First they unearthed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for 42,000 ready-to-eat meals coming to Maryland.

Then they built a data map of how the federal Department of Homeland Security was distributing its funding.

Last week, two-month-old Project Salt Box and its seven-person team revealed what some say is a sign that an ICE surge could be coming to the state.

The group, which works to unearth and explain the public documents behind federal immigration enforcement, was the first to report on Tuesday that DHS had purchased a warehouse near Hagerstown. In correspondence with Washington County officials, federal officials described how they could retrofit the space to become an immigration detention facility.

The emergence of the group comes amid an increase in immigration enforcement in Maryland. Hundreds of people in the state have been taken into ICE custody and held in Baltimore’s ICE field office. Those actions, plus an influx in immigration enforcement nationally, have led to cheers in some corners and protests around Maryland.

Michael Wriston, one of the writers behind the project, grew up outside of Hagerstown and said in an interview this week that the news of the facility felt “incredibly disheartening.” But the Air Force veteran and photographer is encouraged by the response from his neighbors since their piece was published.

Wriston added that the story and subsequent community outcry are “the perfect blend of awareness, data and action” the group aims to achieve with Project Salt Box.

“We have advanced notice, we know it’s coming down the pipeline,” Wriston said. “How do we push back and make our voices heard?”

Wriston and the six others on the volunteer team of public-record sleuths formed about four months ago. Outside of their day jobs, they have been “living in the group chat,” said Wriston.

Their name is a play on words, referring to the yellow wooden boxes found around Baltimore that are filled with salt meant to melt ice — or in this case, ICE.

Before their coordinated research, the members of Project Salt Box were strangers.

The group found each other under a post on Reddit in September from Breyona Gurosko, a U.S. Army veteran and computer engineering student. All of them felt that their work was a way to do something about the looming threat of federal agents surging into Baltimore, as they have in Minneapolis.

It wasn’t until an ICE protest in mid-January that any of them even met in person. For some, it was also their first protest.

Once their group chat formed, the research got underway, and they began sending their findings to local advocacy organizations and politicians.

Inside their homes scattered around the Baltimore area, the group of watchdogs has been scouring the internet for public records — property filings, contracts and government procurements — that are otherwise overlooked.

“I’m pretty much living and breathing this because this is life anyways,” said Allie Lieske, a member of the group and owner of the pet care company Bmore Best Buds. Lieske said she has also been a source for neighbors and local ICE watch groups, often notifying people when she spots immigration enforcement officers while out dog-walking.

The project members said they share a general obsession with going down the “rabbit hole,” but each has their own unique skill sets. Other members include Madisyn Parisi, who was once an auditor and now an independent journalist, as well as Em Knepp, who has worked in government contracting for about a decade.

An attorney and an immigrant rights advocate, both who requested anonymity because they fear reprisal, are also helping with research and providing broader context to the writers.

“We all have different perspectives on how we’re seeing this information,” said Lieske, which helps the group write about the documents “in a way that everybody could understand” them.

“Because that stuff is hard,” she added.

Two months ago, the group decided it would be easier to publish the information they were sharing with local groups in a newsletter. Their following has jumped from 20 to about 450 subscribers this week. Their posts had more than 15,000 views in January.

While their work is derived from publicly available records, they worry about their general safety as their local fame grows.

“That’s one of the chief concerns,” said Wriston.

There have been stepped-up efforts in cities nationwide to keep an eye on ICE and U.S. Border Patrol officers. But protesters and ICE watchers have at times been labeled as domestic terrorists by Trump administration officials.

Kash Patel, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said this week that the agency was investigating some of the Minneapolis ICE watch group chats.

Project Salt Box said it has also received online backlash for their work. Wriston and Parisi said they’ve been told they have “Trump derangement syndrome,” with some readers claiming that they are only out to attack the president and his administration. But Wriston said the project has little to do with Donald Trump.

“If any administration, Democratic or Republican, allocated $190 billion to fund a paramilitary that was going to come into American cities and behave the way that it has, and put human beings at risk, we’d still be here,” Wriston said.

While the work is daunting, with the occasional all-nighter, the Project Salt Box team sees itself as a ragtag, community-driven effort that is hoping to educate people quickly in the midst of the chaos. Wriston jokingly called Project Salt Box a “hot mess.”

For Gurosko, whose post started the project, it’s about building community.

“I hope it also encourages people to find their own little niche or little group that they can get involved in to actually do something that they think matters,” she said. “Even if no one else thinks it does.”