Coalition demands Prince George’s revoke permit allowing ICE to expand presence in Hyattsville

A coalition of immigrant rights and activist organizations called Tuesday for Prince George’s County to revoke the permit it granted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand its Hyattsville legal offices.

In letters to The Bernstein Companies, which owns the building, federal attorneys have written that the government “intends for this space to serve exclusively as administrative offices” for ICE attorneys and that “no detainees or individuals in custody will be present or held within this facility.”

But coalition members said they don’t want the county to allow ICE to expand its presence in any capacity.

And they said the county cannot trust that ICE will refrain from using its space at the Metro 1 building at 6505 Belcrest Road to detain people.

“People are afraid. And they’re asking local government, ‘Stand up for us,’” Chrissy Wilkin, a member of the Greenbelt Resistance Network, said to Prince George’s County Council members during their weekly meeting Tuesday.

“Tell the federal government that Prince George’s County will not participate in a racist mass deportation agenda,” she said.

Wilkin said she provided council staff with a petition signed by more than 1,000 people calling for the county to take away the permit.

The calls come following a recent surge in ICE arrests in Maryland and Virginia that included more than 1,300 arrests over a two-week period in August, leaving communities reeling and top officials demanding answers.

More recently, tensions over federal immigration agents staking out a neighborhood in Frederick for nearly two days boiled over on Friday. Agents violently clashed with protesters, using their vehicles to clear sidewalks and dragging protesters from the front porch of a home they were trying to enter, according to city officials.

In Hyattsville, ICE has leased space for its attorneys on Belcrest Road since 2023.

The building, which is also home to Prince George’s Community College and a county-run food pantry, is located a few hundred yards from the Hyattsville Immigration Court.

The agency applied in January to lease more space under the name PERMIT ME INC. The county approved the application that month, according to the county’s permitting website.

But ICE didn’t pass its final inspection until July, due to multiple failed or canceled inspections, the permitting site shows. ICE did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

Protesters have gathered in front of the facility on a semi-regular basis over the past several months to denounce ICE’s presence and its push to expand.

The county eventually issued ICE a permit after staff “inspected the space and determined that it was not designed to be used as a detention center,” Brian Fischer, a spokesperson for County Executive Aisha Braveboy, said in a statement Tuesday.

Fischer said the recent permit allowed ICE’s attorneys to “occupy additional space in the building strictly to be used as a law office.”

He added that Braveboy issued an executive order in February temporarily banning permits for detention centers in Prince George’s and that the county “retains authority to revoke all use and occupancy permits that are not used for the purpose specified in the permit.”

Council Chair Krystal Oriadha said Tuesday that council members were caught off guard after learning earlier this summer that the county had approved ICE’s permit.

“I think I can speak for the entire body when I say we stand with you in not wanting that permit to go through,” she said to the coalition members.

Oriadha said she has requested the Braveboy administration to look into revoking the permit. And she said she has met with council attorneys to determine what recourse the council may have.

The issue is personal for multiple council members, including Oriadha, whose father is an immigrant.

“Push us and make us do what we’re supposed to do, me included,” Oriadha said during Tuesday’s meeting. “Because if we don’t represent the residents that put us in these seats, then we need to vote us out.”

Wilkin said she expects that another wave of immigrant rights and activist groups will attend next week’s council meeting.

She is planning to keep the pressure on until the county revokes ICE’s permit.