Washington County declares support for ICE amid proposed detention facility near Hagerstown

Washington County commissioners declared “full support” Tuesday for federal immigration officials who revealed plans to convert a sprawling warehouse outside Hagerstown into detention facility.

Protesters both inside and outside the hearing room jeered and blew whistles after the Washington County Commission voted in favor of a declaration of support for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, prompting the commission’s president, John F. Barr, to halt the meeting abruptly.

“That’s it — clear the room,” Barr said after the motion to declare the commission’s support for the facility passed unanimously. “Off air, off air.”

The live stream of the commission’s meeting then cut off.

The declaration stated that the commission “hereby expresses its full support for DHS and ICE, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and local municipal law enforcement agencies in their efforts to maintain public safety and uphold the rule of law.”

The commissioners’ declaration said that cooperation between federal agencies and local government is “vital for the effective enforcement of laws” and that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement play a “critical role in safeguarding our nation’s borders” as well as “protecting the country from potential threats.” The resolution did not specifically mention the proposed detention facility.

A spokesperson for Washington County said that the meeting was reconvened after a “brief recess” and “the agenda was conducted as scheduled.”

Late last month, news broke that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had purchased an 825,000-square-foot facility in Williamsport and its 53.5-acre property for $102.4 million from a private entity.

Washington County said federal officials earlier disclosed to the county that the planned immigrant detention facility would include “holding and processing spaces,” cafeterias and office and health care spaces, among other areas. Trump administration have not commented on their specific plans for the site.

At the time, county officials in a statement said that while “land use are best made locally,” in this case, they were “not able to legally restrict the federal government’s ability to proceed.”

Before the start of the meeting Tuesday morning, Maryland’s U.S. senators, Chris Van Hollen and Angela Alsobrooks, said in a statement that they had written to the commissioners “to express their concerns over the Trump Administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) reported plans to convert a warehouse located in the County into a 1,500-person immigration detention facility.”

The senators said in the statement that they “stressed that this warehouse will further fuel the Trump Administration’s cruel and inhumane immigration agenda — which has been marked by arrests of scores of people who pose no threat to public safety, violations of individuals’ due process rights, and reports of unsafe conditions in detention facilities, among other harms.”

The senators also expressed concern that “using a building not designed or zoned for residential confinement risks overburdening county infrastructure, public health systems, and first response capabilities.”

Separately, Rep. April McClain Delaney, a Maryland Democrat who represents Western Maryland in Congress, said she introduced legislation to prohibit federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement from establishing or operating its planned immigration detention facility in Williamsport or elsewhere in Washington County.

This story has been updated.