Judge Criticizes ICE for Violating Environmental Review Process

The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement received a strong rebuke from a federal judge over its decision to skip the environmental review process for a Maryland warehouse the agency plans to convert into a detention center.

The state’s lawsuit against the Trump administration “provides a crystal-clear example of a federal agency failing to comply with the basic requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act,” said Judge Brendan Abell Hurson of the US District Court for the District of Maryland.

In an opinion released April 17, Hurson issued a preliminary injunction blocking the US Department of Homeland Security agency from renovating a warehouse in Williamsport, Md., while the state continues its litigation.

ICE had invoked a “categorical exclusion” under NEPA, stating the warehouse operation was a real estate acquisition with solely minor renovations and thus exempt from the law’s requirements to review how a federal action could impact the environment.

“The claim that the conversion of a commercial warehouse equipped with four toilets and two water fountains and designed for cargo storage into a detention center capable of housing over 500 people” wouldn’t affect the human environment, “is, bluntly, absurd,” the opinion said, citing harms that included the “likely overtaxing of the sewer system.”

Even under the “highly deferential” standard of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coal. v. Eagle County, which limited judges’ ability to question the scope of NEPA reviews, Hurson ruled ICE didn’t clear the “low bar.”

The opinion acknowledged Fourth Circuit case law hasn’t addressed challenges of this kind after a separate circuit appeared likely to uphold a temporary ICE facility constructed without a NEPA review in the Florida Everglades. New Jersey is also looking to block ICE from converting a warehouse into a detention facility, and asked a federal judge to issue a preliminary injunction earlier this month.

The case is Maryland v. Mullin, D. Md., No. 1:26-cv-00733, preliminary injunction 4/17/26.