A sprawling new immigration detention facility is planned for Western Maryland, and there appears to be little local officials can do to block it, Washington County said Wednesday.

“It is Washington County’s position that decisions about land use are best made locally,” Washington County Government said in a statement posted to Facebook on Wednesday morning. “However, the legal reality when property is owned by the federal government is clear.

“Washington County is not able to legally restrict the federal government’s ability to proceed,” the statement continued, adding that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “has not notified Washington County that a purchase has taken place.”

But public records reveal that the Homeland Security department has indeed purchased an 825,000-square-foot facility and its 53.5-acre property for $102.4 million from a private entity.

Homeland Security officials have so far declined publicly to elaborate on their specific plans for the site. But Washington County’s statement said that according to federal officials, the facility would include “holding and processing spaces,” cafeterias and office and health care spaces, among other areas.

The federal government moved quickly over the last month to establish a foothold in Maryland — a part of a country where it has long lacked immigration detention infrastructure — notifying Washington County officials of its intentions just days before inking the deed giving it full ownership of the property in Williamsport, just outside of Hagerstown.

Those fast-moving developments have prompted outcry from advocates and local elected officials, who worry that the facility for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees could serve as a necessary precursor to unleash a surge of arrests in Maryland similar to those in Chicago and Minneapolis.

In a written statement on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Gov. Wes Moore called the warehouse purchase “deeply troubling” and said DHS initiated its operation to build the immigration detention center with “no coordination with the state.”

The spokesperson, Rhyan Lake, added that the governor’s office would “work closely with our attorney general and federal and local partners to ensure that federal, state, and local laws are followed.”

The statement did not say whether the Moore administration would seek to challenge the planned detention facility in court. State Attorney General Anthony Brown did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

There are no long-term immigrant detention facilities in Maryland, and little bed space in the mid-Atlantic in general. But that appears to be changing quickly. In Virginia, Hanover County officials recently confirmed that they received notice of plans from the federal government for a similar warehouse conversion there.

ICE’s Baltimore field office has a small processing center in a downtown high-rise, which was the subject this week of a viral video depicting dozens of migrants laying on the floor with foil blankets and military food rations in crowded conditions.

The wife of a Honduran detainee inside the Baltimore holding room, who asked not to be named publicly for fear of retaliation, said on Wednesday that some of those confined who spoke with her husband expect to be shipped to Louisiana this week.

But she added many of the men would rather be sent back to their home countries than stay in the overcrowded conditions. She also believes that other detainees will try to find a way to return to the U.S. if their deportations are successful.

“They have kids and they need to be with them,” she explained in a text message to The Banner. “So, it doesn’t matter what they do they will find the way to get here.”

Local officials said they only learned of the plans in a letter that was sent under a federal law related to disclosures about any potential impact on historical structures. They added that the federal government is typically not required to abide by local regulations such as zoning codes, and has not sought any such approvals from Washington County.

Maryland lawmakers in 2021 passed restrictions on establishing immigration detention centers — known as the Detention Not Dignity Act — but those are unlikely to apply when the federal government owns the property outright, according to former immigration officials and legal experts. There could be some remaining hurdles, primarily environmental impact assessments. Leaked plans for the warehouse listed a goal of establishing 1,500 detention beds there.

“They have a lot of money and want detention space all over,” said Scott Shuchart, a former top ICE official, of the current administration. “ICE has complained for years — or decades — that they have no detention space in Maryland or the mid-Atlantic."

Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who worked on immigration detention reform, said in an interview that the planned Hagerstown area facility “is likely part of a ‘detention re-engineering’ effort to purchase a number of facilities, both larger detention sites and smaller processing centers.”

”The theory might be that a greater concentration of detainees would increase efficiencies for removals," she said. “How this would actually create efficiencies seems unclear.”

ICE said in a statement Tuesday night that the agency has no new detention facilities to announce at this time, but added that “these will not be warehouses — they will be very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards."

“Every day, DHS is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe. It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space,” the ICE statement said.

Former immigration officials have said that the establishment of detention space in Maryland would remove a longstanding “bottleneck” and could clear the way for a surge of federal immigration agents.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich on Wednesday told residents to prepare for that possibility — and that the county and the city of Baltimore could be two prime targets.

“Everybody needs to be sober and real about this,” Elrich, a Democrat first elected to the post in 2018, said during a media briefing. “ICE is hiring up. We’ve heard reports that there are going to be 250 agents coming into the city, and that Montgomery County, Baltimore City, are two of the targets of those agents.

“So don’t get too comfortable or passive about thinking that what we’re seeing now is just what it’s going to be,” he added. “It’s bad, but it’s not what you’re seeing in these other jurisdictions. Their plans are to come here and operate the way they’ve operated every place else.”

Elrich couldn’t predict when the county might see a significant change, adding, “I don’t know if it’s coming two weeks from now or a month from now. But that certainly is their plan.”

Banner reporter Sara Ruberg contributed to this report