Maryland congressional members are outraged by the Department of Homeland Security’s purchase of a warehouse to possibly serve as an immigrant detention center in Hagerstown.
Rep. April McClain Delaney (D), who represents western Maryland, says she is working with the governor’s office and local leaders to demand answers from DHS.
“Planning a detention facility behind closed doors is not governance — it is intimidation. For DHS to make such egregious plans in the cloak of darkness is yet another example of a lawless agency hellbent on harassing, assaulting, and killing our neighbors,” McClain Delaney said in a statement to WYPR. “Last week, I stood alongside hundreds of residents across Western Maryland to deliver a clear message to the Trump Administration: we do not want this facility in our backyard. Our communities will not be steamrolled, and our neighbors will not be targeted in silence. We will organize. We will show up. We will speak out.”
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) echoed McClain Delaney’s remarks.
“In blatant disregard for the will of this community, Trump’s ICE has spent over $100 million for a massive warehouse prison to hold up to 1,500 detainees. This Administration is spitting in the face of communities from Minneapolis to Maryland and wasting our tax dollars. We won’t stop fighting back,” he told WYPR.
The DHS bought the more than 825,000-square-foot warehouse in Hagerstown last week. It will possibly serve as a detention facility for ICE that could hold as many as 1,500 beds for detained immigrants.
The deed, signed Jan. 22, shows the property was purchased from FRND-Hopewell, LLC for $102.4 million.
FRND-Hopewell is a holding company with the same address as RSE Capital, an investment firm started by Fundrise, a real estate investment crowdsourcing app.
The deed was unearthed by Project Salt Box, a Maryland ICE watchdog.
The Hagerstown warehouse was part of a leaked ICE list of multiple locations across the U.S. that are possibly being targeted for procurement to hold as many as 80,000 detained immigrants.
The area is currently not zoned for residential use.
DHS’s outright ownership of the facility may have been an attempt to circumvent Maryland’s Dignity Not Detention Act.
The law, passed in 2021, prohibits local and state jurisdictions from entering into agreements that facilitate the detention of immigrants.
By buying the building, the federal government will be able to do as it pleases with the warehouse without an agreement with local or state government.
On Jan. 20, Maryland’s Congressional delegation wrote a letter to DHS about concerns over the facility.
“It is our understanding that such a facility would be used to house noncitizens for as long as ‘a few weeks’ prior to their transfer to large-scale warehouses to facilitate deportations,” the members of the delegation wrote. “Recently, we learned that last week a DHS official visited a potential processing facility site which is not designed or outfitted to house, feed, or provide adequate care for detainees. It is deeply concerning that the proposed location is situated in an area of Washington County that is not zoned for overnight habitation, creating a direct conflict between DHS and local law.”
The delegation requested “all documentation, including but not limited to planning materials, solicitations, proposals, site assessments, and communications concerning the establishment of a processing facility in Hagerstown, Maryland and any other locations where ICE operations are planned or have been established in our state since January 20, 2025” in the letter.
