Judge Hurson's Maryland NEPA Preliminary Injunction Halts Williamsport ICE Construction, Cascades Directly to Bexar TX Warehouse Pause and Anchors Arizona and New Jersey Parallel Challenges

On April 15, 2026, U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson (D. Md.) granted Maryland AG Anthony G. Brown’s preliminary injunction in Maryland v. Noem, No. 1:26-cv-00733-BAH — halting all major construction at ICE’s planned 1,500-bed warehouse detention center in Williamsport, Maryland on the grounds that DHS had likely violated the National Environmental Policy Act. The ruling was the first federal court injunction against a WEXMAC-TITUS warehouse-conversion project. Within two weeks, Bexar County (San Antonio), Texas announced a formal legal pause on the Oakmont 410 ICE warehouse project, explicitly citing the Hurson ruling as precedent for its own NEPA challenge. Arizona AG Kris Mayes and New Jersey Governor Sherrill subsequently filed parallel NEPA-grounded suits against DHS.

What Happened

Maryland AG Anthony G. Brown filed suit on February 23, 2026 in the District of Maryland against DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, alleging NEPA and Administrative Procedure Act violations stemming from ICE’s January 16, 2026 acquisition of an 825,620-square-foot former commercial warehouse in Williamsport, Washington County, for $102.4 million. The complaint documented that DHS and ICE had purchased the property and begun awarding a $113 million retrofit contract — to KVG LLC of Gettysburg, PA, on March 6, 2026 — without conducting any environmental review, without consulting affected state or federal agencies, and without public comment.

The preliminary injunction hearing on April 15 produced Judge Hurson’s most quoted line: “How can you say with a straight face that four toilets is the same as with 542?” — a direct challenge to DHS’s legal filing that placed official capacity at 542 while operational documents and press releases indicated 1,500. Hurson ruled that the state was likely to prevail on its NEPA claims and that irreparable harm was imminent from ongoing construction. The injunction halted all renovation work except HVAC repairs and perimeter security (fencing and cameras).

The Bexar County Cascade

In mid-to-late April 2026, the City of San Antonio announced a formal legal hold on the ICE warehouse project at 542 S.E. Loop 410 — a 640,000-square-foot facility purchased by ICE in February 2026 for $66.1 million (assessed value: ~$37 million) from Oakmont Industrial Group. Per reporting by the San Antonio Current (April 30, 2026), the hold was triggered explicitly by the Maryland precedent.

Bexar County Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert stated publicly that the legal challenge tracked “exactly what the AG in Maryland sued on — that the National Environment Policy Act was not utilized as it must be.” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), who had led the City Council’s March 5, 2026 vote to explore a detention-facility moratorium, announced the pause alongside City Attorney Andy Segovia, who had retained a national environmental law firm to prepare the complaint. The Bexar pause meant DHS could not proceed with renovation permits while the NEPA issue was unresolved — and any environmental review, if required, would take months and include public input.

The Bexar project shares structural features with the Williamsport facility: no documented NEPA categorical exclusion, no environmental impact statement, no environmental assessment, no prior consultation with local authorities.

Why This Ruling Is Precedential

Judge Hurson’s April 15 ruling is the mechanism that transformed NEPA from a theoretical litigation theory into a proven, transplantable legal tool against the WEXMAC-TITUS warehouse buildout. Three structural features make it precedential beyond Maryland’s borders:

1. The dual-capacity number as a NEPA hook. Hurson’s “four toilets vs. 542” challenge places the official-capacity figure on trial. For NEPA purposes, the environmental impact must be assessed against the facility ICE plans to operate — not the lower official-capacity number filed in court. The ruling makes the gap between 542 and 1,500 legally visible, not just administratively noted. Every warehouse in the WEXMAC-TITUS cluster uses an identical numerical split (542 or 550 vs. 1,500), making each a candidate for the same challenge.

2. The “likely to prevail” standard. Hurson’s preliminary injunction explicitly found Maryland likely to prevail on the NEPA merits. Under federal preliminary-injunction standards, that finding raises the probability ceiling for every subsequent NEPA challenge: courts deciding subsequent cases will weigh not just the law but the fact that a sister court has already found NEPA likely violated in a structurally identical scenario.

3. No NEPA compliance in the record. The AG filings in Williamsport documented that DHS failed to identify a categorical exclusion, file an environmental assessment, or prepare an environmental impact statement before purchase — the three sequential gatekeeping steps NEPA requires. The absence of any compliance in the record, rather than a deficient compliance, makes the legal gap in peer facilities easy to document from public records without discovery.

The Cascade: Hurson → Bexar → Surprise → Roxbury

The Hurson ruling anchors a documented legal-precedent chain across four simultaneous WEXMAC-TITUS warehouse challenges:

• Maryland (Williamsport) — origin: Maryland v. Noem, 1:26-cv-00733-BAH (D. Md.). April 15, 2026 preliminary injunction. NEPA failure (categorical exclusion skipped; no EIS or EA). Facility: 825,620 sq ft, $102.4M, 1,500/542 dual capacity.
• Bexar TX (San Antonio) — first explicit citation: Oakmont 410, 640,000 sq ft, $66.1M. Late April 2026 formal pause. Commissioner Calvert directly invokes Hurson ruling in public statements. City preparing NEPA complaint via national law firm.
• Arizona (Surprise) — filed April 24, 2026: Arizona v. Mullin, No. 2:26-cv-02857-SMB (D. Ariz.). AG Kris Mayes. Same NEPA theory: no categorical exclusion, no EIS, no EA. Additional fact: facility located across from Rinchem hazardous-chemical storage site — a hazardous-siting argument not available in the Maryland record. Facility: 418,000 sq ft, $70M (483% markup from 2023 purchase), 1,500/550 dual capacity.
• New Jersey (Roxbury) — filed March 20, 2026 (NEPA theory supplemented): State of New Jersey et al. v. ICE et al., Civil Action 26-02884, Judge Jamel K. Semper (D.N.J.). Primary theory is state conservation easement, but the Roxbury complaint also documents NEPA failure, citing the same structural deficiencies. Hearing scheduled May 12, 2026. Facility: 470,000 sq ft, $129.3M, 1,500/542 dual capacity.

Per Stateline’s April 17, 2026 reporting, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin had already begun reviewing Noem-era warehouse purchases and announced scale-backs from 1,500 to 542 at both Williamsport and Surprise — a move that reduced the official capacity number while leaving unresolved whether it changed the physical infrastructure or the operational plan. The Hurson ruling’s core question — which number governs the NEPA analysis — remains unresolved on appeal.

Broader Context

The NEPA challenge mechanism operates as a forcing function: even a preliminary injunction that is eventually reversed imposes months of delay during which the agency’s record is tested, environmental-impact data is developed, and public input is legally required. For an administration operating on a tight timeline to expand detention capacity before political or legal windows close, delay is itself a material outcome.

The Bexar pause is the clearest documented instance of legal-precedent transplantation within the WEXMAC-TITUS litigation cluster. Commissioner Calvert’s explicit invocation of the Maryland ruling — before any court filing in Texas — shows the mechanism operating at the pre-litigation stage: the existence of a winning NEPA theory in another jurisdiction changes local officials’ assessment of what is achievable, which changes their public posture, which creates political pressure complementary to the legal challenge.

The “Surprise” RAMM article (May 7, 2026) documents the Mayes lawsuit and Roxbury as instances of NEPA being deployed as a check on the WEXMAC-TITUS architecture, noting that DHS’s procurement vehicle was specifically designed to avoid the environmental-review mechanisms that would otherwise slow or expose acquisitions.

Research Gaps

• Case number and judge assignment for any Bexar/San Antonio NEPA filing (if the city has filed beyond press-conference announcement)
• Whether the Hurson ruling is expressly cited by case number in any subsequent AG filing (Mayes, Platkin)
• Post-Mullin status of Williamsport: whether the 542 scale-back modified the construction scope or only the contractual number
• Exact date when Bexar City Attorney Segovia’s complaint was filed or formally announced

Related Entries

• 2026-04-15–judge-halts-williamsport-ice-construction-nepa — the full Williamsport preliminary injunction entry
• 2026-03-19–maryland-judge-extends-ice-facility-restraining-order — prior Hurson TRO (March 19, 2026) extending the temporary restraining order through April 16
• 2026-03-20–nj-roxbury-sue-ice-dhs-detention-warehouse — Roxbury NJ; includes state-easement theory and NEPA supplemental argument
• 2026-03-06–ice-awards-gardaworld-313m-surprise-arizona-contract — Surprise AZ facility origin
• 2026-04-17–san-antonio-restricts-detention-facilities-ordinance — San Antonio City Council zoning ordinance (April 17); the ordinance exempts the existing Oakmont 410 facility, underscoring NEPA litigation as the operative track
• official-capacity-vs-operational-density — mechanism documenting the 542/1,500 dual-number pattern across all four cluster sites
• warehouse-fungibility-and-the-detention-hedge — the procurement layer; NEPA litigation is the primary accountability check on top of the acquisition pattern
• wexmac-titus-warehouse-census — full warehouse census; all 11 documented acquisitions share the same NEPA compliance gap