Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown is suing the Trump administration to prevent a Williamsport warehouse from being used as an immigration detention center.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court for Maryland, argues that Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not follow required environmental reviews and cites economic, safety and public health concerns.
It seeks to void the purchase of the warehouse and prevent any moves to turn it into an immigration facility.
The Department of Homeland Security purchased the 825,000-square-foot facility for $102 million from a private entity last month.
Mr. Brown, a Democrat, said that DHS purchased the facility “behind closed doors” while “keeping the State and the public in the dark.”
The warehouse, in a town of about 2,000 residents, has the capacity to hold 1,500 people. Mr. Brown accused ICE of wanting to operate “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings. Speed and efficiency at all costs, even if it means treating people like packages, and even if it means breaking the law.”
The Trump administration’s move to convert warehouses into ICE facilities is part of its effort to ramp up deportation.
The lawsuit could set an example for blue jurisdictions seeking to prevent such action. It argues that the Trump administration has disregarded the National Environmental Policy and the Administrative Procedure acts, which require environmental considerations to be integrated into the decision-making process while looping in state officials.
The suit says the detention facility would likely harm Maryland’s environment, including a Potomac River tributary, and public health, as other detention facilities have experienced measles outbreaks, sewage problems and unsanitary conditions.
“In their zeal to purchase and convert the Williamsport Warehouse into an immigration detention facility, Defendants have run roughshod over federal law and trampled on the State’s interests,” the lawsuit states.
A DHS spokesperson told News From The States that the facilities will not be warehouses, but “very well-structured” detention centers.
“Let’s be honest about this. This isn’t about the environment. It’s about trying to stop President Trump from making America safe again,” the spokesperson said.
Maryland House Minority Leader Jason Buckel, Allegany County Republican, said that state Democrats are “virtue signaling” by trying to position Maryland as a sanctuary state.
“Democrats complain about detainee conditions in Baltimore for locally based individuals being held by federal authorities. They complain when locally based detainees are sent to far flung facilities in other states to go through the deportation process,” Mr. Buckel said.
“Now, they complain when the federal government undertakes efforts to construct a modern, safe and hopefully humane facility for federal detainees in a county that already approved the transaction, where substantial sums of taxpayer money have already been spent, and in an area where apparently no local zoning rules or regulations are being violated,” he said.
This comes just over two weeks after Democratic officials in Howard County enacted emergency legislation to block the conversion of a building into an immigration detention center in Elkridge.
State lawmakers have been hammering out legislation to rein in the Trump administration’s deportation agenda, including banning agreements between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.
