I had the honor to join Adam Klasfeld of All Rise News on Substack Live this week to talk through a significant legal development in Maryland — and the community organizing that has helped make it happen.
On Wednesday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking construction at a warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland — the first facility ICE purchased, back in January, as part of its push to build a nationwide detention network. The warehouse was intended to hold up to 1,500 people at a time. ICE paid roughly $102 million for it.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown filed suit earlier this week, arguing that ICE had violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by skipping a proper environmental review and effectively shutting out the public. The judge agreed there was enough there to pause construction while the case plays out.
A big part of what we discussed is how this came together at the ground level — starting with a single community member with a background in environmental science who began filing letters to DHS in February, methodically documenting everything ICE was getting wrong. That work eventually reached the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, which helped lay the groundwork for the AG’s lawsuit.
We also got into what the environmental concerns actually look like on the ground — water infrastructure, floodplain risk, and the real possibility of sewage runoff making its way into the Potomac and eventually the Chesapeake Bay. And we talked about what this ruling might mean for similar fights forming in Arizona, New Jersey, and Michigan.
Since we started tracking ICE’s warehouse acquisitions at Project Saltbox, more have been stopped than have moved forward.
We’ll continue watching and reporting developments on ICE’s unprecedented warehouse purchases.
