TELL ICE NO 1,500 BED DETENTION "WAREHOUSE" IN MARYLAND

In partnership with Project Saltbox, we're writing to ICE to formally oppose its secret acquisition of 16220 Wright Road, Williamsport, MD, and the agency's plans to convert what is currently an industrial warehouse into a 1,500-bed detention facility.  

We hope you'll write them too.

BACKGROUND
To date, DHS and ICE have not provided any concrete information about what this project actually entails. There is no site plan, no engineering specifications, no estimates of changes in water consumption or sewage capacity, no traffic projections, no information on proposed staffing levels or the operational infrastructure needed to support a facility that, by ICE’s own figures, would process thousands of people per week — in a town of approximately 2,000 residents.

What has been offered is a rote, cut-and-paste notice describing the conversion of a package warehouse into a high-occupancy detention center as an “in-kind” change. We reject that characterization on its face. There is nothing “in-kind” about transforming a facility built to store boxes into one built to confine human beings. Turning a warehouse into a detention center that will house 1,500 people and cycle thousands more through its doors is not a like-for-like substitution. It is a fundamental transformation of land use, infrastructure demand, and community impact — and it deserves to be treated as one.

Without basic project specifications on the table, residents, local officials, and public health and safety professionals have no meaningful basis on which to assess what this facility will mean for local water systems, roads, emergency services, or the surrounding community. Asking for public input while withholding the information necessary to give it is not transparency. It is the appearance of a process without the substance of one.

HOW YOU CAN HELP/WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
We urge ICE to provide the community with the concrete project documentation that informed public engagement requires — including site plans, infrastructure assessments, operational projections, and a clear accounting of how the needs of a facility of this scale will be met in a rural community wholly unprepared to absorb them.

Maryland communities are not an afterthought. We expect to be treated accordingly.

Claws Out,
Blaire Postman
Founder, Cat Ladies for America (& Maryland citizen)