ICE reportedly dumping 7 detention warehouses — but legal fight over MD’s continues

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reportedly planning to get rid of most of the warehouses it has bought to convert to immigration detention centers, but the site in Western Maryland will remain in ICE’s hands for now.

The New York Times reported last week that ICE has moved to sell or transfer seven of the 11 warehouses it has bought as part of the Trump administration’s mass-deportation efforts. The agency bought them for over $1 billion with a massive funding increase from Congress and aimed to increase its detention capacity by thousands.

But ICE has pivoted since President Donald Trump fired former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and replaced her with Markwayne Mullin, the former Oklahoma senator. The move to shed the warehouses comes as the administration has faced local opposition and environmental lawsuits challenging the attempted rapid conversions.

In Maryland, construction on the warehouse in Williamsport, just outside Hagerstown, has been mostly on hold since mid-April amid a lawsuit under the National Environmental Policy Act by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown. ICE bought it in January for $102 million, state property records show, and announced plans to create capacity for up to 1,500 detainees.

The April injunction allows ICE to perform “various security and maintenance activities” on the site.

According to a status report filed Thursday, one contractor visited the site to “review project progress and ongoing operational requirements,” another contractor delivered Dumpsters, and a third built “temporary perimeter fencing.”

Shawn Byers, an ICE official, stated in a declaration last week that the fence was about 8 feet tall and that the agency would tell the court when it had plans for a permanent one. Earlier this month, a lawyer for ICE wrote that the fence was being built “for the purpose of preventing vandalism, arson, and graffiti.”

Another status report is due July 8.

Environmental lawsuits have caused ICE headaches around the country. In addition to the injunction in Maryland, ICE has told federal judges in Michigan and New Jersey that it wouldn’t proceed with renovating its warehouses before conducting environmental tests.

ICE did not immediately respond to The Daily Record’s request for comment.

But a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told The Times, “From Day 1, DHS has remained singularly focused on removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the United States and is always evaluating the best methods to do so.”

It continued, “These heinous criminals, once arrested, should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense. DHS is moving to swiftly utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners.”

The Times reported ICE plans to sell or transfer to other government agencies two warehouses in Georgia, two in Pennsylvania and one each in Michigan, Utah and New Jersey.

It intends to keep two facilities in Texas and one in Arizona in addition to the one near Hagerstown, but The Times reported that it was “not immediately clear why the agency decided to proceed with those four spaces for detention.”

ICE has no long-term detention capacity in Maryland. State law prevents county detention centers from renting out space to ICE, so people who are arrested are eventually transferred out of state. Separately, ICE was ordered in March to prevent overcrowding at its “hold rooms” in Baltimore, the short-term detention facilities where detainees reported inhumane conditions.