Broad Maryland Coalition Rallies in Baltimore After Hagerstown Protest as Court Hears Lawsuit to Stop Proposed ICE Facility

As Hagerstown becomes ground zero in the fight against ICE warehouse expansion, the next battle unfolds in federal court.

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.