried to distance this project from the word “detention” and have publicly referred to the facility as a processing facility, though referring to it as a detention center in internal communications. The plans include holding spaces, perimeter fencing, lighting, cameras, recreation areas, guard shacks, and strangely, a gun range. Just because county and federal officials prefer a softer name for the facility, does not change the optics of what potential homebuyers see when looking where to purchase.

Economists use the term “disamenity” for a nearby feature that makes a location less desirable. The prison study specifically discusses the disamenities associated with correctional facilities and concludes that their negative effects are highly localized and there is no reason to believe that would be different in Williamsport. Whether a prospective buyer calls the Williamsport project a detention center, a processing facility, or an ICE jail, the relevant question is the same: will that buyer be willing to pay as much for a home located next to it versus a home that is not?

DHS must tell residents what this project could cost them

The community risks should have been examined before DHS purchased the warehouse, not discovered by residents after the money was spent. DHS’s own environmental-review manual says the appropriate analysis and documentation should be completed before the agency makes a decision that irretrievably commits resources or limits reasonable alternatives. Instead, a federal judge found that the actual Record of Environmental Consideration for the Williamsport project was only five pages, was signed after 4 PM on January 15, 2026, and was followed by the $102.4 million purchase the next day. This led to the judge granting a preliminary injunction after concluding that DHS failed to comply with the basic requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

DHS did not stop with the purchase. On March 6, 2026, it awarded KVG LLC a task order worth up to $641.8 million to renovate the ICE-owned warehouse into a processing and detention facility and provide all necessary wraparound services for its operation. Added to the $102.4 million purchase price, however, it means DHS put as much as $744.2 million behind this project without first completing a lawful, site-specific environmental review of what it could cost the surrounding community.

NEPA is supposed to force federal agencies to take a hard look at reasonably foreseeable consequences before committing to a project and to make relevant information available for public scrutiny. That does not necessarily require DHS to predict the exact sale price of every nearby home, and property-value harm alone does not automatically decide whether an Environmental Impact Statement is required. But DHS cannot simply ignore a credible, localized economic effect connected to traffic, noise, pollution, utility demands, emergency-service burdens and a fundamental change in neighborhood character.

DHS has publicly disclosed no analysis of how this proposed jail could affect nearby home values. Now that peer-reviewed national research and Maryland’s own property records identify a specific risk to 4,028 residential properties, the agency’s forthcoming environmental review must confront it. If DHS believes the Williamsport project will not produce the kind of property value decline identified in the study, it should be required to explain why, disclose the evidence supporting that conclusion and give the public a meaningful opportunity to respond.

As part of its environmental review, and before it moves any further toward opening the facility, DHS should be required to analyze and publish the impact this likely will have on nearby home values. DHS should:

• Compare sales of the homes nearby the facility with similar Washington County neighborhoods farther from the site.

• Measure any change after the facility was announced as well as any projected change after it opens.

• Disclose the data, methodology and results to the public before any final decision.

• Explain what mitigation or compensation will be available if neighboring property owners are expected to suffer losses.

Washington County residents have already been told this project will bring jobs, but they have not been told what it could subtract from the value of the homes they spent years paying for. Until DHS and the county commissioners can answer that question honestly, they have no business dismissing this risk or telling residents that the proposed ICE jail will be good for the local economy.

Find out what this facility could cost your home, then tell DHS

Potential harm to nearby home values is a legitimate subject for public comments during DHS’s environmental review. The strongest comments connect the financial risk to the facility’s foreseeable effects on traffic, noise, lighting, pollution, water and sewer systems, emergency services and neighborhood character. DHS’s own NEPA instruction manual calls for the agency to consider environmental and socioeconomic consequences, and DHS has addressed property-value concerns in a previous Environmental Impact Statement.

Use our free address checker at ICEJailTax.com to see whether your home is within 2.49 miles of the proposed ICE jail. If it is, the tool will retrieve your home’s current official Maryland SDAT appraised value and show the potential dollar loss and reduced value after applying the peer-reviewed study’s estimated reduction in value. The result is an estimate of potential risk, not a guarantee that every property will lose exactly that amount, but it gives nearby homeowners individualized evidence DHS should be required to confront.

If your address is within the 2.49-mile radius, copy the figures from our home value checker at ICEJailTax.com and then use this information in a public comment to DHS opposing the opening of the ICE jail through our campaign. You can use this language:

My home is located approximately _____ miles from the proposed ICE detention center in Washington County, Maryland. Maryland’s official property records currently appraise it at $_____. A peer-reviewed national study published by MIT Press in The Review of Economics and Statistics estimated that home values declined by 3.4 percent within 1.24 miles of newly opened prisons, 2.0 percent within 1.86 miles and 1.8 percent within 2.49 miles. Based on my home’s distance from the proposed facility, the applicable estimate is _____ percent. For my property, that would represent a potential loss of $ and an estimated reduced value of $_____.

I am concerned that this financial harm could be compounded by increased traffic, noise, lighting, pollution, demands on water and sewer systems, burdens on emergency services and changes to the character of my neighborhood. This facility cannot be opened without DHS conducting and disclosing a site-specific analysis of how this facility could affect nearby residential property values, explain the data and methodology it uses, and identify how any losses would be avoided, mitigated, or compensated.

The federal government has already put as much as $744.2 million behind this project, and the Washington County Commissioners have already pledged their full support. The people who could be left paying the price were never given an equally serious analysis of what the facility could do to their homes, their neighborhood, or the equity they spent years building.

That is what DHS must confront before this project moves forward. Use the checker, tell DHS exactly what this proposed ICE jail could cost your family and demand that the agency select the no-action alternative. Washington County residents should not be forced to gamble millions of dollars in home value on a detention center they never asked for.

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Prince George’s County has approved a Use and Occupancy Permit allowing the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand its existing operation inside Metro 1 at 6505 Belcrest Road in Hyattsville.

Neither the county nor DHS has publicly explained what ICE plans to do in the newly approved space. The most urgent questions remain unanswered: Will immigrants be detained, interviewed, or processed there? Will enforcement officers work from the building? Could the office be used to support arrests connected to the nearby immigration court?

Those questions would be serious at any location and are especially urgent at Metro 1. That’s because a person can walk into the building to apply for SNAP, pick up food from a county pantry, take a free English class or attend college. A few floors away, ICE operates an office that helps the federal government pursue deportation cases. Now that operation is expanding.

What ICE is adding at Metro 1

ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor, known as OPLA, already operates from Suite 450 at 6505 Belcrest Road. OPLA is ICE’s legal arm. Its attorneys represent DHS in immigration court and help the federal government pursue deportation cases.

The newly approved permit concerns Suite 310, so this is an expansion of ICE’s presence in the building, not simply a renewal of its existing office.

WJLA reported in February that ICE was believed to be leasing as much as 20,000 square feet at Metro 1. The Baltimore Banner later reported that the project involved Suite 310 and had been delayed after failing multiple inspections, including one on March 3.

The City of Hyattsville has now announced that Prince George’s County has now approved the permit. What the announcement did not say is who will occupy Suite 310 or what they will do there.

ICE’s deportation operation relies on attorneys, administrative employees, case processing, interviews and coordination with enforcement officers. Even if Suite 310 contains no jail cells, work performed there could still contribute directly to arrests, detention and deportation.

But the possibility that immigrants could be brought into Metro 1 must also be taken seriously. Members of Maryland’s congressional delegation asked DHS and ICE about that possibility in February. They asked whether the location would contain holding cells, whether immigrants would be brought there, whether enforcement officers would be stationed inside and how residents using other services in the building would be protected. And DHS does not appear to have publicly answered those questions.

Families visit Metro 1 for food, education and public assistance

Metro 1 is where many Prince George’s County residents go when they need help paying for groceries or covering other basic needs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), medical assistance, cash assistance, and a permanent food pantry in the building. This is also where Prince George’s Community College holds classes, job-training programs there, adult education, and offers free English classes for refugees and people who have been granted asylum.

People should not have to walk past an ICE operation to obtain food, learn English, attend college, or ask their local government for help. ICE’s presence can cause harm even if no one is arrested inside the building. A family afraid of being watched, questioned or followed may decide not to apply for food assistance. A refugee may stop attending English classes. Someone who needs help may stay home because entering the building no longer feels safe.

Residents warned Hyattsville officials months ago

Residents were raising concerns about Metro 1 well before the permit was approved. During a City Council meeting in May, residents from Wards 2 and 3 warned the council about the reported ICE expansion and urged city leaders to act.

A member of Hyattsville Resistance criticized the lack of clear communication and asked the city to take a stronger public position. Other residents called on city officials to oppose the expansion, keep people informed and protect those who depend on the services inside Metro 1.

Now the permit has been approved, but the public still does not know what Prince George’s County authorized. Residents should not have to piece together a major ICE expansion from permit records, news reports and announcements issued after the decision has already been made.

The timing of the permit is impossible to ignore

The timing raises even more questions. The Prince George’s County Council enacted CB-031-2026 on June 22 and County Executive Aisha Braveboy signed it into law on July 21.

The law prohibits Prince George’s County from issuing a building permit or certificate of occupancy for a detention center. It defines a detention center to include buildings where people are incarcerated or involuntarily confined for judicial or administrative proceedings, including immigration detention facilities. But the law does not take effect until 45 days after it became law, which is September 4.

On July 29, just eight days after Braveboy signed the legislation, the City of Hyattsville announced that the county had approved ICE’s permit for Suite 310.

That does not prove the county rushed the permit through to beat the new law. The city’s announcement does not even disclose when the permit was approved. But with DHS refusing to say whether immigrants will be detained or involuntarily confined inside Metro 1, the timing cannot simply be brushed aside.

Prince George’s County should immediately release the permit’s approval date, the use listed on the application and any records showing whether officials considered CB-031-2026 while reviewing it. If county officials determined that Suite 310 will only be used as an office and would not qualify as a detention center under the new law, they should release the records supporting that determination.

If ICE does plan to detain people there, residents deserve to know whether the permit would have been prohibited had it been issued after September 4. They also deserve to know whether ICE obtained approval during the brief period between the bill becoming law and its restrictions taking effect.

Washington County residents have seen this before

For people fighting the proposed ICE detention center in Washington County, Maryland, the secrecy surrounding Metro 1 is painfully familiar.

DHS purchased an 825,000-square-foot industrial warehouse in Washington County and moved forward with plans to detain as many as 1,500 people there before residents or state agencies had a real chance to examine the project. Maryland later sued DHS, accusing the agency of bypassing required environmental review and public participation. Washington County commissioners endorsed the facility despite unanswered questions and warnings from Maryland’s congressional delegation about the secrecy surrounding it.

Prince George’s County residents are now being forced into a similar position. ICE has been allowed to expand while basic information remains hidden, leaving the public to uncover the details through news reports, public-records requests and sustained pressure.

This is becoming a pattern: DHS moves first, local officials provide little information and residents are expected to investigate what their government has already approved.

The Hyattsville office is part of ICE’s nationwide expansion

ICE is pursuing new space across the country. Federal records reviewed by WIRED showed activity at more than 150 locations. General Services Administration employees were reportedly assigned to an “ICE surge” team helping find space for OPLA attorneys, Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel and other ICE employees.

A federal solicitation issued in October 2025 sought approximately 6,000 to 8,001 rentable square feet within five miles of Hyattsville for unspecified “law enforcement operations.” Though the solicitation does not name ICE or identify 6505 Belcrest Road specifically, it does show that the federal government was seeking additional law-enforcement space in the immediate area while ICE pursued more space inside the building.

Prince George’s County and DHS need to release the records

A Use and Occupancy Permit generally determines whether a proposed use complies with applicable zoning, building and safety requirements. Prince George’s County may not have had the legal authority to reject an otherwise valid permit simply because ICE was the tenant. But the county has no excuse for refusing to show residents what it approved.

Prince George’s County should release the complete permit file for Suite 310, including the application, stated use, approval date, square footage, anticipated occupancy, floor plans, inspection reports, correction notices, correspondence, and final approvals. And DHS and the General Services Administration should release the lease or occupancy agreement, cost, duration, operational requirements and records identifying which ICE components will work at Metro 1.

Residents need direct answers:

• Will immigrants be detained, questioned, interviewed or processed inside Metro 1?

• Will ICE enforcement officers work there?

• Will the office support arrests connected to the nearby immigration court?

• What protections will prevent ICE from watching or following people who visit the building for food, education or public assistance?

• When was the permit approved?

• Did county officials consider CB-031-2026 before issuing it?

• Would the permit have been prohibited if it had been issued after September 4?

• What will the county, city and agencies inside Metro 1 do if ICE’s presence prevents residents from safely accessing their services?

These answers should have been provided before the permit was approved. They should not require months of public-records requests and community pressure.

Join Friday’s protest at Metro 1

Hyattsville Resistance and Greenbelt Resistance Network are calling on the community to protest outside Metro 1:

Friday, July 31 at 5:00 PM
Metro 1
6505 Belcrest Road, Hyattsville, Maryland

No one should have to risk contact with ICE to get food, take an English class, attend college or ask their local government for help. Residents warned Hyattsville officials about ICE’s expansion months ago, but the county approved the permit without providing the public with the answers it deserves.

Join Hagerstown Rapid Response, Washington County Indivisible, and the Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps as we stand with our allies in Prince George’s County.

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During Tuesday’s Washington County Commissioners meeting, residents will have three separate opportunities to speak about proposed changes involving water and sewer infrastructure, permitted land uses, and commercial zoning. On paper, the three hearings concern different properties and different parts of the county. However, they raise a much larger question: What kind of industrial and commercial development are county officials preparing Washington County to accommodate?

Residents have every reason to examine these proposals closely, especially after how much planning for the proposed ICE detention warehouse occurred outside public view.

In April, we uncovered that in December, 2025, Washington County Commissioners signed a nondisclosure agreement involving a secret land deal. One month later, it was announced that the federal government then purchased an 825,000-square-foot warehouse in Williamsport and began preparing it to hold as many as 1,500 people, even though major questions about wastewater capacity, emergency services, traffic, environmental impacts, and other infrastructure remain unanswered.

We are also deeply skeptical that the Department of Homeland Security intends to limit the facility to 1,500 people over the long term. Before abandoning plans for seven other warehouse detention centers last month, the agency planned to confine far more people inside buildings of comparable size. In Salt Lake City, for example, DHS purchased an approximately 833,000-square-foot warehouse, nearly the same size as the Williamsport building, with plans to detain between 7,500 and 10,000 immigrants there. Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County confirmed those projected numbers when they sued to stop the facility. Given DHS’s record of secrecy, residents have no reason to assume that the publicly stated capacity for Williamsport represents the agency’s ultimate plan.

Viewed in this broader context, county zoning and infrastructure decisions warrant far greater scrutiny. They determine what can be built, where it can be built, and how easily a proposal can move forward once the public finally learns about it.

The irony is impossible to miss. The commissioners are now holding three public hearings and asking residents to participate in decisions involving zoning, infrastructure, and future development. Yet they have repeatedly refused to allow residents to comment on the proposed ICE detention center during their meetings, even as the project raises many of the same questions about water, sewer capacity, emergency services, traffic, environmental effects, and land use.

On February 10, the commissioners unanimously adopted a resolution declaring their full support for DHS and ICE while the detention warehouse was at the center of intense local controversy. They were willing to take an official position supporting the agencies behind the project, but they have refused to provide the public with any forum to challenge the facility itself. Public participation cannot be treated as legitimate when it is offered for some major development decisions but withheld when residents oppose a project the commissioners have already chosen to support.

The Commissioners Have Already Given Residents Reasons to Be Suspicious

The lack of transparency surrounding these hearings is part of a broader pattern. On May 21, the commissioners held a special meeting and approved a consulting contract with GDMS LLC, a company operated by former County Administrator and former Water Quality Director Greg Murray, to study the county’s water and sewer capacity, infrastructure, and future development needs.

Strangely, the contract was not competitively bid. Commissioners Neil Parrott and Randal Leatherman opposed it after raising concerns about the selection process and the appearance of awarding such a consequential contract without seeking competing proposals. Nevertheless, Commissioner President John Barr cast the decisive vote in the 3–2 approval and was designated to sign the contract on the county’s behalf. The county’s official minutes document the vote and Barr’s role as signatory.

The no-bid award also involves a personal and professional relationship that should have been disclosed and discussed publicly. Greg Murray’s wife, Debra Murray, became chief financial officer of Ellsworth Electric, the company founded by John Barr, in 2018. Barr nevertheless cast the decisive vote awarding the consulting contract to Greg Murray’s company and was designated to sign it on the county’s behalf. That relationship does not appear in the county’s agenda report. At a minimum, Barr should publicly disclose the relationship, explain whether he sought an ethics opinion before participating, and release any such opinion. Awarding a no-bid public contract to the company of a person whose spouse held a senior financial position with Barr’s family business creates exactly the appearance of favoritism that transparent procurement and ethics procedures are supposed to prevent.

The materials presented to the public provided remarkably little accountability for such a broad assignment. The agenda report listed the fiscal impact, alternatives, and concurrences as “N/A.” The contract’s examples include reviewing water and sewer capacity, regulatory requirements, growth projections, neighboring utility systems, economic development objectives, service consolidation, joint agreements, and regional infrastructure projects. It also allows GDMS to perform unidentified additional tasks, including work outside utility evaluations, if directed. The initial scope of work did not even have to be developed until after the contract became effective. Those terms appear in the county’s revised meeting packet.

At the same special meeting, the commissioners voted 4–1 to amend an agreement with JG Business Link International Inc. under which the county would undertake improvements to the private sewer system serving approximately 62.9 acres at the former Fort Ritchie property. Now, two months later, the commissioners are holding a public hearing on an amendment that would significantly revise the zoning rules governing the broader Special Economic Development district at Fort Ritchie. Meanwhile, another hearing concerns extending water and sewer service to nearly 1.85 million square feet of proposed warehouse space near the Pennsylvania line.

Hiring a former senior county official through a process that did not include a broader search for consultants raises legitimate questions about favoritism and public accountability. Those concerns are heightened by the county’s agenda report, which listed the contract’s fiscal impact, alternatives, and concurrences only as “N/A,” even though the attached contract established an hourly payment arrangement and permitted additional assignments beyond the specifically identified utility work. When Barr cast the deciding vote despite objections to the selection process, he added another layer of suspicion to decisions involving valuable development rights and major public infrastructure. Residents are justified in asking who is shaping these decisions, which developers or properties could benefit, and how much may already have been decided before the public is invited to comment

A Temporary Moratorium Is Not a Permanent Safeguard

The commissioners recently voted 4–1 to impose a 12-month moratorium on the acceptance, processing, review, and approval of new data-center applications. Although the published meeting packet formally proposed a six-month pause, County Administrator Michelle Gordon said during the hearing that staff’s initial assessment called for 12 to 18 months and that staff recommended 18 months to examine potential effects on residents, the local economy, water and utility resources, infrastructure, and other regulatory concerns. County officials have also explicitly stated that the moratorium is not intended to prohibit data center development permanently. It merely delays the acceptance and review of applications while the county considers new regulations. The county’s moratorium materials also acknowledge that its current zoning ordinance does not specifically address data centers.

The moratorium may offer temporary protection, but it should not be mistaken for a final policy or binding long-term commitment. The same commissioners who enacted it retain the power to amend or repeal it through later official action. They could also adopt weak regulations at the end of the study period and begin accepting applications once the moratorium expires. Without a transparent study, enforceable standards, meaningful public participation, and a clear explanation of which zoning categories could accommodate data centers, the pause risks becoming little more than a dog-and-pony show designed to reassure residents while county officials prepare to permit these projects later.

This distinction is especially important when considering RZ-26-002, one of the projects open for public comment on Tuesday. It is not the county’s promised new data center ordinance, but a narrower amendment to the existing zoning rules governing the former Fort Ritchie property. The amendment would remove “Data Processing Facilities” as an expressly permitted use, but it neither defines nor expressly prohibits “data centers.” Removing that category may eliminate one potential route for approving a data center at Fort Ritchie, but it does not permanently settle whether one could be allowed there.

The county plans to develop separate data center regulations during the temporary moratorium. As part of that process, the commissioners could later decide whether data centers will be permitted at Fort Ritchie or elsewhere in Washington County and under what conditions. Residents should therefore demand clear definitions, binding protections, and meaningful opportunities for public participation before the moratorium expires or any permanent regulations are adopted.

1.) Water and Sewer Plan Amendment WS-25-004

The first hearing, scheduled for 9:30 a.m., concerns approximately 172 acres at 17939 Mason Dixon Road near the Maryland-Pennsylvania line. The company, 2003 Mason Dixon LLC, wants the county to change the property’s water and sewer classification from “planned service” to “programmed service” and formally recognize the Antrim Township Municipal Authority in Pennsylvania as a provider of water and wastewater service to eligible properties in Maryland.

The applicant is planning two warehouse or distribution buildings measuring approximately 1,237,600 and 611,520 square feet, for a combined total of nearly 1.85 million square feet. A site plan for the development, SP-23-004, is already under review by regulatory agencies. The Planning Commission has recommended approval of the amendment. The county’s hearing packet confirms the proposed warehouse sizes and requested utility changes.

The scale of the project alone would be more than twice the size of the 825,000-square-foot warehouse the Department of Homeland Security purchased in Williamsport. A development of that magnitude could generate substantial traffic, stormwater runoff, utility demand, construction disturbance, emergency-service needs, and effects on nearby groundwater and private wells. Its size makes comprehensive environmental, infrastructure, and public-safety studies essential before officials approve the Water and Sewer Plan amendment needed to serve it.

The hearing gives residents an opportunity to ask what these buildings are expected to contain, how much water and electricity they could eventually require, how much wastewater they could generate, and whether the proposed use could change after the infrastructure amendment is approved. Residents should also ask what safeguards would prevent the buildings from being converted into other intensive uses without another meaningful opportunity for public input.

The county’s own records state that the property is located within a wellhead protection area designated by the Maryland Department of the Environment and that individual wells and septic systems would be inadvisable because of the potential for groundwater contamination. County staff have argued that connecting the development to public utilities in Pennsylvania would be preferable to relying on private wells and septic systems and would preserve capacity in Washington County.

Connecting the proposed warehouses to public water and sewer service may be preferable to drilling new wells and installing septic systems on the property, but it does not resolve the potential risk to residents already relying on private wells nearby. Construction and operation of nearly 1.85 million square feet of warehouse space could alter stormwater drainage, increase impervious surfaces, disturb soil, and introduce new sources of contamination within a designated wellhead protection area. Before approving the amendment, officials should identify nearby private wells, establish baseline water-quality data, evaluate the development’s potential effects on groundwater, and explain who would be responsible if neighboring wells are contaminated or otherwise affected.

This hearing also appears to repeat the same basic failure that undermined the Department of Homeland Security’s public comment process for the proposed ICE detention center. DHS asked the public to evaluate its environmental conclusions without releasing the studies and infrastructure assessments underlying them. Now, the Washington County Commissioners are asking residents to comment on a water and sewer amendment without providing other information necessary to understand its potential effects. The county’s own staff report states that the Antrim Township service-area boundaries were not provided and does not identify the number of people currently living within the affected area. The application materials also do not appear to identify how many nearby households rely on private wells and septic systems that could be affected by development within this designated wellhead protection area.

How can the commissioners determine the effects on existing well users when they do not know the boundaries of the proposed service area, the number of people already living within it, or the number of nearby households relying on private wells and septic systems? A public hearing cannot provide meaningful public participation when the public has not been given the information necessary to evaluate what is being proposed.

Because this proposal depends on the Antrim Township Municipal Authority supplying water and wastewater service from Pennsylvania, residents there also deserve to know how much system capacity would be committed to nearly 1.85 million square feet of new warehouse development in Maryland. County documents say the authority has confirmed that capacity is available, but residents should be shown the underlying calculations and told whether the arrangement could affect future capacity, utility rates, infrastructure costs, drought planning, or service reliability for existing Pennsylvania customers. They should also know who will pay for construction, maintenance, treatment upgrades, and emergency repairs associated with extending service across the state line.

The ICE detention controversy has demonstrated why these questions must be asked before a warehouse is built or converted, not after a government agency has purchased it and begun construction.

2.) Zoning Text Amendment RZ-26-002

The second hearing, scheduled for 9:45 a.m., concerns the Special Economic Development district covering the former Fort Ritchie property in Cascade. Cascade Properties LLC is asking the county to amend the zoning rules for the entire district rather than approve one particular building.

The application would revise the uses and development standards governing the former Fort Ritchie property. It is important to read the application’s track-changes formatting carefully. Uses shown in red and underlined would be added, while uses shown in red with a strikethrough would be removed. “Data Processing Facilities” is crossed out, meaning the applicant is proposing to remove that use from the district. “Warehouses” appears in black and would remain an existing permitted use rather than being newly authorized. The full application and proposed changes are available in the county’s hearing packet.

Crossing out “Data Processing Facilities” does not settle whether data centers could be allowed at Fort Ritchie. The county has already acknowledged that its current zoning ordinance does not specifically address data centers, which raises the possibility that officials view “data processing facilities” and “data centers” as legally distinct uses. If that is the county’s position, removing the older term would not necessarily prohibit a modern data center. It could simply leave data centers unaddressed until the commissioners adopt separate regulations after the temporary moratorium.

Commissioners should explain whether a data center could still be approved under another permitted category, through the provision allowing uses deemed “functionally similar,” or through future countywide zoning changes. Until they answer those questions clearly, residents should not assume that crossing out “Data Processing Facilities” protects Fort Ritchie from future data center development.

The importance of this hearing is broader than data centers. The amendment would change which commercial, industrial, residential, and institutional uses can operate at Fort Ritchie and, in some cases, whether those uses require a special exception or can proceed as principally permitted uses. Moving a use from the special-exception process into the list of principally permitted uses can reduce later opportunities for neighbors to object to a specific project. Residents should examine each proposed addition, deletion, and procedural change and ask how it could affect future public oversight.

Warehouses would continue to be permitted at Fort Ritchie, while “Military Communication, Training or Operations Support Facilities” would remain listed as a special-exception use. Commissioners should explain whether any existing or proposed category could encompass immigration detention, federal contracting, or another government institutional use, and what additional public review would be required before such a project could move forward.

This is precisely the moment to clarify those definitions and procedures. Once broad zoning language has been adopted, residents may have far less leverage when a specific proposal arrives.

3.) Zoning Map Amendment RZ-26-003

The third hearing, scheduled for 10 a.m., concerns an application from Michael Godinez and Dominion Realty LLC to rezone two specific parcels from Residential Multifamily to Highway Interchange.

Unlike the Mason Dixon Road application, this request does not approve a specific development. Unlike the Fort Ritchie amendment, it does not change the rules across an entire zoning district. Instead, it would change the zoning designation of two particular parcels, opening them to a broader range of commercial and highway-oriented uses in the future.

Godinez and Dominion Realty argue that the surrounding area has changed and become more commercial, making the current residential zoning inappropriate. If the commissioners agree, a future developer would have more options for using the land, although an actual project could still require site-plan review, permits, and other approvals.

The information gap here is not limited to the water and sewer amendment. In RZ-26-003, residents are being asked to comment on converting two residential properties on Maugans Avenue to Highway Interchange zoning without being told what the contract purchaser intends to build or being given a concept plan showing the size, access, parking, lighting, operating hours, or proximity of any future commercial use to neighboring homes. The hearing packet does not even provide residents with a clear comparison of the uses allowed under the current Residential Multifamily zoning and the much broader Highway Interchange designation.

Godinez and Dominion Realty rely on increased traffic, access to public utilities, future road improvements, and separation from nearby homes to justify the rezoning. Yet the packet contains no traffic-impact study, utility-capacity confirmations, environmental analysis, or stormwater assessment. This is especially concerning because the applicant identifies a perennial stream and a county-owned stormwater facility immediately behind the properties, then claims the rezoning would have “no potential for adverse impacts in the future” without providing a study supporting that conclusion.

Once again, the process looks eerily similar to the public comment period DHS conducted for the proposed ICE detention facility in Washington County. DHS asked residents to evaluate claims about environmental and infrastructure impacts without releasing the studies underlying those claims. Now, the county commissioners are asking residents to evaluate whether this rezoning is compatible with neighboring properties and public infrastructure without disclosing the intended development or providing the traffic, utility, environmental, and stormwater analyses necessary to assess its effects. How can residents provide meaningful comments when they have not been told what may be built and have not been given the information needed to understand its potential impact?

The Larger Issue Is Public Oversight

These three hearings are not identical, and they should not be presented as parts of a single proven plan. One supports two enormous warehouses already under review. Another rewrites the development rules for the former Fort Ritchie property. The third converts residentially zoned land to a commercial highway designation without identifying a particular project.

What connects them is that each decision could expand or alter development rights and infrastructure access before residents fully understand what may eventually be built.

Washington County residents have already seen the consequences of learning about a major project too late. By the time the proposed ICE detention center became public, DHS had already selected and purchased the warehouse, and federal officials had conducted key early steps without meaningful public participation. The deed was executed on January 16, recorded on January 22, and publicly reported on January 27. Maryland later alleged that DHS had failed to conduct the required public environmental review before committing more than $100 million to the property.

Tuesday’s hearings offer something residents were denied during that process: an opportunity to ask questions before the decisions are final. But asking for public comment without giving residents the information needed to understand these proposals makes the hearings look more like a performance than a genuine attempt to hear from the public.

The hearings will take place Tuesday, July 21, at the Washington County Administration Building, 100 West Washington Street in Hagerstown:

• 9:30 a.m.: WS-25-004, 2003 Mason Dixon LLC

• 9:45 a.m.: RZ-26-002, Cascade Properties LLC

• 10 a.m.: RZ-26-003, Michael Godinez and Dominion Realty LLC

Anyone who wants to speak must submit a separate registration for each hearing by noon on Monday. The county’s registration page is available here.

Residents do not need proof of a hidden project to ask what these amendments would allow. The purpose of a public hearing is to examine the consequences before the county acts. After everything Washington County has experienced with the ICE detention warehouse, accepting vague assurances and waiting for answers until after approval would be an indefensible mistake.

Show Up and Make Your Voice Heard

If county officials are going to ask residents to comment without first providing the studies and information needed to evaluate these proposals, the public should not remain silent. Come to Tuesday’s Washington County Commissioners meeting, peacefully protest, speak during the hearings, ask questions, and demand answers before any votes are taken.

Bring signs. Bring neighbors. Bring specific questions. Demand the traffic studies, environmental reviews, stormwater analysis, utility-capacity information, groundwater protections, and other records the public deserves to see.

We’ll see you there.

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This Tuesday, July 21, at 9:00 a.m., we’ll gather outside the Washington County Commissioners meeting at 100 W. Washington Street in Hagerstown to continue our fight against the proposed ICE detention warehouse in Williamsport.

For months, the Washington County Commissioners have refused to allow public comment about the ICE detention warehouse during their meetings. Residents have repeatedly attempted to raise concerns about the project, but discussion of the warehouse has been shut down from the very beginning. Even so, every Tuesday we continue showing up because public accountability does not end when elected officials refuse to listen.

Ironically, this week’s meeting includes three separate public hearings, all of which involve careful consideration of land use, infrastructure, or environmental impacts. One concerns extending public water and sewer service to a massive warehouse development. Another involves changes to industrial zoning, and a third examines whether existing water, sewer, stormwater, and transportation infrastructure can support a relatively small rezoning request. These hearings demonstrate that the County routinely scrutinizes whether infrastructure can support new development. Yet the public has been denied the opportunity to discuss many of those same issues as they relate to the proposed ICE detention warehouse. With additional large-scale projects, including proposed data centers, on the horizon, residents deserve transparency about whether our community’s water, sewer, and other infrastructure can support these developments and how they could affect one another.

If you want to do more than protest, you can also sign up to speak during one or more of Tuesday’s public hearings. Whether you want to discuss water and sewer infrastructure, land use, zoning, environmental impacts, or simply call for greater transparency, your voice deserves to be heard. You can register in advance using the Washington County Public Hearing Sign-Up Form.

This warehouse threatens far more than one piece of property. In addition to the human rights concerns, it would place additional strain on our infrastructure, increase wastewater demands, put our creeks and waterways at risk, and raise serious questions about zoning, forest conservation, and responsible planning. These are precisely the kinds of issues county government is supposed to evaluate openly and transparently.

Your presence outside the meeting sends a powerful message. Bring a sign, stand with your neighbors, and help demonstrate that our community expects transparency, accountability, and leadership.

Public pressure matters, and it has already helped shine a national spotlight on this project, delayed its progress, and forced greater scrutiny of decisions that were made behind closed doors. It has also helped expose serious failures in transparency within our county government. Every person who shows up sends a clear message that Washington County residents are paying attention and will continue demanding accountability.

Whether you’ve attended every protest or this would be your first, your presence matters. Bring a friend, bring a sign, and stand with us as we continue opposing the ICE detention warehouse.

Tuesday, July 21
9:00 a.m.
Washington County Commissioners Office
100 W. Washington Street
Hagerstown, MD

We’ll see you there.

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When the Department of Homeland Security’s public comment period closed on June 30, more than 4,300 people had submitted comments through our campaign opposing the agency’s proposal to convert an 825,000-square-foot industrial warehouse in Washington County into a massive ICE detention center. According to DHS, that public comment process is now over. We do not agree, and neither do many of the organizations and public officials who have spent the past month demanding that the agency conduct this process in a transparent and lawful manner.

We at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible will continue accepting public comments through NoKingsNoCamps.com and delivering every submission directly to DHS until the agency releases the environmental and infrastructure studies it relied upon and provides the public with a new 30-day opportunity to review and comment on those materials.

The reason is straightforward. DHS asked the public to weigh in on the environmental and infrastructure impacts of this project while refusing to disclose the very reports it relied upon to conclude those impacts either do not exist or are not significant. According to the agency’s own Environmental Assessment, those withheld documents include a Wastewater and Domestic Water Infrastructure Assessment, a third-party Phase I Environmental Site Assessment, a site utilities report, floodplain information, and documentation related to wetlands, water features, cultural resources, and threatened and endangered species. Despite relying on those materials, DHS never released them to the public while simultaneously concluding that it was “not aware of any potential for significant environmental impacts.”

That is not how a meaningful public comment process is supposed to work. Public participation only has value if the public has access to the information the agency itself relied upon in reaching its conclusions. Otherwise, people are not being asked to evaluate evidence. They are being asked to accept the agency’s assurances without seeing the underlying analysis.

It is also important to remember why this public comment period existed in the first place. DHS initially attempted to move forward with the project without conducting the environmental review required under federal law. After the State of Maryland challenged the agency in federal court, DHS was forced to prepare an Environmental Assessment and open a public comment period from June 1 through June 30. Yet even after the litigation, the agency never released the studies and assessments that formed the basis for its conclusions.

That concern was reinforced almost immediately after the comment period ended. Just hours after our campaign closed on June 30, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown submitted comments calling on DHS to release the environmental studies underlying its conclusions, provide another public comment period after those materials become available, prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement instead of the more limited Environmental Assessment currently underway, and even consider selling the warehouse rather than converting it into an ICE detention center. We were encouraged to see the Attorney General raise many of the same concerns that thousands of community members had already submitted through our campaign.

Shortly after Attorney General Brown’s comments were submitted and made public, we then saw more come out and oppose the ICE facility, starting with the Piscataway Conoy Tribe.

On behalf of Chief Jesse James Swann Jr and the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, this letter serves as a formal statement of concern and objection regarding reports of a possible proposal to construct an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Washington County, MD. We emphasize that neither the Tribe nor Chief Swann were consulted or notified about any such discussions or potential decisions. This absence of government-to-government communication is deeply troubling, particularly given that the proposed location falls within the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, a Maryland State recognized Tribal Nation.

Then, soon after, the Maryland Chapter of Sierra Club submitted their public.

As three Maryland environmental agencies have warned, the impacts of this project would be significant and adverse to Williamsport, Hagerstown, and neighboring areas, and likely catastrophic with regard to its impacts on sewerage infrastructure and surrounding waterways. Given the insurmountable evidence regarding the significant impacts of this site, we urge DHS to immediately cancel its plans for a warehouse immigration detention and processing facility in Williamsport.

The proposed ICE detention center is expected to generate nearly 200,000 gallons of wastewater every day in a community that has already acknowledged significant wastewater infrastructure constraints. The site also sits adjacent to Semple Run, which flows into Conococheague Creek before reaching the Potomac River and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. If DHS is confident those impacts have been thoroughly evaluated, it should have no hesitation in releasing the reports it relied upon so the public can review them for themselves.

Over the past month, this public comment campaign has received support from the ACLU of Maryland, Detention Watch Network, The Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, the Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps, the Indivisible Maryland Coalition, Arsenal PAC / ResistMap, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, and many other organizations and community leaders who believe transparency is essential when decisions of this magnitude are being made.

We also designed this campaign to streamline the process and so every submission is delivered directly to DHS. Given the agency’s conduct throughout this process, we believed it was important to create a clear and verifiable record demonstrating both the volume of public opposition and the fact that every comment was delivered.

We are not continuing this campaign because we believe public participation should be endless. We are continuing it because the public has still not been given the information DHS relied upon when it concluded this project would not have significant environmental impacts. If DHS believes those studies support its conclusions, it should release them, allow the public to review them, and provide a meaningful opportunity for informed comment. Until then, we will continue collecting and delivering every public comment submitted through NoKingsNoCamps.com.

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It was clear from the beginning that DHS was not conducting this process in good faith, but we also knew it was important to make a statement if we could show that thousands of people opposed this facility opening in our community. Throughout the entire process, the public was asked to submit comments about the project’s environmental impacts without having access to many of the environmental studies, engineering reports, infrastructure analyses, and operational plans that DHS relied upon to conclude those impacts would not be significant.

Just hours after our public comment campaign ended, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown submitted comments to DHS asking for many of the same things that thousands of residents had spent the last month demanding.

Brown called on DHS to release the studies underlying its conclusions, provide another public comment period once those studies become available, and prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement rather than the more limited Environmental Assessment currently being pursued by the agency. He also urged DHS to consider selling the warehouse rather than moving forward with plans to convert it into an immigration detention center.

The environmental review process only exists because Maryland sued DHS earlier this year after the agency attempted to move forward with the project without conducting the review required under federal law. In April, a federal judge largely halted the project and ordered DHS to begin the process it had previously attempted to avoid, leading to the thirty-day public comment period that closed on July 1.

Over the course of that month, our public comment campaign generated more than 4,300 submissions opposing the project and demanding greater transparency from DHS. Just hours later, Maryland’s Attorney General was formally demanding the release of the same studies, another opportunity for public review, and even suggesting that DHS consider selling the building altogether.

If Maryland’s Attorney General and the heads of Maryland’s Departments of Environment, Natural Resources, Transportation, and Health believe they do not have enough information to fully evaluate this project, it is difficult to argue that ordinary residents were ever given enough information to do so during a thirty-day public comment period.

DHS asked the public to trust its conclusions without allowing the public to review the evidence behind them. More than 4,300 people submitted comments anyway because they understood what was at stake for Washington County and the surrounding region. The public comment period may be over, but the demand for transparency did not end on July 1, and neither did our commitment to holding DHS accountable for the decisions it is making in our community.

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As the public comment period on the proposed Washington County ICE detention center comes to a close, we are proud to stand alongside the elected officials and organizations that have joined the call for transparency and accountability.

We stand with Maryland State Delegate Matt Schindler, Hagerstown City Council Members Caroline Anderson, Erika Bell, and Tiara Burnett, the Washington County Branch of the NAACP, the ACLU of Maryland, and every organization and community member demanding answers. Today, we joined together to submit a formal comment urging DHS to release the environmental and infrastructure studies underlying its conclusions, prepare a full Environmental Impact Statement, and provide a transparent public review process that allows for meaningful public participation.

DHS claims that converting an 825,000 square foot warehouse into a massive ICE detention center capable of producing nearly 200,000 gallons of wastewater per day will have no significant environmental impact. Yet the agency has refused to release the wastewater studies, environmental assessments, infrastructure analyses, and other reports it relied upon to reach that conclusion.

The public cannot meaningfully comment on information it has not been allowed to see.

DHS should immediately release every study and assessment used in its determination and extend the public comment period so residents, elected officials, and community organizations can review the same information available to the federal government before submitting comments that could shape the future of Washington County and the surrounding region.

Please continue submitting public comments at NoKingsNoCamps.com

The Conococheague Creek is one of the largest tributaries of the Upper Potomac River and flows from Pennsylvania into Maryland before meeting the Potomac near Williamsport. The creek has drawn significant attention from the Potomac Riverkeeper Network because of persistent bacteria contamination and broader water quality concerns.

The Conococheague Creek flows directly into the Potomac River, which continues to absorb the consequences of more than 240 million gallons of raw sewage released into the watershed through combined sewer overflows and infrastructure failures in recent years.

In August 2024, the Upper Potomac Riverkeeper announced that harmful cyanobacteria had been detected in the Conococheague Creek, prompting warnings to residents and pet owners to avoid contact with affected portions of the waterway. The discovery did not establish what caused the bloom, nor did it suggest that any single source was responsible. But it served as a reminder that the Conococheague watershed is not immune from the kinds of environmental pressures increasingly affecting waterways across the region.

All of this is relevant to the current situation. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is attempting to convert an 825,000-square-foot industrial warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland, into a massive ICE detention facility despite overwhelming concerns about its environmental impacts, infrastructure demands, and human rights implications. One of the most serious environmental concerns associated with the proposed ICE detention warehouse is wastewater. According to DHS’s own environmental review documents, the facility would generate approximately 187,000 gallons of wastewater every day. That wastewater has to go somewhere.

Washington County’s sewer infrastructure is already at capacity, and increasing the current property’s daily sewage output by over 234 times would overwhelm collection lines, pump stations, and treatment capacity. When sewer systems exceed their capacity, the result is sanitary sewer overflows, where untreated or partially treated sewage backs up into streets, properties, and waterways.

If sewage spills occur, they would not remain confined to the detention facility site. The area drains into local streams that ultimately connect to the Conococheague Creek, then flow down the Potomac River, and then the Chesapeake Bay, meaning contamination would move far beyond Washington County. Raw sewage releases would introduce bacteria, viruses, excess nutrients, and other pollutants into waterways, harming aquatic ecosystems, degrading water quality, and creating public health risks for downstream communities.

In February 2026, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown sued DHS after the agency attempted to move forward with the project without conducting the environmental review required by federal law. The lawsuit showed that DHS unlawfully fast-tracked the project while failing to adequately evaluate impacts on local waterways, wastewater systems, traffic, emergency services, public health, air quality, and surrounding communities.

This led to a federal judge largely halting the project and forcing DHS to begin the environmental review process it had previously attempted to avoid. As a result, DHS was forced to create a public record and consider public input before moving forward and led to DHS opening a 30 day period allowing the public to submit comments until July 1 as part of the environmental review process.

However, DHS is asking the public to comment on the environmental impacts of this project while refusing to release the underlying studies and assessments it says it relied upon to conclude that it is “not aware of any potential for significant environmental impacts.” Those include things like wastewater and domestic water infrastructure assessments, environmental site assessments, utilities reports, and other technical studies that the public has never been allowed to see.

None of this means the proposed detention center would cause harmful algal blooms in the Conococheague or that any future water quality problems could be traced back to a single source. That is not the argument being made here.

The question is whether DHS has adequately analyzed what adding nearly 200,000 gallons of wastewater per day could mean for a watershed that has already experienced bacteria contamination, nutrient challenges, and harmful algal blooms in recent years. Environmental review is supposed to examine projects in the context of existing conditions, not in isolation from them. The health of the watershed today matters when evaluating how much additional strain it can absorb tomorrow.

That is precisely why DHS’s refusal to release the underlying studies is so difficult to justify. The agency says it relied on wastewater infrastructure assessments, environmental site reviews, utilities analyses, and other technical documents before concluding that it was “not aware of any potential for significant environmental impacts.” Yet the public is being asked to evaluate that conclusion without seeing any of the information that produced it.

The timing of all of this raises obvious questions. On June 30, the Washington County Commissioners are scheduled to formally recognize volunteers who removed more than 51,000 pounds of litter, tires, and debris from the Conococheague and Antietam watersheds, celebrating their commitment to environmental stewardship and the protection of local waterways throughout Washington County. Those volunteers absolutely deserve that recognition.

More difficult to reconcile is the fact that this celebration of watershed protection comes as local officials continue to support a project that DHS itself acknowledges will involve significant water and wastewater demands. The proposed detention center sits beside Semple Run, upstream of the Conococheague Creek and ultimately the Potomac River, and is expected to generate nearly 200,000 gallons of wastewater every day. Washington County appears willing to applaud residents for removing pollution from these waterways while showing far less interest in scrutinizing what additional burdens may be placed on them in the future.

The contradiction becomes more difficult to ignore when viewed alongside the county’s recent discussion about slowing or temporarily pausing large-scale data center development in order to better understand potential impacts on water supplies, wastewater treatment capacity, infrastructure, and public services. County leaders have expressed a willingness to apply caution and demand an additional study when it comes to one form of large-scale development, while refusing to allow any public comment about a proposed ICE detention facility that DHS insists will not result in significant environmental impacts despite withholding the underlying studies and assessments it relied upon to reach that conclusion.

During the public comment period of the March 17, 2026, Washington County Commissioners meeting on proposed 911 fee increases, Washington County NAACP President Taj Smith drew a connection between the reported $3.7 million shortfall and the proposed ICE detention facility, a project for which the commissioners have refused to hold any public comment period or public hearing.

Washington County Commissioners President John Barr then ordered Smith removed from the meeting before she could finish her remarks.

(Side note: sign up here to register to speak at the hearing on data centers. The Washington County Commissioners do not want you to speak during this hearing and this hearing has only received community attention because a Washington County Indivisible leader discovered a hearing was added to this page.)

These decisions suggest a county government that may only be concerned about environmental impacts when it is politically convenient. After all, this is same Board of County Commissioners which only just a few months ago was pushing for legislation which would loosen septic-related regulations in Washington County, despite longstanding concerns about wastewater capacity, runoff, failing septic systems, and downstream impacts on local waterways.

Protecting waterways involves more than celebrating cleanup efforts after problems appear. It also means asking difficult questions before new environmental pressures are introduced into an already stressed watershed.

The issue extends beyond the ICE warehouse detention center itself. The Conococheague eventually empties into the Potomac River, meaning any environmental consequences associated with wastewater, nutrient loading, or infrastructure failures would not stop at the Washington County line. Communities throughout Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia share an interest in ensuring that major federal projects receive the level of environmental scrutiny required by law.

If DHS believes the project’s wastewater generation will not significantly affect local waterways, it should release the analysis supporting that conclusion. If the agency believes existing infrastructure has sufficient capacity and resilience to absorb those demands, it should release the studies supporting that conclusion as well.

The public comment period closes on July 1. Before DHS asks communities throughout the Potomac watershed to accept assurances about environmental impacts, the agency should make public the information it relied upon to reach those assurances in the first place. And Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible encourage you to tell DHS exactly that.

Here’s one very specific thing you can ask for in your public comment:

Request that DHS publicly release the reports and assessments it claims to have relied upon when concluding that it is “not aware of any potential for significant environmental impacts” from this project.

Submit your public comment now at NoKingsNoCamps.com

Just a reminder, there will be a protest this Tuesday, June 30 at 9:00 AM outside the Washington County Commissioners meeting.
Location: 100 W Washington St, Hagerstown, MD

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When most people hear about the proposed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention warehouse in Washington County, Maryland, they assume it is a local issue. That assumption is understandable. The facility would be located in a former warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland, and many of the most immediate impacts would be felt by Washington County residents. But the information Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released as part of its Environmental Assessment suggests this project is far larger and more complicated than a typical warehouse renovation.

Earlier this month, DHS revealed that the facility is designed to accommodate up to 1,500 people and would require significant utility modifications, wastewater infrastructure improvements, floodplain review procedures, and the installation of a massive 750,000-gallon water storage tank. The agency also estimates the facility could generate approximately 187,000 gallons of wastewater per day. Those disclosures raise some obvious questions. Where will all of that water come from? Can the surrounding infrastructure handle a project of this scale? What happens when a facility designed to hold up to 1,500 people is inserted into a watershed that already supports local communities, businesses, farms, and ecosystems?

Those questions are especially important because DHS originally attempted to move this project forward without conducting the Environmental Assessment that is now underway. The public only has access to this information because Maryland successfully challenged DHS in court and forced the agency to complete the environmental review required by federal law. That lawsuit not only opened the current public comment period, it also revealed details about the project that residents would otherwise never have had the opportunity to examine.

The Environmental Assessment has also highlighted something that receives far less attention than it should. The consequences of this project do not stop at the Washington County line. Water leaving the project area eventually flows through Semple Run, into Conococheague Creek, then into the Potomac River, and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. Along the way, it becomes part of a network of waterways and environmental resources shared by millions of people throughout the Mid-Atlantic.

That reality matters because it means this is not simply a Washington County story. Residents of Maryland, Washington, The District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware all have a legitimate interest in understanding what DHS is proposing, what questions remain unanswered, and why now is the time to submit a public comment before the July 1 deadline.

Maryland

Maryland has the most to lose.

Unlike residents in neighboring states, Marylanders would experience both the immediate impacts of hosting the facility and any downstream consequences that follow. DHS wants to convert an 825,000-square-foot warehouse into a detention facility designed to hold up to 1,500 people. To make that happen, the agency has acknowledged that the project will require significant utility upgrades, major wastewater infrastructure improvements, floodplain review, and a 750,000-gallon water storage tank. That alone should raise eyebrows. Projects that require that level of modification are not simple warehouse renovations, no matter how DHS tries to describe them.

Marylanders should be asking some pretty basic questions. If the facility is expected to generate roughly 187,000 gallons of wastewater per day, can the existing system actually handle it? If additional upgrades become necessary later, who pays for them? What happens when infrastructure that was originally built to serve local communities is increasingly dedicated to supporting a federal detention complex? These are not abstract concerns. They are questions that affect taxpayers, local governments, and residents who depend on those systems every day.

There is also the issue of the Chesapeake Bay. Maryland taxpayers have spent decades and billions of dollars trying to improve water quality, reduce pollution, and restore one of the state’s most important natural resources. At the same time, DHS is proposing a project that would dramatically increase water consumption, wastewater generation, and stormwater runoff in a watershed that ultimately drains into the Bay. Whether those impacts end up being significant is precisely what the Environmental Assessment is supposed to evaluate. What should concern Maryland residents is that DHS initially tried to move this project forward without conducting that review at all.

And this is not just a Washington County issue. Water leaving the project area eventually becomes part of the larger watershed that connects communities across Maryland. The decisions made at this site therefore have implications far beyond the warehouse property itself. When a federal agency proposes a project of this scale in a sensitive watershed, Maryland residents have every right to demand clear answers, rigorous review, and more than vague assurances that everything will work out.

Washington, D.C.

At first glance, it might seem strange that residents of Washington, D.C. should care about a proposed detention facility more than 70 miles away in Washington County, Maryland. But the Potomac River does not begin at the District line.

The Potomac is one of the most important natural resources in the region. It provides drinking water to the Washington metropolitan area, supports recreation and tourism, and serves as the backbone of a watershed that connects communities across multiple states. It is also a river that has faced pollution challenges for decades. Combined sewer overflows, stormwater runoff, wastewater discharges, and other sources of pollution continue to affect water quality despite years of cleanup efforts and billions of dollars in public investment.

That is why the proposed ICE detention facility matters to District residents. The question is not whether Washington, D.C. will experience the immediate impacts of construction in Washington County. The question is whether DHS has fully evaluated the consequences of adding another major wastewater-generating facility to a watershed that already faces significant environmental pressures.

That is not just common sense. It is also reflected in federal environmental law. Agencies conducting environmental reviews are required to consider cumulative impacts on shared resources such as rivers, watersheds, and ecosystems.

District residents are routinely told that protecting the Potomac requires everyone to do their part. Washington, D.C. has spent billions of dollars trying to reduce sewage pollution and improve water quality in the river. Residents and businesses are expected to follow the rules, utilities are expected to invest in infrastructure, and taxpayers are expected to help fund those efforts. It is entirely reasonable to expect DHS to meet that same standard before moving forward with a project that would become part of the Potomac watershed.

Virginia

Virginia has spent decades trying to improve the health of the Chesapeake Bay and the waterways that feed it. State agencies, local governments, farmers, businesses, and taxpayers have invested enormous amounts of time and money into reducing pollution, improving water quality, and restoring ecosystems throughout the watershed. Those efforts continue today because many of the challenges facing the Bay have not been solved. Nutrient pollution, stormwater runoff, wastewater discharges, and habitat degradation remain ongoing concerns throughout the region.

That is what makes the proposed ICE detention facility in Washington County relevant to Virginia residents. DHS is proposing a project that could house up to 1,500 people, generate approximately 187,000 gallons of wastewater per day, require significant utility upgrades, and involve floodplain review and major infrastructure modifications. The facility may be located in Maryland, but it sits within a watershed that ultimately connects to the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, both of which are deeply important to Virginia communities.

The Commonwealth’s connection to the Potomac is not abstract. The river forms part of Virginia’s border and supports recreation, tourism, fishing, wildlife habitat, and local economies throughout Northern Virginia and beyond. Decisions made upstream can have consequences downstream, which is why watershed management has long been treated as a regional responsibility rather than a purely local issue.

Virginia has enormous political, financial, and regulatory obligations tied to Chesapeake Bay cleanup. Virginia is constantly negotiating pollution reduction targets with EPA, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and other Bay jurisdictions. A project that adds another major wastewater source into the watershed isn’t just an environmental question. It’s a regional governance question because Virginia is one of the states that gets measured on Bay outcomes.

West Virginia

For residents of West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle, the connection to the proposed ICE detention facility is far more direct than many people might realize.

Water leaving the project site eventually makes its way through the Conococheague Creek and into the Potomac River, which flows past some of West Virginia’s most recognizable communities. Places like Harpers Ferry and Shepherdstown are closely tied to the health of the river. It supports recreation, tourism, wildlife habitat, local businesses, and some of the natural landscapes that make the Eastern Panhandle unique.

That is why residents of West Virginia have a legitimate interest in what happens in Washington County. What happens upstream can affect communities downstream, which is why environmental reviews are supposed to examine more than just impacts occurring directly on a project site.

For residents of the Eastern Panhandle, the Potomac River is one of the defining natural resources of the region, and any project that could affect the watershed deserves careful scrutiny before it moves forward.

Pennsylvania

The Conococheague Creek watershed does not begin in Maryland. It begins in Pennsylvania.

That means communities like Chambersburg, Greencastle, and Mercersburg are already connected to the same watershed as the proposed ICE detention facility.

It should very much concern Pennsylvania residents that DHS initially attempted to move this project forward without conducting an Environmental Assessment. If Maryland had not sued, many of the questions now being examined might never have been asked in the first place.

People on both sides of the Maryland-Pennsylvania border have spent years working to protect and improve the waterways that connect their communities. They understand something that can sometimes get lost in discussions about state boundaries: watersheds do not care where one state ends and another begins.

For residents of southern Pennsylvania, this is a proposal involving a watershed that begins in Pennsylvania, flows through Maryland, and ultimately connects communities in both states. That alone gives Pennsylvanians a legitimate interest in the questions DHS is finally being forced to answer.

Delaware

Many people would never connect a proposed ICE detention facility in Washington County, Maryland to the State of Delaware. But they should.

Delaware has spent decades participating in efforts to restore and protect the Chesapeake Bay. State agencies, local governments, environmental organizations, and taxpayers have invested significant time and spends millions of dollars a year to improve the water quality and protect one of the most important natural resources in the Mid-Atlantic. Those efforts are based on a simple reality: the health of the Bay is shaped by decisions made throughout the watershed, not just in the communities closest to the water.

That gives Delaware residents a legitimate interest in projects like the one DHS is proposing in Washington County. The question is not whether Delaware will experience the immediate impacts of construction at the site. The question is whether DHS has fully evaluated the environmental consequences of a major federal project located within a system of waterways that ultimately connects to the Chesapeake Bay.

The proposed detention facility may be located hundreds of miles from parts of Delaware, but the principle is the same. When a federal agency proposes a project with potentially significant environmental consequences, the public should not have to drag that agency into court simply to force it to study those consequences before moving forward.

The Clock Is Ticking

The public comment period for DHS’s Environmental Assessment is open now, but it closes on July 1.

The proposed ICE detention facility raises questions that extend far beyond Washington County. Residents of Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Delaware all have a legitimate interest in ensuring those questions are fully examined before this project moves forward.

To make participation easier, we at Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible set up a public comment submission campaign at NoKingsNoCamps.com. The process takes two minutes or less:

1. Visit NoKingsNoCamps.com and fill out your contact info.

2. In the body of your email, raise specific environmental concerns you have about the project.

3. Customize the template as much as possible and hit send.

Your comment will become part of the official administrative record that DHS is required to consider as part of its Environmental Assessment.

July 1 will be here before you know it. Visit NoKingsNoCamps.com and submit your comment today. Once the public comment period closes, the opportunity to have your concerns included in the record closes with it.

⭐ Bonus points for also clicking the orange
button and leaving a comment below ⭐

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Federal contractors working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security rely heavily on careful language when describing the 825,000-square-foot facility planned for Williamsport, Maryland. Terms like “operational footprint” and “site management” show up repeatedly, as if the choice of wording can soften what is actually being proposed.

But nothing about this project is theoretical for the people who live here. It connects directly into the systems that keep this community running. Water, sewer, stormwater, and local infrastructure are not side details. They are the foundation.

The federal notice lays out enough technical detail to make the scale of the project impossible to ignore. What is being proposed is a massive, resource-heavy facility being inserted into a system that already operates near its limits.

The Numbers in the DHS Blueprint

For months, local officials stayed largely quiet while federal planning moved forward. Now, with the public comment window open until July 1, the details are finally visible in a way the public can actually respond to. And the details matter.

The plan includes a 750,000-gallon on-site water storage tank. That is more than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. It is not a minor backup system. It is a core requirement to keep the facility running at the scale being proposed.

The facility is also designed to hold up to 1,500 people, which immediately translates into sustained demand on sewer systems, pump stations, and treatment capacity. The required modifications are not routine upgrades. They are structural changes to how local utilities function on a daily basis.

On top of that, the site work extends into floodplain-adjacent areas, where large-scale paving and grading will increase stormwater runoff. That runoff does not stay contained on a site plan. It moves downstream into surrounding land and waterways that are already sensitive to changes in flow and volume.

A System Built in 1928 Being Asked to Carry a Modern Industrial Load

Washington County, Maryland depends on a water system first built in 1928. It was designed for a small population and steady municipal use. It was never designed to support a high-volume federal detention operation running continuously at this scale.

Local infrastructure is already serving homes, schools, and small businesses under real constraints. There is no hidden surplus capacity waiting to absorb a project of this magnitude. Every additional demand placed on the system forces tradeoffs somewhere else.

That is the part that often gets lost in official language. Capacity is not flexible just because it is discussed in planning documents. It is physical. Pipes carry only so much. Treatment plants process only so much. Pump stations move only so much. And once that limit is reached, something else gives.

And when systems are pushed past their intended range, the costs do not disappear. They shift downward into long-term maintenance, emergency repairs, and accelerated infrastructure upgrades that local ratepayers are left to cover. The federal government does not carry those costs over time, and private contractors have no stake in what happens after construction is complete.

A Sudden Standard That Is Not Being Applied Consistently

Just last week, county leadership signaled hesitation around large-scale data center development, citing concerns about water usage, wastewater capacity, and overall infrastructure strain. And those concerns are real.

But that raises a straightforward question. If infrastructure limits are serious enough to justify pausing one category of development for further study, why do those same limits not trigger the same caution when it comes to a federal detention facility with comparable or greater utility demands.

The standard cannot shift depending on the project. Either the infrastructure constraints matter, or they do not.

The Public Comment Window Is Now Open

Because litigation has forced a formal environmental review process, the federal government is now required to accept public comments on infrastructure, environmental, and community impacts.

That comment window is open until July 1, and it becomes part of the official administrative record used in future review and potential legal proceedings.

This is not a procedural formality. It is one of the only opportunities the public has to force the real-world constraints of this project into the record that regulators and courts must consider.

Make Your Voice Part of the Official Environmental Record

This project is not just an infrastructure question. It is an environmental one.

A facility of this scale would place sustained pressure on local water systems, sewer capacity, stormwater controls, and surrounding watershed conditions. Those systems are not separate from the environment. They are part of it. When they are overwhelmed, the impact does not stay on paper or within utility lines. It moves into streams, floodplains, groundwater, and downstream ecosystems.

Because Maryland successfully challenged the attempt to fast-track this project without a full environmental review, the federal government is now required under law to collect public comments on these impacts. That includes water usage, wastewater discharge, stormwater runoff, and the broader environmental consequences of stressing aging municipal systems.

That comment window is open until July 1.

This is the moment to make the environmental record specific. General objections are easy to dismiss. Concrete documentation of environmental strain is not.

When you submit your comment, focus on how the proposed 750,000-gallon on-site water system, combined with sustained high-volume use, affects local watershed health and utility discharge capacity. Ask how increased wastewater output and stormwater runoff will impact floodplains, downstream water quality, and already constrained treatment systems.

These are environmental questions, and they belong in the official record

Take Action Now

Submit your public comment here:

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

It takes two minutes or less. We have created a system that allows you to customize your submission and ensure that DHS receives it directly as part of the official environmental record.

The most important thing is to submit your comment before the July 1 deadline so these environmental impacts are formally documented and cannot be ignored.

Click here now to submit your public comment opposing the ICE detention warehouse DHS wants to open in Washington County, Maryland!

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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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