Residents, council raise transparency concerns about proposed federal migration processing facility
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Summary
Public commenters and council members accused county and federal actors of excluding city officials and community investigators from meetings about a proposed federal immigration processing facility; Mayor William McIntyre said the decision is federal but pledged the city will seek clear answers and protect Hagerstown residents.
During the March 24 Hagerstown council meeting, public commenters and several council members urged greater transparency around a proposed federal immigration processing facility in Washington County and criticized a recent county or DHS-organized event that they said excluded city representatives and local investigators.
At the start of the citizen comment period, Shawn Porter told the council she had learned the county ‘‘did not typically reach out to the city or inform them of events’’ tied to the Department of Homeland Security and that the city was not invited to a meeting involving DHS and county commissioners. "They didn't even tell the city that a meeting was going on between Department of Homeland Security and...the county commissioner fellas," Porter said, adding that local investigators and some local media were denied entry to a press conference.
Porter also raised an allegation about local prosecutorial discretion, saying an elected state's attorney's son received what Porter described as special treatment from a special prosecutor in a September 2024 case; no county or prosecutorial representative responded to that allegation during the council meeting.
Councilman Flaherty echoed concerns about the press event's timing and media selection, saying he believed the meeting was organized in a way that limited broad public participation and that community members who have been investigating the facility's impact were shut out. "I believe that this should have been open for everybody to have their voices heard," he said.
Mayor William McIntyre framed the issue as a federal policy decision but emphasized the city's role in seeking information that affects local residents. McIntyre said the Williamsport warehouse acquisition was made at the federal level and that questions of federal immigration policy belong in Washington, D.C., but he added, "What I will not leave to others is my obligation to ask the hard questions that directly affect the city of Hagerstown and its residents...The people of Hagerstown deserve street answers, not political theater." (quote as read in the transcript).
The council did not take formal action on the facility during the meeting. Council members and the mayor said they would pursue appropriate channels with state and federal officials to seek clarity and to protect municipal interests; no specific follow-up timeline was provided in the transcript, and no county- or DHS-officials responded in this session.
Public-comment allegations in this meeting were reported by attendees and have not been independently verified in the council record. The claims about prosecutorial decisions and exclusion from county or DHS events were not addressed on the record at the meeting and remain unresolved in the transcript.
