Support journalism that demystifies the law and civic engagement.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement must stop construction of a warehouse designed to hold up to 1,500 people at a time in Maryland, a federal judge ruled.
Maryland’s Attorney General Anthony G. Brown celebrated what he called “a critical victory, stopping construction that threatened our waterways, endangered species, and communities before irreversible harm could be done.”
“Though temporary, this ruling stops the construction of this massive immigration detention center while our lawsuit continues to play out in court,” Brown wrote in a statement. “We will not let DHS and ICE rush through the proper legal process in their haste to ramp up deportations.”
Project Salt Box’s co-founder Michael Wriston played a key role in drumming up public attention and opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to create a nationwide archipelago of detention camps.
ICE’s director Todd Lyons callously compared the vision to Amazon “Prime, with for human beings.”
Issued on Wednesday evening, U.S. District Judge Brendan A. Hurson’s temporary restraining order only lasts 14 days, but he found that the attorney general would be “likely to succeed” in proving that the plan for the ICE warehouse violated the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.
During a conversation that aired this afternoon on Substack Live, Michael Wriston and I discussed what the lawsuit means for the nationwide campaign of resistance to ICE’s plans.
You can watch the video of the discussion at the top of this newsletter and read the judge’s ruling here.
