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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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McCarthy: So tell me about the second incident

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this case, the answer appears to be no.

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

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

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

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

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

That changed this morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17,662 people have signed up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ll gather to:

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

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

• Demand that our elected officials defend due process for everyone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ll gather to:

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

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

• Demand that our elected officials defend due process for everyone

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

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

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

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

The Timeline

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

  

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

  

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

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because they may have signed an agreement not to.

The NDA Playbook: From Big Tech to ICE Warehouses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read that again.

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s rally reflected that growth.

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

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

Today proved that people power and legal pressure are working.

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

Today was a major step forward.

Tomorrow, the fight continues.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Monday night, Rachel Maddow said on national television what so many of us here in Washington County have known for months: this fight is working because the pressure is working. Her words were not just a recognition of the work Hagerstown Rapid Response, our partners, and you have done on the ground. They were a reminder of something much bigger. What is happening here in Hagerstown is becoming a blueprint for how communities everywhere can fight back when federal agencies attempt to force dangerous and deeply harmful detention infrastructure into their neighborhoods.

Maddow described Hagerstown Rapid Response as “giving a clinic” on how to slow down, problematize, and make it as difficult as possible for the Trump administration to move forward with what she rightly called one of its gigantic new prison camps.

“Hagerstown Rapid Response is giving a clinic in Hagerstown, Maryland on how to slow down, how to problematize, how to just make it as difficult as possible for Trump to try to open up one of his gigantic new prison camps to hold people without trial.” - Rachel Maddow

That description landed because it is true. For months, local residents, organizers, doctors, faith leaders, and allied groups have refused to allow this project to move forward in silence. We have joined Washington County Indivisible and protested every single week for months outside County Commissioners meetings. We have filed Maryland Public Information Act requests and exposed communications that officials never intended the public to see. We have obtained drone footage of the site. We have dug through permitting requirements and identified where DHS and ICE appear to have pushed past critical legal and environmental safeguards. We have worked with medical professionals to document the ways this facility could strain an already burdened local health system. We have built a Signal network several hundreds strong, capable of mobilizing in real time whenever new developments emerge. And this couldn’t have happened without you.

What Maddow captured so clearly is that this has never been a symbolic campaign. This has been a campaign rooted in facts, public records, law, health, and relentless local accountability. The reason this story has continued to gain traction is because people here refused to let it disappear behind bureaucratic language and carefully managed press statements. Every document request, every protest, every drone image, every doctor’s letter, every petition created, every rally outside the Commissioners meetings has served one purpose: to make it impossible for this project to proceed quietly.

That work matters precisely because this project is not over. In fact, the recent developments in court make this moment more urgent, not less. DHS’s carefully worded claim that it will not “imminently” pursue retrofitting for detention purposes should not be mistaken for a cancellation. It is a litigation tactic, a public relations maneuver, and an attempt to cool the headlines while preserving room to continue the underlying infrastructure work. The danger right now is that people read those headlines and assume the threat has passed. It has not. The warehouse remains at the center of a federal plan that could still move forward unless the legal, political, and public pressure continues to intensify.

That is why Patrick Dattilio’s words, highlighted by Maddow last night, are so important: “This is the moment to increase pressure, not reduce it. The danger right now is complacency.” He is exactly right. This is often the stage where powerful institutions hope movements will exhaust themselves. They soften the language, adjust the timeline, and create the impression of retreat without surrendering the larger objective. If communities interpret a pause as a victory and step back, the machinery begins moving again, often with less public attention than before.

We have seen this playbook before. Agencies facing legal scrutiny or mounting public backlash rarely admit defeat outright. Instead, they recalibrate. They shift the wording. They introduce ambiguity. They say work is being “reconsidered,” “paused,” or not moving forward “imminently,” while leaving the door wide open for the same outcome down the line. The goal is simple: lower the temperature, reduce the pressure, and wait for public outrage to fade. That is exactly why this moment demands the opposite response.

What we have learned in Hagerstown is that local resistance works when it is persistent, scrappy, and deeply informed. This has never been a fight based only on outrage, though the outrage is justified. It has been a fight built on facts, records, legal pressure, public health evidence, and relentless visibility. We have forced this issue into the local press, the Baltimore media market, national outlets, and now onto one of the most watched political programs in the country. That visibility has not happened by accident. It has come from people on the ground doing the slow, difficult work of organizing and refusing to let officials bury the story.

What makes this moment especially significant is that Maddow did not simply report on what is happening here. She recognized that Hagerstown may be offering something larger: a roadmap. Her observation that our work “may help at least show the way in stopping this whole project for the whole damn country” should resonate far beyond Washington County. The federal government is watching what it can get away with here. Other communities are watching how to respond. If this proposed detention warehouse can be stopped through coordinated public pressure, legal action, health advocacy, and relentless scrutiny, then Hagerstown may indeed become the model others follow.

This is about far more than one warehouse in Williamsport. It is about whether communities have the power to stop federal detention infrastructure from being imposed without transparency, without adequate environmental review, and without regard for the human and public health consequences. It is about whether local residents, doctors, organizers, and legal advocates can force institutions to answer for decisions that put entire communities at risk.

The answer, increasingly, appears to be yes.

But only if we keep going.

This is not the moment to ease off the gas. It is the moment to press harder than ever. The legal fight is entering a critical phase, and the public needs to show up in force.

On April 15, a judge will hear Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s landmark lawsuit seeking to stop ICE’s conversion of the 825,000-square-foot Williamsport warehouse into a detention facility. We need the courtroom packed, the courthouse steps filled, and the streets outside impossible to ignore.

Join Hagerstown Rapid Response, Washington County Indivisible, the Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps, and allies from across the state on April 15 at 9:00 AM for a rally outside the courthouse. At 10:00 AM, supporters can attend the hearing or join the interfaith vigil outside. The rally will take place at George H. Fallon Federal Building and Courthouse, located at 101 West Lombard Street in Baltimore.

“All of this hustle. The protests, the drone footage, the documents, the letter from the doctors...all of this hustle in what really is a pretty Republican part of blue-state Maryland. The work of these local activists has now been incorporated into a lawsuit by the state that’s trying to stop the Hagerstown facility and another one they want to build elsewhere in Maryland...And now after months of effort like that at the local level there are these headlines about the programs potentially stopping nationwide and specific headlines saying that Homeland Security is reconsidering the scope of that Hagerstown ICE prison. Reconsidering the scale of it. Saying “oh the conversion of it to a prison is not imminent after all.” I’ll tell you, nobody in Hagerstown is declaring victory over this, but boy have they thrown a lot of sand in the gears. And in a way that has had some signaled success in Hagerstown, Maryland. And that may help show the way in stopping this whole project for the whole damn county.” - Rachel Maddow

This fight is far from over. If anything, the attention from last night’s Maddow segment confirms that what we are doing here matters, not just for Hagerstown, but for communities across the country facing similar threats. The lesson of the past few months is simple: pressure works.

So now is the time to increase it.

Pack the court. Fill the streets. Stop the camp. Join us on April 15th and RVSP now!

For a brief moment, Washington County was invited to exhale. The Department of Homeland Security told a federal judge it would not “imminently” pursue retrofitting the Williamsport / Hagerstown warehouse for detention purposes, and predictably, some people rushed to interpret that language as progress, perhaps even a victory. It is neither. What DHS offered this week was not a concession, not a reversal, and certainly not a moral awakening. It was a carefully engineered legal maneuver designed to cool the temperature in federal court while preserving as much of the project as possible outside it.

The most important thing to understand is that DHS has not stepped back from the facility itself. In the same filing where its lawyers assured Judge Hurson that detention retrofitting was not imminent, the agency made clear that work on the site is still continuing. Roof repairs are still moving forward. HVAC upgrades are still underway. A perimeter fence is still being built. Cables for security cameras are still being laid. Administrative office space for ICE is still being constructed on the property. That is not the behavior of an administration abandoning this plan. It is the behavior of an administration trying to continue every piece of work it believes it can justify while litigation is pending.

That distinction is not semantic. It goes directly to the heart of what DHS is doing. This is a litigation tactic, not a policy shift. The agency is trying to preserve its investment in the site, continue hardening the physical infrastructure, and buy time while public attention risks drifting elsewhere. Federal agencies understand better than almost anyone that time itself can become strategy. If the headlines dwindle, if the protests thin out, and if the community begins to interpret carefully hedged legal language as genuine retreat, then DHS has already gained ground.

The same dynamic is at work in the sudden emergence of the 542-person capacity figure. For months, the 1,500-detainee number has defined public understanding of what this facility could become. Now, without any meaningful public explanation, DHS has quietly completed an initial environmental review based on a capacity of 542. Nothing about this number inspires confidence. It did not emerge from community consultation. It was not the result of local concerns being taken seriously. It was not announced as a formal reduction in scope. Instead, it appears to be a conveniently smaller figure that happens to align with an already completed environmental review, narrowing the immediate legal exposure of what DHS has already done while preserving ample room for future expansion.

There is no reason to read this as an act of good faith. If anything, it should be read as legal positioning. The smaller number allows DHS to defend a narrower project footprint in court while retaining flexibility later. And even if one were inclined to accept 542 as a genuine operational cap, ICE’s own record in Maryland makes clear why that would be naïve.

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The Baltimore holding facility offers the most obvious warning. That facility was designed for short stays and an official capacity of just 56 people. Yet in 2025, a federal judge found that it exceeded double that number multiple times, reaching 123 detainees in a single day. Nearly 900 people were held beyond ICE’s own 72-hour limit. Human beings slept on concrete floors under foil blankets. Reports described denial of food, water, and medical care. A federal court had to intervene simply to force compliance with basic constitutional standards. Even then, ICE denied that overcrowding was occurring. That is the same institution now asking this community to trust that 542 represents a meaningful limit. Why should anyone believe that this number is a ceiling when history strongly suggests it is closer to a floor?

What makes this even more concerning is what DHS has been doing outside the courtroom. On March 27, in the same week it was using soothing legal language about future review and procedural caution, the agency quietly published a notice in the Federal Register adopting five new categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act. The technical language obscures the practical consequence: fewer environmental reviews, less public scrutiny, and a dramatically easier path to construction.

One of the new exclusions, borrowed from the USDA Farm Service Agency, covers an extraordinarily broad range of construction and ground disturbance activities, including excavation, grading, roads, access roads, and related site work. DHS explicitly stated that it intends to use this authority for a broad range of such activities. In plain English, this means substantial work could move forward without an environmental assessment, without an environmental impact statement, and without public input.

That Timing is Impossible to Ignore
At the precise moment DHS is telling the public that further review will come before significant development, it is simultaneously equipping itself with new tools that could allow it to bypass much of that review altogether. The promise of future oversight is being made at the same time the agency is quietly weakening the mechanisms that would require it.

What is even more striking is the way this was done. DHS did not publish a proposed rule. It published a notice, meaning the change took effect immediately, with no public comment period whatsoever. No hearings. No local input. No opportunity for community opposition to be formally registered. Under a provision tucked into the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act, agencies are permitted to adopt another agency’s existing categorical exclusions simply by notifying the public. DHS used that loophole exactly as intended.

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The irony here is almost too sharp to ignore. Maryland’s lawsuit against DHS is fundamentally about the lack of public review, environmental analysis, and consultation surrounding the Hagerstown area acquisition. Yet while that lawsuit is actively pending, DHS has moved to codify additional tools for bypassing precisely those same public processes. This is not an agency learning from legal challenge. It is an agency institutionalizing the very conduct now under scrutiny.

That is why this should not be mistaken for victory. The broader pause on future warehouse acquisitions under new Secretary Markwayne Mullin does not change that reality. Every incoming cabinet secretary pauses inherited initiatives to assess contracts, liabilities, and political exposure. This is standard bureaucratic transition procedure, not a concession to public pressure. The Hagerstown area warehouse was purchased well before this review process, and DHS officials have already confirmed that development of already acquired facilities continues to move forward. This pause was never really about the Hagerstown area facility.

The danger now is complacency. Institutions often survive controversy not by defeating opposition head-on, but by waiting for momentum to dissipate. The cameras leave. The headlines dwindle. Coalitions lose urgency. People begin to assume the threat has passed. Then the work resumes under diminished scrutiny.

That is why this moment demands more pressure, not less. The response cannot be celebration. It has to be escalation: continued presence at every Washington County Commissioners meeting, aggressive use of Maryland Public Information Act requests, sustained legal pressure, direct communication with elected officials, and relentless engagement with the press. The coalition that has brought the fight this far has already demonstrated what local organizing can accomplish. The town halls, the protests, the legal strategy, and the records requests have all mattered.

But this is not the finish line. It is the moment that determines whether this community forces an actual cancellation or merely mistakes a procedural pause for progress. Anything short of a written cancellation and the death of this facility as a project is not a win.

DHS appears to be counting on silence and confusion to make the public believe the threat has passed. Some may have been duped by that narrative, but we have not. We see exactly what is happening, and we are ready to fight harder than ever.

As peaceful protests over the proposed Hagerstown-area ICE facility continued to build, everything came to a head this weekend when thousands of people showed up for Saturday’s No Kings rally in Hagerstown. The turnout made one thing unmistakably clear: this community is not going to be silent.

The No Kings, No Camps campaign echoed across Maryland at multiple rallies, raising awareness about the 825,000-square-foot Washington County warehouse being converted into an ICE detention facility and our fight to stop Indeed and other job sites from profiting from its staffing.

The Weekly Protests Are Not Letting Up

This momentum did not begin on Saturday, and it will not end there.

For weeks, we have been showing up outside the Washington County Commissioners’ meetings every Tuesday morning at 100 W. Washington Street, standing in visible and sustained opposition to the proposed ICE detention facility and the lack of transparency surrounding it.

In partnership with Washington County Indivisible, we have used these weekly actions to keep public pressure on the Commissioners, force local media attention, and ensure that every vote tied to this facility is met with public scrutiny. Every week, we have returned with signs, speakers, residents, physicians, faith leaders, and neighbors who refuse to let this project move forward in silence.

This week’s protest centered on what may be one of the most urgent warnings yet: a letter signed by 50 local doctors outlining the serious health consequences the facility could bring if it opens.

That letter made clear that the risks do not stop at the fence line. It warned of the dangers posed not only to detainees, but also to facility employees, emergency services, and the broader Hagerstown and Washington County community. The doctors raised alarms about overcrowding, infectious disease spread, strain on local healthcare systems, and the consequences of converting an industrial warehouse built for packages, not people, into a detention center.

That public health warning became the central focus of this week’s protest.

We rallied around the message that this is not just an immigration issue or a transparency issue. It is a community health issue. The consequences of opening this facility would be felt by every resident, every nearby neighborhood, and every hospital and medical worker in the region.

Washington County Commissioners Delay Vote on Buying Riot Gear

Less than 24 hours before the weekly commissioners meeting, a Hagerstown Rapid Response member discovered a curious agenda item on the schedule: a vote to purchase $94,000 worth of riot gear for local law enforcement. Coming on the heels of one of the largest local demonstrations we have seen, it felt like a direct response to the momentum we have been building.

But we did what we always do: we organized.

We mobilized our 500+ person Signal group to attend the Tuesday protest outside the Washington County Commissioners meeting. And people were watching. Multiple Washington, D.C. and Baltimore TV news crews were on the ground, along with several national media outlets covering the event, bringing even more visibility to what is happening here in Washington County.

Then came the result: the Commissioners caved and delayed the vote on purchasing the riot gear.

That did not happen because they suddenly changed their minds. It happened because the community showed up, stayed loud, and refused to back down.

When we fight back, we win.

This is exactly why we keep organizing, keep protesting, and keep growing this movement week after week.

The delayed riot gear vote is not happening in a vacuum. It comes after weeks of organized pressure, sustained Tuesday protests, and a weekend rally that brought thousands into the streets.

This is what accountability looks like.

When we keep showing up, they are forced to respond.

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Let that sink in.

As community outrage over the ICE warehouse continues to grow, county leaders are not moving to address residents’ concerns.

They are moving to outfit deputies for “civil disturbance incidents.”

According to documents on the March 31 Board of County Commissioners agenda, the county is set to vote on a resolution authorizing 29 full sets of protective gear for deputies assigned to the Civil Disturbance Unit.

The total cost: $94,592.99.

And the county’s own paperwork makes the purpose unmistakable.

The agenda report states:

“This personal protective equipment will be purchased to assist in outfitting our Deputies that are assigned to the Civil Disturbance Unit.”

It goes even further, stating the equipment is designed to protect deputies from “thrown projectiles” during civil disturbance incidents.

This is riot gear.

And this no-bid contract vote is on the commissioners.

What they are buying

The attached Safeware quotes spell out exactly what taxpayers are being asked to fund:

• 29 riot shields

• multiple long and interlocking crowd-control shields

• 29 police helmets

• 29 expandable batons

• 30 metatarsal guards

• fire-resistant coveralls

• specialized tactical footwear and protective gear

This is not normal departmental spending.

This is equipment built for confrontation.

The timing is impossible to ignore

For weeks, residents, doctors, and community organizers have been sounding the alarm over the proposed ICE detention center near Hagerstown and Williamsport.

People have shown up week after week at commissioner meetings.

Protests have continued.

Public pressure is growing.

And now, in the middle of that escalating opposition, county commissioners are preparing to authorize riot gear for deputies assigned to respond to “civil disturbances.”

The optics could not be clearer.

Instead of responding to the community’s concerns, they appear to be preparing for the community.

This is on the Board of County Commissioners

The county cannot hide behind the Sheriff’s Office on this one.

The resolution explicitly states that the Board of County Commissioners is authorizing the purchase.

That means every commissioner who votes yes owns this decision.

Every yes vote is a vote to spend public money on crowd-control gear at the exact moment the public is rising up against the ICE warehouse.

Residents deserve answers.

Why now?

Why nearly $95,000 in riot gear?

And what exactly are they expecting to happen in Washington County?

Because from where the public is standing, this looks less like leadership and more like preparation for dissent.

Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible are mobilizing community members to gather tomorrow outside the Washington County Board of County Commissioners meeting in protest of the proposed ICE detention facility near Hagerstown. The action comes amid urgent warnings from Washington County doctors that the facility could trigger a local public health crisis.

The protest will take place at 100 W. Washington St., Hagerstown, MD at 8:45 AM on Tuesday, March 31. Organizers note that these demonstrations are part of an ongoing effort, with community members protesting weekly outside Washington County Commissioners meetings to demand answers and accountability.

The demonstration follows growing concern from local medical professionals, including Dr. Jennifer Janus, author of a widely circulated letter - signed by more than 50 western Maryland health care professionals - raising alarm about the health risks posed by the facility. This letter will be read aloud by Dr. Kate Sugarman, MD, who joins the weekly protests in Hagerstown.

That letter - part of a broader effort by Washington County healthcare providers - frames the proposed detention center not as a political issue, but as a public health threat.

According to the letter and supporting statements from local clinicians, conditions commonly reported in ICE detention facilities - including overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, and limited access to medical care - create environments where infectious diseases can spread rapidly and chronic conditions can worsen. The letter highlights issues such as “overflowing toilets with floors flooded with feces and urine-contaminated water” and DHS itself reporting in 2024, that in a majority of detention facilities they “found instances of non-compliance with medical care standards, like dental and chronic care, and medical staffing.” SInce that DHS report was released, the number of detainees in ICE custody has nearly doubled and conditions have worsened.

“Given that the warehouse in Williamsport is meant for packages - not people - there is great potential for conditions there to be even worse,” said Dr. Jennifer Janus, a physician from Hagerstown and author of the letter. ”Impacts will be felt not only by the detainees, but also facility employees and the community at large. As a primary care physician and pediatrician, I want the public to understand the negative health impacts such a facility will inevitably create.”

The warning comes as local providers describe detention settings as a “public health risk” where disease outbreaks - including influenza, COVID-19, and tuberculosis - can spread quickly in crowded, poorly resourced environments.

For Dr. Kate Sugarman, a family physician and leader of Doctors for Camp Closure, and also a key member of Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps, these risks aren’t abstract - they’re already unfolding.

“People are continuing to die while in ICE custody because ICE is denying detainees the medical care they need in order to live,” she said. Sugarman reviews ICE medical records for detained individuals, documenting what she describes as a pattern of neglect. “I see how ICE is denying them the medical care that they are begging for. ICE has admitted that they are no longer paying for specialty medical care.”

In other words, even when serious conditions are identified, treatment may not follow.

Health experts also emphasize that these risks extend beyond the facility itself. Staff, emergency responders, and hospital systems are all part of the same ecosystem, meaning the impact of a large-scale detention center could ripple across Washington County’s already strained healthcare infrastructure.

At the same time, organizers say the public has been left in the dark about critical details surrounding the project. Residents and advocates have repeatedly called for transparency regarding health safeguards, emergency preparedness, and oversight - but say those answers have not been provided.

The protest reflects both concerns: the health consequences of the facility itself and the lack of clear communication from local government about how those risks will be addressed.

“When the medical community says ‘this is dangerous,’ ignoring them isn’t leadership - it’s negligence,” said Kate Rader of Washington County Indivisible.

Recent reporting has also highlighted growing opposition from community groups and elected officials, with calls for greater scrutiny of the facility’s potential impacts on public health, infrastructure, and emergency services.

“Doctors in this community are raising the alarm based on what they see every day in their work,” said Patrick Dattilio, founder of Hagerstown Rapid Response. “This isn’t theoretical. This is about real-world health consequences - for detainees, for workers, and for everyone who lives here.”

The demonstration is expected to draw residents, healthcare providers, and advocates demanding transparency, accountability, and a full public understanding of the health implications tied to the proposed detention center.

In addition, Washington County Indivisible will continue to gather signatures for their Citizens’ Resolution. This citizens’ resolution is a formal public statement condemning the Washington County Board of County Commissioners for supporting the proposed ICE detention facility. At its core, it argues that DHS and ICE have a documented record of abuse, deaths in custody, poor medical care, and unconstitutional conduct, and that by publicly backing the project, the County Commissioners are morally and politically responsible for what follows.

The resolution contends that by allowing the warehouse conversion to move forward and failing to answer residents’ concerns, the commissioners are neglecting their duty to represent and protect the community. It then formally declares that the citizens signing the resolution oppose the detention facility and intend to hold local officials accountable for their inaction, lack of transparency, and complicity.

Join us Tuesday, at 8:45 AM at 100 W. Washington St., Hagerstown, MD!

As health care providers, we are writing to express concerns regarding the planned conversion of a warehouse to a Department of Homeland Security detention facility for up to 1500 detainees in Washington County.

Firstly, conditions inside DHS detention centers are a set up for significant impacts to individual and public health. According to DHS itself, in a report from September of 2024, in the majority of detention facilities “we found instances of non-compliance with medical care standards, like dental and chronic care, and medical staffing.” A significant proportion of the facilities’ living conditions “violated... standards related to environmental health and safety, like sanitation of bathrooms and housing facilities” (1). Since then, the number of detainees in ICE custody has nearly doubled, leading to multiple reports of deteriorating conditions including overcrowding, poor food quality, inadequate temperature control, and insufficient sinks and toilets (2). Some detainees have described overflowing toilets with floors flooded with feces and urine-contaminated water (3).

Crowded and squalid conditions will dramatically increase the risk of both airborne and fecal-oral borne diseases. This has already caused outbreaks of influenza, COVID, mumps, and hepatitis A in detention facilities. More recently, DHS facilities have seen outbreaks of mumps and measles (4). There has even been an increase in reported cases of tuberculosis in these facilities (5). In addition to causing misery and threat to life of the detainees, there is no guarantee that communicable diseases will stay confined to the detention facility. Security, custodial, and medical staff are all likely to come into contact with the microbes that cause these illnesses, and subsequently bring them into the community.

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Secondly, emergency services capacity is another important consideration. Facilities of this size require reliable access to medical care, including emergency departments and ambulance services. One study showed an average of 68 events per detention center per year with average population of the detention center being 775; therefore, one can extrapolate about 135 events per year for a facility of 1500 detainees (6). A review of 911 calls from ten ICE facilities in the first half of 2025 revealed nearly 400 calls to emergency services (7). Incidents such as fire or disease outbreaks could increase this number drastically. However, the nearest EMS department has only eight volunteer paramedics. The Meritus Hospital Emergency Department already struggles to see patients in a timely manner, and the presence of such a large facility will adversely impact emergency medical care for residents of the county (8).

Finally, detention settings also carry documented mental health implications, especially for children. A huge study of almost 5000 children showed that the risk of depression, anxiety, PTSD and developmental delays was at least 3 times higher than the general population among detained children. Prolonged detention resulted in PTSD rates above 90%, and self-harm and suicide attempts were also significantly increased (9). “Psychological science is clear: detention, deportation, family separation, and the constant threat of such actions create chronic stress that increases anxiety, depression, trauma-related symptoms, and long-term health risks. These harms are especially severe for children, whose emotional development depends on stable and secure caregiving relationships,” said APA CEO Dr. Arthur Evans, Jr. (10).

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There has been very little information forthcoming from DHS and the Washington County Board of County Commissioners. The Maryland Attorney General is now suing DHS over the lack of environmental review. Given the track record of unsanitary conditions and poor health care in other detention facilities as described above, as well as the lack of transparency from the federal and local government, one must assume that conditions at the Williamsport facility will be as bad or worse than reported at existing DHS detention centers.

In summary, the conversion of a warehouse in Williamsport to a DHS facility poses significant impacts to the physical and mental health of detainees, as well as heath threats to the community through communicable diseases and strain on emergency services. With the health of our community as our foremost concern, we as healthcare providers in Washington County oppose the construction of this facility.

Respectfully,

Jennifer Janus, MD

Victoria Giffi, MD

Wendy Betah, DNP, FNP-C, PMHNP-BC

Jonathan Caldera Colon, MD

Heather Dorius, MSN, CRNP, FNP-C

Christopher Larrimore, DO

Seemal Awan, MD

Andrew Ditto, DO

Teresa Dumpe MS, RN, CRNP

Christine Feathers CRNP

Jeannette Sweitzer CRNP AMC

Helen Harrington DO

Milay Luis Lam MD

James Schiro MD

Tara Rumbarger MD

Karl Riggle MD

Erin Donoghue PA-C

Martha A Riggle MD

Sarah Lincoln PA-C

Jason Lincoln PA-C

Kiran Khosa MD

Oliver Chen MD

Christopher Vaccari MD

Samina Anwar MD

Susan Womeldorf MD

Michael O’Donoghue MD

Merih O’Donoghue MD

Maria Merzouk DO

Rachelle Fischer FNP-C, CPNP-PC

Catherine Feaga DO

Brian Bonham MD

McKenzie Sorrell DO

Mohammed Z. Ali MD

Mohammed Bilgrami MD

Chris Gauthier DO

Pegah Zare MD

Kelsey Thrush DO

Susanna Goheen MD

Joshua Similuk DO

Erin Foutch, MSN, CRNP

Shaju Shamsuddin MD

Ashima Saini MD

Mahin Khan MD

Charles Brandon Mitchell MD

Scott P Worrell MD

Adjoavi Andele MD

Saba Aziz MD

Victoria Gonsorcik DO

Chintamaneni Choudari MD

Anand Saha MD

Michael Costello MD

Taylor James PA-C

Bryan Peralta NP-C

Jasmine Gulati DO

Adeba Kannsin MD

Stephanie Maxsell PA-C

Leona Leung, MD.

Donna Lofton CNM

(1) https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2024-09/OIG-24-59-Sep24.pdf

(2) https://factually.co/fact-checks/justice/conditions-in-ice-detention-

facilities-5166.ed

(3) https://www.aclu.org/news/ immigrants-rights/detained-immigrants-detailphysical-

abuse-and-inhumane-conditions-at-largest-immigration-detentioncenter-

in-the-u-s

(4) https://statnews.com/2026/02/04/measles-outbreak-immigration-detentioncenter-

preventable/

(5) https://san.com/cc/tb-is-spreading-in-ice-detention-centers-so-whats-theagencys-

responsibility/

(6) Dekker AM, Farah J, Parmar P, Uner AB, Schriger DL. Emergency Medical Responses

at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Centers in California. JAMA

Netw Open. 2023 Nov 1;6(11):e2345540.

(7) https://www.wired.com/story/ice-detention-center-911-emergencies/

(8) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-025-02832-4#Tab1

(9) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-025-02832-

4?utm_source=chatgpt.com

(10) https://www.apa.org/monitor/2025/09/mental-health-immigrationenforcement

Signatories to this letter are expressing their individual views as healthcare providers.

These views do not represent the positions or policies of their respective employers or

affiliated institutions.

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A town hall about the proposed ICE detention warehouse near Hagerstown. Open to the public. Accessible online. Featuring candidates, organizers, and a physician warning about what’s at stake.

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That might not sound remarkable until you understand why it exists.

This town hall is happening because the public was shut out.

After months of unanswered questions and growing concern about the conversion of an 825,000-square-foot warehouse into a 1,500-bed ICE detention center, residents were excluded from a recent “community” roundtable hosted by Representative April McClain Delaney. The general public, many of the most engaged community members, and many organizations working on this issue, were not allowed in the room.

So Ethan Wechtaluk, candidate for Maryland’s sixth congressional district, organized a virtual town hall that is actually open to the public.

The virtual town hall will take place on Thursday, March 26, 2026 at 8:00 PM ET and will be accessible to the public at MdTownHall.com.

“People in Washington County aren’t asking for special treatment. They’re asking not to be shut out of decisions that affect their lives. If elected officials won’t open the door, this town hall will,” Wechtaluk said.

That sentiment has been building for months.

Residents have been organizing, protesting weekly, filing public records requests, and asking basic questions about a project that could fundamentally reshape their community. What they have received in return is silence, deflection, and exclusion.

“Community members have been left with nothing but ambiguity and uncertainty due to information being withheld from them at every level of leadership,” said Bre Gurosko, co-founder of Project Salt Box. “The goal of this town hall is to provide the only resolution to uncertainty: information.”

The frustration is not just about the facility itself. It is about how decisions are being made.

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In February, Washington County Commissioners unanimously endorsed the plan to convert the warehouse into an ICE detention center. At the same time, they declined to answer basic questions from the public about the project.

Then came another revelation.

A Maryland Public Information Act request showed that county officials had invited President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Kristi Noem to tour the facility. That directly contradicted earlier claims that they had no contact with the federal government.

For many residents, that was a turning point.

“Washington County residents have made their opposition to the DHS Warehouse known through a variety of creative interventions, but they and all Marylanders deserve a simple public forum where it is easy to ask questions and share their concerns,” said Alexis Goldstein, candidate for Maryland’s 6th Congressional District. “I’m honored to participate in this public town hall.”

Others were more direct.

“If we can’t get a single answer after months of questions, why waste our time with them? We will do our own town hall,” said Patrick Dattilio, founder of Hagerstown Rapid Response.

That line captures the shift that is happening in Hagerstown right now.

This is no longer just a fight over a single facility. It is a fight over whether the public has any meaningful role in decisions that affect their lives.

And for some, the stakes go even deeper.

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“As a physician, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when people are detained without adequate medical care. It costs lives,” said Dr. Kate Sugarman, MD. In addition to being a family physician, Dr. Sugarman is one of the key leaders at Doctors for Camp Closure and a core member of Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps.

“Preventable deaths inside detention facilities continue to climb. These facilities are overcrowded, lack access to proper ventilation and clean water, and restrict access to basic hygiene measures. ICE and DHS have been negligent in providing appropriate and timely medical care for those in detention.”

That warning is not theoretical. It is based on real conditions inside detention facilities across the country.

Candidates at both the state and local level say the lack of accountability is part of a larger pattern.

“We can’t escape the fact that ICE is not being held accountable anywhere. Why would I want that in my state, county, or district?” said Brandon Thompson, candidate for Maryland State District 2A.

“When government stops listening, communities start organizing,” said Seth Funk, candidate for Maryland State District 1C. “This town hall is proof that people here are done being ignored.”

“Residents deserve answers, not silence,” said Teri Pailen, candidate for Washington County Commissioner. “This town hall is about making sure their questions are heard publicly.”

That is ultimately what Thursday night represents.

Not just another event. Not just another protest. Something more fundamental.

A community deciding that if it cannot be included, it will not wait.

The Honorable Wes Moore

Governor of Maryland

State House

Annapolis, MD 21401

The Honorable April Delaney

Committee on Agriculture

United States House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Governor Moore and Congresswoman Delaney:

Thank you for your plans to visit Hagerstown and hold a community roundtable and press availability to address concerns about the planned U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) Enforcement detention facility in Washington County.1 We appreciate your work and that of other Maryland officials, including the Office of the Attorney General, to pursue litigation to halt construction and operation of the unlawful ICE detention facility in Washington County, and applaud the OAG’s swift and successful work obtaining a Temporary Restraining Order.2 The OAG included a comment letter of several Washington County Community organizations as Exhibit I in its March 10 emergency motion, citing the letter’s concerns about the strain the planned ICE facility could pose to local resources.3

As you know, Washington County communities have actively opposed the planned ICE detention center, holding multiple protests outside the Washington County of Maryland Board of County Commissioners (BOCC). Opportunities for public comment on this alarming planned detention facility have been extremely limited: the BOCC has a prohibition on public comment leading organizers to plan silent protests, and DHS only allowed eight days for public comment on their “Early Notice and Public Review of a Proposed Activity in a 100- to 500-Year Floodplain.”4

Despite the planned ICE detention facility in Williamsport gaining national attention, there is a severe lack of public forums for Washington County and Maryland residents to express their views on this facility that will impact our community so drastically.

We at Hagerstown Rapid Response call on you to additionally hold a public Town Hall on the topic, so all voices in the Washington County community with concerns about the planned detention center can be heard.

We greatly appreciate your attention to this request, and look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Hagerstown Rapid Response

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On a quiet stretch of land outside Hagerstown, Maryland, plans are moving forward to convert a warehouse into a large-scale ICE detention facility. To some local officials, it’s a federal project already in motion. To a growing number of residents, it’s a source of concern.

But to dozens of health care providers in Washington County, it’s something else entirely.

It’s a public health warning.

In a document titled “An Open Letter from Washington County Health Care Providers,” a coalition of local doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants lays out a sobering case against the facility—not in political terms, but in clinical ones. Their argument isn’t about ideology. It’s about what happens when large numbers of people are held in crowded conditions with inconsistent access to care, sanitation, and basic resources.

And they’re clear about the stakes.

Conditions inside ICE detention centers, they write, are already “a set up for significant impacts to individual and public health.” Federal oversight reports have documented failures in medical care, sanitation, and staffing. Since then, the detained population has grown—and with it, reports of worsening conditions: overcrowded spaces, inadequate temperature control, limited access to sinks and toilets. In some cases, detainees have described environments where overflowing toilets leave floors contaminated with waste.

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That kind of setting doesn’t just make people uncomfortable. It makes them sick.

Outbreaks of influenza, COVID-19, hepatitis A, and tuberculosis have already been documented in detention facilities. More recently, measles and mumps have spread in similar environments. And as the letter points out, those illnesses don’t stay contained. Staff move in and out. Patients are transported to hospitals. What begins inside a detention center doesn’t necessarily end there .

For Dr. Kate Sugarman, a family physician and leader of Doctors for Camp Closure, and also a key member of Maryland Coalition to Stop the Camps, these risks aren’t abstract—they’re already unfolding.

“People are continuing to die while in ICE custody because ICE is denying detainees the medical care they need in order to live,” she said. Sugarman reviews ICE medical records for detained individuals, documenting what she describes as a pattern of neglect. “I see how ICE is denying them the medical care that they are begging for. ICE has admitted that they are no longer paying for specialty medical care.”

In other words, even when serious conditions are identified, treatment may not follow.

Sugarman’s work has taken her from reviewing case files to standing outside the Washington County Commissioners’ building, where she joins weekly protests organized by Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible, demanding that Washington County Commissioners finally address questions and concerns from the community. The demonstrations have become a steady presence, drawing attention to a project that many residents say has moved forward with more speed than transparency.

For Sugarman, the connection between what she sees in medical records and what’s being proposed in Hagerstown is impossible to ignore. A new facility doesn’t mean a new system—it means an expansion of an existing one.

And that system, she argues, is already failing.

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The open letter from local providers echoes that concern, but widens the lens. It’s not just detainees who could be affected—it’s the entire county. A facility housing up to 1,500 people will generate medical emergencies, requiring ambulance transport, emergency room capacity, and ongoing care. Yet local resources are already stretched thin. The nearest EMS unit relies on just eight volunteer paramedics, and Meritus Medical Center is struggling to keep up with demand.

In that context, the arrival of a high-need detention population doesn’t just add pressure. It risks tipping the balance.

Doctor Judy Stone, an infectious physician, has raised similar concerns in a separate letter, focusing on the fundamentals that often go overlooked: water, sanitation, and disease control. Without sufficient access to clean water for drinking, bathing, and hygiene, she warns, detention settings become fertile ground for infections—conditions that can quickly escalate from manageable to life-threatening .

These are not new problems. But they are problems that, according to the providers, have not been adequately addressed as plans for the facility move forward.

What makes this moment different is who is speaking out. These are not outside advocates or distant observers. They are local clinicians—people who treat patients in this community every day, who understand the limits of the system because they work within it.

Their warning is grounded in that reality.

The question now is whether anyone will listen.

Because if they’re right, the consequences won’t be confined to a single facility on the outskirts of town. They’ll be felt in emergency rooms, in clinics, and in communities across Washington County—long after the doors of the detention center open.

And by then, the conditions they’re warning about won’t be theoretical anymore.

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For weeks, Washington County officials have tried to frame the planned ICE detention warehouse outside Hagerstown as something largely outside of their hands—a federal project with limited local involvement and minimal communication.

That framing is no longer sustainable.

This week, Hagerstown Rapid Response uncovered and broke two developments that tell a very different story—one that raises serious questions about how this project has been handled and what residents have (and haven’t) been told.

The first came through a Maryland Public Information Act request, filed Ethan Wechtaluk, a core member of the group’s research and media team. Those records revealed that Washington County officials invited President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance to tour the ICE warehouse site.

That contradiction is difficult to ignore. A visit of that scale and profile requires communication, planning, and coordination. It suggests a level of engagement that goes well beyond what residents have been led to believe.

And it is especially striking given the broader context. For months, residents have been asking basic, unresolved questions about the facility: how an 825,000-square-foot industrial building is being converted into a high-capacity detention center, what the environmental and infrastructure impacts will be, and how the project will affect local resources. Those questions have not been fully answered, despite sustained public interest.

The second story we broke, which unfolded at yesterday’s Washington County Commissioners meeting, highlights a different but related issue: how those questions are being handled when they are raised in public.

Taj Smith, president of the Washington County NAACP, attended the meeting to speak during the public comment period about the proposed 911 fee increase. Her focus was not abstract opposition, but the county’s finances—specifically, connected to the proposed 911 fee increase and an emerging budget shortfall—and how those pressures intersect with the decision to move forward with a large-scale detention facility.

Her concern was straightforward. Facilities of this size rely heavily on local infrastructure, including emergency services, dispatch systems, and healthcare providers. If the county is already facing financial strain in maintaining those services, the addition of a high-capacity detention center raises obvious questions about cost, capacity, and long-term sustainability.

Smith attempted to raise those questions directly.

She was cut off before she could finish, removed from the meeting, and ultimately trespassed.

Taken together, these two developments point to a broader pattern. On one hand, there is evidence of behind-the-scenes coordination and engagement around the project, including outreach to national political figures. On the other, there is a visible breakdown in how local concerns are received, particularly when they touch on accountability, cost, and transparency.

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That gap—between what is happening privately and what is being acknowledged publicly—is where much of the tension around this project now sits.

It also helps explain why so much of the information that has emerged about the ICE warehouse, just outside of Hagerstown, has not come from official disclosures, but from independent efforts to obtain and analyze public records. Hagerstown Rapid Response has played a central role in that process, filing requests, reviewing documents, and working with media to bring new details into public view.

The result is a clearer, more complete picture of how this project is moving forward—one that challenges the idea that it has simply been a passive or externally driven process.

And while the immediate focus is on Washington County, the implications extend beyond it. Across the country, similar facilities are being developed through the rapid conversion of industrial buildings, often with limited public input and uneven transparency. What is happening in Hagerstown reflects a broader dynamic in how immigration detention infrastructure is expanding—and how communities are responding when they feel excluded from the process.

At this point, the core issue is not whether the project exists. It is how it has been handled, what has been communicated, and what remains unclear.

Inviting the president to tour the site while residents are still seeking basic information about its impact is not a minor inconsistency. Neither is removing a community leader for raising questions about how the project could affect already strained emergency services.

Those are decisions. And they are shaping how this story is being understood, both locally and beyond.

The more that comes to light, the harder it becomes to maintain the idea that this has been a limited, hands-off process.

And that is exactly why the details matter.