Washington County Commissioners Tried to Keep the ICE Detention Center Quiet. We Put It on a Billboard.

Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible partner with Indivisible.org to take the fight over a proposed ICE detention center public with a new billboard.

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.

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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