Judge Hurson's Maryland NEPA Preliminary Injunction Halts Williamsport ICE Construction; San Antonio Officials Point to the Maryland Suit as Their Warehouse Project Goes on Pause

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. By April 30, 2026, the ICE plan for the Oakmont 410 warehouse in San Antonio was on pause, and local officials pointed to the Maryland suit. Legal challenges on environmental grounds have also been filed against ICE warehouse projects in New Jersey (March 20, 2026, before the Maryland ruling), Michigan and Arizona (Arizona AG Kris Mayes, April 24, 2026) (San Antonio Current, April 30, 2026).

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, filed February 23, 2026, alleged that DHS and ICE had purchased the property for $102.4 million and moved ahead with construction plans without the required environmental review, public participation or state consultation (Maryland OAG). After the suit was filed, on March 6, 2026, DHS awarded KVG LLC of Gettysburg, PA a $113 million contract to retrofit the warehouse, with options for more than $600 million in further work (WYPR), without consulting affected state or federal agencies, and without public comment.

The preliminary injunction hearing on April 15 produced this question from Judge Hurson to government lawyers: “How can you say with a straight face that four toilets [in the warehouse] is the same as you would have with 542 people?” (CBS Baltimore, April 15, 2026) — 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 ICE plan to convert the warehouse at 542 S.E. Loop 410 in San Antonio was put on pause (DHS was putting several warehouse projects on hold for environmental reviews after lawsuits elsewhere) — 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 pause followed lawsuits elsewhere, including the Maryland case. Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez said the project was “on pause along with several others nationwide” and that the city had “retained legal council and we will take action if necessary.”

Bexar County Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert told the San Antonio Current (April 30, 2026) that “the resolution that I originally drafted said exactly what the AG in Maryland sued on — that the National Environment Policy Act was not utilized as it must be.” He had already urged the city and county to seek an injunction on February 11, before the Hurson ruling (News4SA). 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 environmental impact statement, no environmental assessment, no prior consultation with local authorities — and, per the 2026-09-17 correction below, no properly-supported categorical exclusion at Williamsport specifically (one was invoked and later found arbitrary and capricious, not omitted). Whether Bexar’s own NEPA posture involves an invoked-but-contested exclusion or no exclusion document at all has not been established from a Bexar-specific litigation record — see Research Gaps.

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. A stacked, rushed categorical exclusion in the record — not an absence of one. Correction, 2026-09-17: this point previously stated DHS “failed to identify a categorical exclusion” at Williamsport. That is incorrect and is corrected here after retrieving ECF 43 (the memorandum opinion itself, D. Md. 1:26-cv-00733-BAH, filed 2026-04-17) directly. DHS/GSA’s Record of Environmental Consideration for Williamsport invoked three stacked categorical exclusions — C1 (real-estate acquisition), D1 (repair/maintenance), and E2* (limited new construction) — per the DHS NEPA Instruction Manual’s exclusion table. Judge Hurson found the stacked application “arbitrary and capricious” not because no exclusion was claimed, but because the record showed no evidence the agency considered the exclusions’ applicability before deciding to invoke them — “what review was done appears to have proceeded at a rocket’s pace.” This is a materially different, and more precisely checkable, defect than a bare absence of paperwork: it is a thin, after-the-fact categorical-exclusion record, not a missing one. See 2026-09-11–gilroy-williamsport-nepa-injunctions-share-categorical-exclusion-theory for the corrected comparison against Gilroy, and wexmac-titus-categorical-exclusion-template-test for the site-by-site test of which of the eleven WEXMAC-TITUS sites match this pattern (exclusion invoked, later invalidated) versus a genuine no-document absence (Surprise AZ, Romulus MI, Social Circle GA — per those states’ own complaints).

The Cascade: Hurson → Bexar → Surprise → Roxbury

The Hurson ruling sits within four simultaneous WEXMAC-TITUS warehouse challenges (the New Jersey suit was filed before it, and no source ties the Arizona suit to it):

• Maryland (Williamsport) — origin: Maryland v. Mullin (originally v. Noem), 1:26-cv-00733-BAH (D. Md.). April 15, 2026 preliminary injunction (ECF 42); April 17, 2026 memorandum opinion (ECF 43). NEPA failure: three stacked categorical exclusions (C1/D1/E2*) invoked via DHS’s REC, found likely arbitrary and capricious — not skipped. See correction above. Facility: 825,620 sq ft, $102.4M, 1,500/542 dual capacity.
• Bexar TX (San Antonio) — pause linked to the Maryland case by the San Antonio Current: Oakmont 410, 640,000 sq ft, $66.1M. Late April 2026 pause (ICE putting projects on hold for environmental review). Commissioner Calvert likened his county resolution to what the Maryland AG sued on (San Antonio Current). City preparing NEPA complaint via national law firm; no federal suit located as of 2026-09-17 (see Research Gaps).
• Arizona (Surprise) — filed April 24, 2026: Arizona v. Mullin, No. 2:26-cv-02857 (D. Ariz.). AG Kris Mayes. Complaint alleges (¶140, unadjudicated) “Defendants have invoked no categorical exclusion excusing their failure to [prepare an EIS or EA], nor is there any such applicable categorical exclusion” — a no-document allegation, structurally different from Williamsport’s invoked-but-invalid exclusion. 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 agreed to scale the Surprise, Arizona plan back from 1,500 to 542 detainees and offered the same scale-back at Williamsport — 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 comparison of his county resolution to the Maryland AG’s suit — 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 — as of 2026-09-17, no Bexar/San Antonio federal lawsuit was located; the “no documented categorical exclusion” characterization for San Antonio rests on a county commissioner’s public statement and local reporting (San Antonio Report, San Antonio Current), not a litigation-forced document. Per Trump v. CASA (2025), the Fourth Circuit’s Hurson precedent does not bind the Fifth Circuit (Texas) — San Antonio Current (April 30, 2026) reported the San Antonio project on pause after NEPA lawsuits elsewhere, including the Maryland ruling; it reported on August 31, 2026 that ICE had awarded the site’s operation contract to GardaWorld Federal Services.
• Whether the Hurson ruling is expressly cited by case number in any subsequent AG filing (Mayes, Davenport)
• 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 (appears not to have been filed as of 2026-09-17; only a county resolution and public statements confirmed)

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

Correction, 2026-08-27 — New Jersey Attorney General. This entry listed Matthew Platkin as an actor and named him in a research gap. Platkin left office on 2026-01-20, three months before this entry’s date; Jennifer Davenport is the 63rd Attorney General of New Jersey, serving under Gov. Mikie Sherrill. Corrected to Davenport in both places.

Not a corpus-wide defect — a succession boundary. A synthesis pass flagged canon as inconsistent because some entries say Platkin and others Davenport. Checked all six: five are correct for their own dates. Entries dated before 2026-01-20 should say Platkin; entries on or after should say Davenport. Only this one was wrong. Future workers should not “fix” the Platkin references on earlier entries.