Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown filed a lawsuit today to stop the Trump administration from converting a sprawling warehouse near Hagerstown into an immigration detention center.

The purchase of the vacant 54-acre site by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was completed last month without an environmental review required under the National Environmental Policy Act, the lawsuit alleges.

“DHS purchased this facility while keeping the state and the public in the dark, spending more than $100 million in federal taxpayer dollars without performing the required environmental review and without giving Maryland or Marylanders any voice in the process,” Brown said in a press release.

The warehouse on Wright Road, Williamsport, was purchased for $102.4 million on January 16, with the aim of converting the property into a 1,500-bed “ICE Baltimore Processing Facility.”

The sale was disclosed by Project Salt Box, a Baltimore-based volunteer group that tracks ICE activities through public record searches and FOIA requests.

With 825,620 square feet of space, the facility currently has only four toilets, two water fountains and a six-inch lateral sewer line, Brown noted. Meanwhile, the prospective population of detainees, guards and other officials would nearly match the size of the western Maryland town, with 2,000 residents.

The lawsuit argues that the converted warehouse “will have predictable impacts on the environmental, economic, and public health and safety interests of the State of Maryland. Among other things, these actions are likely to harm the State’s natural resources and environment, including a waterway that is a tributary to the Potomac River and important habitat to State-protected species.”

$38 Billion Expansion

A viral video that surfaced last month showed about three dozen men huddled under metallic blankets on the floor of the current ICE facility in the George Fallon Federal Building in downtown Baltimore.

A lawsuit by Amica Center for Immigrant Rights and others has denounced the conditions at Baltimore and other ICE facilities as “dangerous, unsanitary and inhumane,” citing lack of access to medical care and denial of basic dignity.

ICE plans to spend $38 billion to turn 16 existing warehouses into detention centers around the country, each holding between 1,000 and 10,000 detainees.

Maryland, New Hampshire, Georgia, Pennsylvania are among the potential locations. ICE says it would retrofit the buildings with dormitories, cafeterias and courtroom spaces. 

The Williamsport facility has come under attack by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and by local officials, including Howard County Executive Calvin Ball, who successfully blocked a proposed privately run detention center earlier this month in Elkridge.

Today’s lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court of Maryland to vacate ICE’s warehouse purchase as a violation of NEPA and the federal Administrative Procedures Act. Read the filing, Maryland v. Noem, here.