BALTIMORE — Maryland lawmakers have made a third surprise visit to the Baltimore ICE holding facility downtown. There, they saw no detainees, not even guards. But the conditions they say remain appalling.
“Each time it makes the hair stand up on your arms. It really does. This facility is unfit to even house animals,” Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D) said following the visit on Monday.
It’s not immediately clear why the holding facility was empty, but lawmakers did write last week about their concerns about a Legionnaire bacteria outbreak at the building to the Head GSA administrator, Ed Forst.
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DHS and ICE Baltimore did not respond to WMAR-2 News’ request for comment.
Last week, a federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security had to limit the number of detainees that are held within the facility to just 56. At one point, court documents claim that there was as many as 123 detainees.
The five holding rooms vary in size according to lawmakers who have been inside. They’ve been reported to be overcrowded and overwhelmed with detainees that have been held past the 72 hour limit.
“It’s shocking. It's Un-American. It’s illegal. Thank God the judge finally came through and said this is too much,” Representative Glen Ivey (D) of Maryland’s 4th district said.
No photos or videos have been allowed by lawmakers during their visits, but a viral-video shared by advocates and lawmakers in January shows dozens of men packed into a room like sardines with barely room to stand.
We Are Casa, an immigrant advocacy group, has confirmed the validity of the video and is in touch with the family of one of the people seen in the video, according to Jose Ceballos.
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Meanwhile, Congress remains in a stalemate over DHS funding, causing a partial shutdown that's been ongoing now for more than a month.
“Why do we need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for more facilities? We don’t. That was a sham,” Rep. Ivey said. “This is a fight. We know it. This is something we've got to win. Because the constitution hangs in the balance, but human lives hang in the balance."
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City leaders joined the Maryland delegation, as they had their own plans to prevent continued ICE expansions within city limits.
A bill to block any private detention centers will be introduced Monday night, with a public safety hearing planned for Tuesday, March 10 at 1 p.m.
“This is about lives. This is about fear. This is about power,” Mayor Brandon Scott said. “It may not have started with us, but it will never stop if we let them do it to one group of people. They will keep going until anybody that challenges them, that doesn't look like them, that doesn't pray like them is no longer in this country. We cannot allow that to happen.”
“We keep coming back here because it's a gaping wound in the heart of our city and it hasn't been healed yet,” District 1 Baltimore City Councilman Mark Parker said.
Council President Zeke Cohen says they're not aware of any plans for one at the moment.
“We want to make sure all of our neighbors know that as long as you follow the laws, as long as you're here to do right by you and your family, we don't want you held in a horrific private detention center,” he said.
While they cannot control the detention activities within the George Fallon building because it is federal, Cohen notes, the ban would apply to any private detention or building that DHS might purchase.
“We believe that this bill will be legal, that it will meet legal sufficiency,” Cohen said.
This follows in the footsteps of both Baltimore and Howard counties, which both passed similar emergency legislation last month.
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The latter could be paying out big time for its move to pull the plug on an ICE facility under construction in Elkridge last month, if a new lawsuit prevails.
In early February, the county revoked building permits at the last minute for the project that Attorney Michael Edney says began under the Biden Administration to replace the Baltimore City DHS office.
The same one that has been plagued by issues.
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Edney represents the company, Genesis GSA Strategic One LLC, which has spent $21 million dollars and counting on the project retrofitting the building.
“It's really unfair to that business. You can't strand all that investment or else the whole system doesn't work,” Edney said
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He says the county was fully aware of the nature of project from the beginning and met with ICE officials.
“You can't take out a political disagreement on a private contractor that's doing the federal government's work. That's where the federal courts have come in and said that's unfair. That's a violation actually of the US Constitution, and they've stopped those efforts," he said.
They plan to ask for a preliminary injunction to resume construction as soon as possible.
