Washington County Deserves a Voice: Call for Public Town Hall on ICE Facility

Closed door meetings are not enough. Washington County residents want answers in public.

March 22, 2026

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

1

Ben Mause, “Moore, McClain Delaney to meet with Hagerstown residents about ICE facility,” The Baltimore Sun (Mar. 20, 2026), https://www.baltimoresun.com/2026/03/20/wes-moore-mcclain-delaney-ice-hagerstown.

2

Attorney General of Maryland Anthony Brown, “Statement from Attorney General Brown on the Court’s Order to Temporarily Halt Construction of Unlawful ICE Detention Facility in Washington County,” Office of the Attorney General of Maryland (Mar. 11, 2026) https://oag.maryland.gov/News/Pages/Statement-from-Attorney-General-Brown-on-the-Court%e2%80%99s-Order-to-Temporarily-Halt-Construction-of-Unlawful-ICE-Detention-Facil.aspx.

3

“Memorandum in Support of Plaintiff’s Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order,” Maryland v. Noem et al., 1:26-cv-733-BAH, Doc No. 5-1, at 17 (March 10, 2026). Available at: https://oag.maryland.gov/News/Documents/pdfs/Binder12.pdf (“Hagerstown Rapid Response, NAACP of Washington County, ACLU of Maryland, Comment Letter on Floodplain Notice (Mar. 5, 2026), Exhibit I (submitting letter on behalf of local organizations representing community members living in the area of the warehouse and raising concerns that activity in support of a proposed detention facility could strain local resources, including transportation infrastructure, the water supply, and emergency services.”)

4

This notice violated DHS’s agency’s obligations in Sec. 2(b) of EO No. 11514, as it had not provided any public hearings, the information provided to the public is not timely (it was provided only eight days prior to the comment deadline), and it did not ensure the fullest practical provision of timely public information. See: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “Early Notice and Public Review of a Proposed Activity in a 100- to 500-Year Floodplain,” available at: https://www.dhs.gov/notice-activity-100-year-floodplain.