The Howard County Council on Thursday night unanimously voted to block a private immigrant detention center nearing completion in Elkridge.

The highly anticipated vote came less than one week after County Executive Calvin Ball announced he was pursuing emergency legislation to ban permits for privately owned detention centers. County administrators on Monday revoked a building permit for the project, which has not met use and occupancy requirements.

Council voted 4-1 to approve a second piece of emergency legislation that member Liz Walsh, who introduced the bill, said was aimed partly at identifying such projects earlier.

The votes came amid a national debate over the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics to arrest and remove immigrants, including a surge in Minneapolis in which federal agents shot and killed two protesters who were U.S. citizens.

The office building, at 6522 Meadowridge Road, is owned by Genesis GSA Strategic One and is being retrofitted for immigration detention purposes by a third party company, McKeever Services. Representatives of the companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Council Chair Opel Jones called the permitting ban personal because the facility, which he called “unfit and unwelcome,” is in his district.

“This is simply unacceptable today, tomorrow and forever,” Jones said.

Vice Chair Christiana Rigby said she saw the bill as a shield for the county.

“When the history of this moment is written, it will show how we responded when our community’s peace and stability were threatened by outside overreach,” Rigby said.

News of the project caught many Howard residents by surprise. The county, where about 22% of people are foreign-born, stands out in Maryland for having a sanctuary law called the Liberty Act, which prohibits county employees from assisting with immigration enforcement. The measure, approved by voters in 2022, has drawn negative attention from the Trump administration.

The five councilmembers — Democrats Jones, Rigby, Walsh and Deb Jung and Republican David Yungmann — indicated their intentions to approve the ban earlier in the week.

Still, the prospect of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility operating in Howard County prompted outrage from many residents. Hundreds of people staged a rally outside the government headquarters Monday night and returned Wednesday to deliver impassioned testimony during a public hearing that lasted more than four hours.

After councilmembers approved the permit ban in a matter of minutes, they deliberated extensively on the second bill. It addresses immigration enforcement on county property and declares contracts in support of such enforcement void and unenforceable.

Walsh said she modeled the bill on similar legislation filed in Montgomery County, called the County Values Act, and the state’s Maryland Values Act. Ball, Rigby and Jones co-sponsored her bill.

Jung and Yungmann expressed concerns that it was being rushed to a vote without enough input from the county’s human relations department, office of law and labor unions.

“I certainly support the bill overall and what it is attempting to do here,” Jung said before voting yes on the measure. “I would have also appreciated the opportunity to talk to county employees, find out what’s on their minds, how they feel about these extra responsibilities.”

Yungmann, the council’s lone conservative, cast the only no vote after calling it an “assault on our Howard County employees.”

He suggested the bill put employees in the difficult position of choosing between interfering with law enforcement at the risk of getting shot and getting disciplined by their employer.

“The Liberty Act prohibits people from doing things,” he said. “This compels people to do things.”

Just before casting the fourth vote needed to pass the second emergency legislation, Walsh teased that the council could soon identify other measures to protect every person living in Howard.

“I’m so proud of us tonight,” she said.

Meanwhile, in Western Maryland, federal officials have purchased an 825,000-square-foot facility and its 53.5-acre property in Washington County for what local officials say will be an ICE detention facility. Local officials say there is little they can do to block that project.