Records, statements undercut claims that Washington County signed an NDA tied to ICE warehouse
A county attorney's letter identifies the agreement as a routine economic development matter. ICE said it never requested one.
The Washington County Attorney's Office in Maryland told Project Salt Box on Monday that a redacted non-disclosure agreement executed in December 2025 between the Board of County Commissioners and a private Maryland company has no connection to federal immigration enforcement or the warehouse property near Williamsport that the Department of Homeland Security purchased earlier this year.
The letter, signed by County Attorney Zachary Kieffer and issued in response to a Maryland Public Information Act request filed by Project Salt Box, states that the NDA “is not related to ICE, DHS, or any department of the Federal Government” and instead involves a private business seeking to keep its commercial activities in Washington County confidential from competitors.
Kieffer further stated that the agreement does not pertain to the property interchangeably referenced by its addresses as 16220 Wright Road and 10900 Hopewell Road in Williamsport — the site at the center of the detention facility controversy.
The letter also explains the basis for the redactions. Under Section 4-335 of the Public Information Act, records custodians are required to deny inspection of public records containing trade secrets or confidential commercial and financial information. Kieffer wrote that he had received confirmation from the NDA counterparty’s counsel that all records shared with the county were provided with the expectation they would not be disclosed, given their confidential and proprietary nature.
The identity of the company, Kieffer wrote, is itself protected under that provision, because disclosure at the outset of proposals and negotiations would cause commercial consequences from actual or potential competitors.
Official Board of County Commissioners records offer additional context for the agreement’s origins. Minutes from the Dec. 9, 2025, closed session — the same date the NDA was executed — show that a private project team and a land use attorney attended the meeting alongside county commissioners, county administration, and legal staff. The records do not identify the company the project team represented.
The NDA, which was signed by then-Board of County Commissioners President John Barr on behalf of the county, defines confidential information broadly to include discussions involving “facility network strategy,” “location strategy,” and “economic development incentives,” as well as “the existence and progress” of any such plans. The agreement carried a two-year term from its December 2025 execution date.
ICE denied any role in the agreement. In an April 28 email response to a press inquiry, an agency spokesperson said: “FALSE. ICE did NOT ask Washington County to sign an NDA.”
County Administrator Michelle Gordon, at a Board of County Commissioners meeting May 12, stated that any claims or social media posts suggesting otherwise are false and that no county officials were approached with or signed an NDA with federal immigration authorities.
The documented timeline of the warehouse acquisition does not support a pre-purchase coordination theory. DHS formally notified Washington County of its intent to purchase and convert the warehouse on Jan. 12, 2026, according to emails released through a Maryland Public Information Act request and reviewed by Project Salt Box. State land records show purchase documents were executed four days later, on Jan. 16. The property’s owner, Fundrise, told investors it was not actively marketing the warehouse for sale when it received the unsolicited federal offer.
When ICE officials engaged county leadership directly, the meeting was documented and later released through the county’s public records portal. Notes from a March 16 briefing — attended by senior ICE advisor Dave Venturella, Assistant Director Matt Elliston, Gordon, and county commissioners — show the parties discussing a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes model, infrastructure costs approaching $380 million, and operational logistics, including plans to transfer detainees to a facility in Pennsylvania.
The denials are consistent with how ICE has conducted warehouse acquisitions elsewhere. Project Salt Box contacted officials in all 11 localities where ICE purchased warehouse properties as part of its detention reengineering initiative; none reported signing a non-disclosure agreement with the agency. A review of publicly available records from those jurisdictions likewise turned up no non-disclosure agreements.
Court filings from Social Circle, Ga. — where the city sued DHS and ICE in May 2026 over a planned 10,000-bed detention facility — describe a sequence of events in which local officials were given no advance notice of the federal purchase whatsoever.
According to the complaint, Social Circle first learned of the plan through a Washington Post report on Dec. 24, 2025, and had not been contacted by federal officials at any point before or immediately after the sale closed.
The only NDA referenced in the Social Circle litigation is one the property’s private seller, PNK LLC, cited when declining to answer questions from the Walton County Development Authority.
The pattern here is becoming impossible to ignore: local governments weren’t bound by NDAs, weren’t briefed in advance, and weren’t partners in the warehouse purchases. They were bypassed. Washington County’s records line up with what every other locality has said — ICE didn’t ask for secrecy because it didn’t need cooperation. The federal government simply bought the buildings and informed communities after the fact. The NDA rumor was a distraction from the real issue: a detention expansion carried out through opacity, not partnership.
So, in other words, there were NDAs, but county/city officials were told they were negotiating with private companies that were specifically not ICE?