Washington County already knows what a prison looks like. We have MCI-Hagerstown, the Maryland Correctional Training Center, Roxbury Correctional Institution and our county detention center. We have people who work inside them, families who travel here to visit loved ones, and thousands of people living behind their walls. Before we add another enormous institution of confinement, we ought to spend some time looking at the ones already here and the people inside them.
In July 2025, the three state prisons held 4,577 people, including 3,138 Black people. That is 69% of their combined population. Washington County’s population is about 14% Black. These prisons hold people from across Maryland, so nobody should expect their populations to mirror the county’s. But the contrast tells us something about this place: a predominantly white county has become home to institutions that confine thousands of Black people from communities across the state.
Now DHS wants to put up to 1,500 immigration detention beds in a former warehouse near Williamsport. Different laws govern who would be held there, and the circumstances of their detention would be different. But we would again be hosting a system that brings people here to be confined, separated from their communities and moved according to decisions made elsewhere. Our commissioners have already pledged their support to the federal agencies behind it. We think they owe this community a much better explanation than the promise of jobs.
We have gotten used to the prisons
The state’s figures are stark. MCI-Hagerstown’s population was 70% Black. At MCTC, it was 64.2% Black. At Roxbury, it was 74.2% Black. That disparity is already here, whether the ICE facility opens or never holds a single person.
For people with family inside, these institutions are anything but background scenery. For everyone else, it is easy to get used to them. We drive past the fences. We know someone who works there. We hear about staffing and budgets. After a while, the existence of several large prisons can seem as ordinary as any other feature of the county.
But getting used to something is not the same as having reckoned with it. Thousands of people are confined here, and their families live with the consequences. When another government comes along wanting another facility, we should have enough experience to ask harder questions. Instead, DHS bought a warehouse, announced its plans, and our commissioners pledged not to stand in its way.
Four toilets. A $102.4 million purchase.
DHS and ICE bought the Wright Road property on January 16, 2026, for $102.4 million. The warehouse covers 825,620 square feet on nearly 54 acres. At 1,500 beds, the proposed facility would have roughly three times the capacity of the Washington County Detention Center, whose listed maximum is 495.
The warehouse had four toilets and two water fountains, according to the record discussed in Judge Brendan Hurson’s April opinion. It was designed to store cargo and move it through loading docks. DHS wants to turn it into a place where people eat, sleep, receive medical care and remain in custody.
Obviously, renovation would add bathrooms and other facilities. The point is what the federal government purchased and how it approached that conversion. DHS tried to proceed using environmental exclusions rather than conduct the fuller review Maryland sought. Hurson granted a preliminary injunction after finding that Maryland was likely to succeed in challenging that approach.
The federal government found more than $100 million to buy the building. It then fought over whether converting it into a detention facility required a fuller examination of the consequences. That tells us plenty about how urgently it wanted the beds and how little patience it had for the questions.
Who would actually be held here?
Supporters of the immigration crackdown keep talking about criminals. That word does a lot of work for them. It allows people to picture a detention center full of convicted offenders without asking whether that is who ICE is actually arresting.
Reuters reported that ICE arrests reached nearly 51,000 in August 2026, setting a monthly record for the third month in a row. Its analysis of Deportation Data Project figures found that fewer than a quarter of July arrests involved people with criminal convictions. Some others may have had pending criminal charges. But the figures do not support treating everyone swept into this system as a convicted criminal.
Immigration detention is civil detention. People can be held while their immigration cases are being decided, without serving a sentence for a criminal conviction. That distinction matters when the government proposes building a place to confine 1,500 of them in our community.
The Government Accountability Office examined ICE detention data for 2019 through 2022 and found that Mexican citizens accounted for 22% of detentions, Guatemalan citizens 14%, and Honduran citizens 11%. Other leading countries included Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador.
Those are citizenship figures, not racial categories, and they cannot tell us exactly who would end up at Wright Road. They do show how heavily the detention system draws from Latin American and Caribbean communities. Our existing prisons disproportionately confine Black people. This proposed facility would serve an immigration enforcement system that reaches deeply into a different set of communities, many far from Washington County.
We should talk about those people as people. Someone arriving here may have children waiting at home, a job they can no longer show up for, medication they need, or an immigration case they are trying to pursue. Calling them “detainees” is accurate. Letting that become the only thing we know or care about them is a choice.
Apparently, it is only “processing”
The county’s March 18 update repeated DHS’s insistence that Wright Road would be a processing facility rather than a detention center. In the same paragraph, it explained that people would be held for an average of three to seven days before being transferred to an out-of-state detention center. DHS anticipated about 500 occupied beds on a given day, with space for 1,500.
That is quite a distinction to offer someone who cannot leave. County officials can call the building a processing facility, but the people inside would still be in custody. Their families would still be separated from them. And a transfer after several days would mean another move, not necessarily a release.
The short stays also make the daily bed count an incomplete picture. Five hundred people on Monday may be a substantially different group from the five hundred there the following week. As beds empty and fill, the number of people passing through over a year can be much larger than the number held at once. DHS’s projected occupancy does not tell us the facility’s annual reach.
Wright Road would be a stop in a larger detention network. People would arrive here, be held and processed, then be sent somewhere else. The county would become part of that routine, day after day, long after the announcement and the arguments over construction had faded from the news.
Our commissioners made a choice
DHS made the purchase. Federal officials are responsible for the detention policy and the proposed conversion. But our commissioners are responsible for their response, and they put it in writing.
On February 10, the board adopted a resolution supporting DHS and ICE enforcement efforts and pledging not to impede their operations within Washington County. They chose that position while major questions about the facility remained unresolved. Federal ownership did not require them to make that pledge.
The commissioners pledged not to get in DHS’s way. Apparently, finding out what the project would actually do to the county could wait. If they believe their support was justified, they should be able to explain what information persuaded them and what, if anything, would cause them to withdraw it.
The jobs pitch needs answers too. The county’s March update relayed DHS’s claim that the facility could create 1,125 jobs and identified KVG, LLC as responsible for renovation, engineering and construction work. There is paid work attached to this project. There are also people whose confinement would make that work necessary.
We can care about local employment without treating every project that promises jobs as a good idea. The people who work in prisons and detention facilities do not set federal immigration policy. But elected officials do decide whether to endorse a project, promote its promised benefits and help make it part of the community’s future. A jobs estimate does not relieve them of having to defend those decisions.
We already have enough experience to ask
Washington County has lived alongside large prisons for decades. We can see who is disproportionately confined in them. We know that a facility becomes an employer, a budget item and a familiar landmark, while the people behind its walls become easier for everyone outside to overlook. That experience should make us pay closer attention to what DHS is proposing.
The Wright Road warehouse was built to store and move cargo. Now the federal government wants to use it to confine and transfer human beings, and our commissioners have pledged support to the agencies pursuing that plan. Before another set of fences becomes something we simply drive past, they need to explain why they endorsed it, whose interests they believe it serves, and how much consideration they gave to the people who would be locked inside.
Who will be put there. The right question indeed.
Answer: our neighbors.