Maryland Had No Say When the Federal Government Bought a Warehouse to Detain Immigrants. Lawmakers Are Trying to Change That.

Three bills moving through the House of Delegates would set new rules for immigration detention in Maryland — if they can survive a legislative calendar that is already running out.

Image by Kevin Galens, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Department of Homeland Security is in the middle of the most ambitious expansion of immigration detention infrastructure in American history. It has purchased warehouses in at least eight states, with a congressionally authorized budget of $45 billion to spend through 2029 and a plan to hold upwards of 92,000 people at any given time — more than three times the capacity of the entire system as recently as a year ago.

One of those purchases was in Washington County, Md., just outside Hagerstown, where DHS paid $102.4 million in January for an industrial shell it intends to convert into an immigration processing and detention center. Local officials say they learned about it after the fact. It landed in the middle of a state legislative session with only weeks left on the clock.

Now Maryland lawmakers are moving to assert whatever authority they have.

Three Bills, One Window

Three bills advancing through the House of Delegates — HB 630, HB 1017 and HB 1018 — would establish a strengthened framework for governing immigration detention in Maryland, covering where such facilities can be built, who must authorize them and what standards must protect people held inside. All three are emergency measures, requiring a three-fifths supermajority in both chambers to pass and taking effect immediately upon enactment.

HB 1017, sponsored by Del. Melissa Wells, a Baltimore Democrat who chairs the House’s Government, Labor and Elections Committee, would bar private entities from operating immigration detention facilities without explicit zoning approval. A general classification permitting government or institutional uses would not be sufficient — immigration detention would have to be expressly authorized.

To prevent applicants from obscuring a facility’s purpose, the bill includes a physical-characteristics test: perimeter security, controlled access points and locked holding areas would identify a building as proposed for detention use regardless of how the permit request describes it. Private entities operating in violation face civil penalties of up to $10,000 per day, and the attorney general could seek injunctive relief. The bill applies retroactively, regardless of permits already issued or money already spent.

HB 1018, sponsored by Del. Vaughn Stewart, a Democrat from Montgomery County, would require the Secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services to adopt minimum mandatory standards for the care, custody and conditions of civil detainees. Facilities out of compliance would move through a defined sequence: compliance plan, letter of reprimand, full audit, and ultimately a court order or closure. Annual certifications would be required, attesting to adequate utilities, functional heating and cooling, emergency power and emergency operations plans; a material increase in occupancy would trigger an updated certification within 30 days. Licensed health care practitioners and certified security guards would be required to report violations to the Maryland Commission on Correctional Standards and face disciplinary action if they do not.

Facilities that obstruct inspections face immediate closure, and if a facility is shut down, the responsible state, local or federal entity bears the cost of transferring detainees. Both bills were heard in committee on Feb. 12 and are expected to proceed before the full chamber later this month.

HB 630 is in a different situation.

Sponsored by Del. Matthew J. Schindler and nine co-sponsors, the bill would add a single but pointed prohibition to Maryland’s existing Dignity Not Detention Act: no person may operate an immigration detention facility in a building not originally designed and constructed for that purpose. It is aimed squarely at the Williamsport facility and any warehouse conversion that might follow.

The bill was introduced Jan. 30 and assigned to the Judiciary Committee, on a separate track from the other two. A hearing scheduled for Feb. 18 was canceled two days before it was to take place and rescheduled for March 11. The chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Delegate J. Sandy Bartlett, a Democrat from Anne Arundel County, did not respond to a request for comment on the reason for the postponement.

A senior House Democratic official said the delay may matter less than it appears, suggesting that HB 1017 and HB 1018 could absorb provisions from HB 630 if the third bill fails to cross over. “There will be amendments to enlarge these bills,” the official said.

In the Maryland General Assembly, crossover is the deadline by which a bill must pass its chamber of origin to remain alive. A bill that has not yet had its committee hearing on March 11 still needs a committee vote and a full House floor vote before that deadline. Of the three bills targeting immigration detention, the one most directly aimed at the Williamsport facility has the least room for error.

The Limits of State Authority

Behind all three bills is a legal reality their sponsors have not tried to obscure: Maryland’s ability to constrain a federal agency acting on federally owned property is limited. When DHS purchased the Williamsport warehouse outright rather than contracting with a local entity to operate it, legal observers noted the move may have been a deliberate workaround of the Dignity Not Detention Act, which restricts state and local cooperation with immigration detention but cannot bind the federal government.

Washington County’s all-Republican Board of County Commissioners voted to formally declare support for the federal project while acknowledging there was little else it could do. “Washington County is not able to legally restrict the federal government’s ability to proceed,” the county said in a public statement.

The three bills navigate that constraint by targeting private entities rather than federal ones.

As of mid-February, ICE was holding roughly 73,000 people in detention nationwide, an 84 percent increase from the same point a year ago and the highest level the agency has ever recorded. The number of people with no criminal record in ICE custody has risen by roughly 2,500 percent since the start of the Trump administration’s second term. The agency is preparing to build what it calls “mega centers” holding between 7,000 and 10,000 people, alongside dozens of smaller processing centers capable of holding between 1,000 and 1,500 people for up to 60 days before deportation.

The Washington County facility, if completed as planned, would be among those processing centers — a civil detention site in a state that has had no long-term immigration detention infrastructure of its own.

What Maryland can do, proponents argue, is raise the floor: require zoning approval, set conditions standards, keep state oversight mechanisms active and on the record. Whether that is enough, and whether all three bills survive to give it a try, is what the next several weeks will determine.

The bills have drawn attention beyond the State House. Ethan Wechtaluk, a Democrat running for the Maryland sixth congressional district seat that includes Washington County, called the legislation a step toward accountability. “HB 630, HB 1017 and HB 1018 deal with three basic questions: where detention can happen, who has the authority to approve it, and what standards must protect the people inside,” Mr. Wechtaluk said. “Each bill fixes part of the problem. Together, they point toward a more complete solution.”