The Howard County Council unanimously voted Thursday night to block a private immigrant detention center nearing completion in Elkridge.

The highly anticipated vote came less than one week after County Executive Calvin Ball announced he was pursuing emergency legislation to ban permits for privately owned detention centers. County administrators on Monday revoked a building permit for the project, which has not met use and occupancy requirements.

The vote comes amid a national debate over the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics to arrest and remove immigrants, including a surge in Minneapolis in which federal agents shot and killed two protesters who were U.S. citizens.

The office building, at 6522 Meadowridge Road, is owned by Genesis GSA Strategic One and is being retrofitted for immigration detention purposes by a third party company, McKeever Services. Representatives of the companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

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News of the project caught many Howard residents, about 22% of whom are foreign-born, by surprise. The county stands out in Maryland for having a sanctuary law called the Liberty Act, which prohibits county employees from assisting with immigration enforcement. The measure, approved by voters in 2022, has drawn negative attention from the Trump administration.

The five councilmembers — Democrats Opel Jones, Christiana Rigby, Liz Walsh and Deb Jung and Republican David Yungmann — indicated their intentions to approve the ban earlier in the week.

Still, the prospect of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility operating in Howard County prompted outrage from many residents. Hundreds of people staged a rally outside the government headquarters Monday night and returned Wednesday to deliver impassioned testimony during a public hearing that lasted more than four hours.

In Western Maryland, federal officials have purchased an 825,000-square-foot facility and its 53.5-acre property in Washington County for what local officials say will be an ICE detention facility. Local officials say there is little they can do to block that project.

This article will be updated.