Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Department of Homeland Security to stop the conversion of a warehouse in Washington County into an immigrant detention facility. WYPR’s Scott Maucione spoke with news director Matt Bush about all the issues that this brings up.
BUSH: Scott, thanks for joining us, to start, quickly remind us what this building is planned to be used for.
MAUCIONE: Yeah, this building is part of a ramp up that DHS is using to create a system of detention centers for ICE to hold immigrants across the nation. DHS bought it in January for about $102 million and it's gotten significant pushback from the community as they've continued this build up and turn a former warehouse into what would now be a detention facility.
BUSH: The Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown says DHS failed to conduct an environmental impact study. What does that mean?
MAUCIONE: Yeah, it means that these buildings have a huge impact on the surrounding community, it would bring in about 1,500 people plus guards. And that means a slew of issues. It means extra sewage flow. It means impact on roads and more cars and traffic. It means that the construction could impact wildlife and the other nature nearby. So, there's a lot that needs to be taken into account. Dan Myer, an attorney at Tully Rinckey, and he says that this is something that should have been addressed by the local government, and that really wasn't the job of the state to come in and ask these questions.
MYER: This is no question. This is a slap in the face of the Washington County Commissioners. You had the governor coming in. I would make the observation that Washington County may lose out on state funding next because Annapolis can play tough when they need to play tough.
MAUCIONE: In addition to what Meyer said Maryland is likely to question DHS mission in general. They're going to go to court and say that DHS is supposed to protect the border, that's part of their mission, but is it supposed to house people as part of the mission? That's going to be one of the main questions they're going to ask. We saw a lot of judges question that as ice infiltrated Minneapolis earlier this year.
BUSH: So this could slow the process down, because Maryland is going to argue that these studies need to take place, and how is the federal government going to counter that?
MAUCIONE: Yeah, so Washington County sits at the intersection of I-81 and I-70, and there's a lot of traffic that goes in between there. And because of that, distribution warehouses are attracted to it, FedEx, Staples, Home Depot, Tractor Supply, they all have distribution centers in that area. So, if you look back at comments made by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. He said that he wanted to create a network that's like Amazon Prime, but for humans when it came to how ICE's deportation system works. So, you can see why this area would be attractive to DHS for what they're trying to do here. The problem for Maryland is that it wants to keep these big companies in Washington County. A judge may ask, why is this area suitable for these other warehouses that are also holding, you know, 1,500 employees, but not for the facility that DHS is trying to create? Here's Dan Meyer again talking about that situation.
MYER: The question I would ask, if I was DHS, is, well, these are such environmentally sensitive areas, why weren't the state the MEPAs abided by, why weren't the state and local rules invoked when they were originally being constructed? So the question is, can the citizens of Hagerstown have it both ways?
BUSH: So what's next for this case?
MAUCIONE: We may see things slow down as DHS has to think about complying with this however, we've also seen the Trump administration use national security declarations to move things along quickly, so it could be likely that they may seek relief under that from a judge to keep this construction going. At the same time, we may see Maryland continue pushing this case and possibly slowing things down or even completely stopping it, if the case goes in their direction.
