A federal judge issued an injunction Wednesday blocking the Trump administration from moving forward with plans to convert a logistics warehouse in Western Maryland into a massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility.
The decision from U.S. District Judge Brendan A. Hurson amounts to a legal victory — though perhaps just a temporary one — for opponents of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Department of Homeland Security has said the site near the small city of Hagerstown could house anywhere from 500 to 1,500 detainees and help boost its deportation efforts.
Hurson’s injunction allows DHS to erect a protective fence around the site and make some repairs to the warehouse, but it forbids the government from building out a detention facility while the underlying litigation plays out.
The Hagerstown warehouse is one of several industrial sites around the country that Trump officials quietly scooped up with an eye toward building out the capacity for their deportation campaign. The plans have drawn bipartisan blowback in many communities, with residents raising moral objections as well as environmental and health concerns.
Maryland’s Democratic attorney general sued the administration to stop its plans for the Hagerstown site, arguing it hadn’t carried out the appropriate environmental reviews required under federal law. Hurson found that the state was likely to succeed in that challenge.
