u/swarmster

Miles Taylor, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security turned fierce anti-Trump critic, announced the rollout of a new app designed to alert people about plans to open immigration detention facilities in an appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show” in late April.

Users who signed up for the app then received email messages and phone texts stating that their emails, phone numbers, locations and other information had been “forwarded to the authorities,” including the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and ICE, according to Hagerstown Rapid Response, a Maryland-based group organizing against a proposed ICE detention facility 75 miles outside of Washington, DC.

The apparent breach was highlighted in a press release and blog post issued by Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible claiming that “nearly 18,000” users were affected. The anti-ICE groups cited a post by the pro-Trump Data Republican X account indicating that 17,662 people signed up for the app.

A fiery resistance has sprung up in a conservative Maryland county after the Trump administration quietly bought a warehouse to hold detainees. They have a lot of determination — and some drones.

People volunteered to research city and county codes, pull water and sewer documents and file public record requests. An Uber driver took routes near the warehouse to keep tabs on activity there. The group even attracted two drone operators to do surveillance from afar. In a city where the only regular protests used to take place outside the downtown abortion clinic, warehouse opponents were now descending on county board meetings while Rage Against the Machine blared outside.

The Western Maryland warehouse is part of a broader Trump administration plan to convert several industrial spaces around the country into detention centers. The purchases have drawn bipartisan pushback in many communities, with residents worried about effects on the local environment, infrastructure and tax base. But nowhere has the resistance been so fierce and organized as in Hagerstown and surrounding Washington County.

The most energized warehouse opponents have no background in activism or politics — just a shared sense of dread about where the country seems to be headed and how their community figures into the administration’s plans. Dattilio grew up in Hagerstown, earned a degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, and returned to marry his high school girlfriend. He has four children between the ages of 4 and 10. His family has been in the area for 120 years.

He can’t shake the idea of Hagerstown becoming shorthand for “concentration camp.”

A newly obtained DHS email is shedding new light on the proposed ICE facility in Washington County, Maryland, and the language inside it directly contradicts months of softer public messaging surrounding the project.

While the subject line of the email refers to the site as the “ICE Baltimore Processing Facility,” DHS officials internally describe it as the “proposed ICE detention center at 10900 Hopewell Road in Hagerstown, Maryland.”

That distinction matters because officials have repeatedly relied on terms like “processing facility” when discussing the project publicly, even as residents and advocates warned the warehouse was being developed into a large-scale detention operation.

The email also reveals that the project is still facing unresolved tribal consultation issues under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. According to DHS, one tribe requested additional information related to ground disturbance impacts, and ICE is now awaiting final design details from its contractor before continuing consultation.

At the same time, DHS says ICE has now determined the project requires a formal Environmental Assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act due to the “scope of potential impacts associated with the proposed undertaking.”

That means the federal government is acknowledging the project may carry significant environmental and community impacts requiring deeper review and future public engagement.