Hagerstown, Maryland Is the Test Case for ICE’s Next Expansion. Congress Is Finally Responding.

Rashida Tlaib introduces the Ban Warehouse Detention Act as Hagerstown exposes ICE’s expansion strategy in real time

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