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BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown today filed a federal lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), seeking their compliance with the Attorney General’s administrative subpoena for records related to reported dangerous, inhumane, and unlawful conditions in ICE “hold rooms” at the George H. Fallon Federal Building in the city of Baltimore. The lawsuit arises out of the Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) Civil Rights Division and Federal Accountability Unit’s joint investigation into whether ICE has engaged in a pattern or practice of civil rights violations against individuals detained at the Baltimore facility.
“The conditions inside the Baltimore holding cells have been dangerous, inhumane, and unlawful — and ICE and DHS have done everything in their power to keep us from finding out just how bad they are. The agencies have stonewalled our investigation while people in their custody are denied critical medical care and forced to sleep in cold cement cells and live in their own excrement,” said Attorney General Brown. “We’re taking ICE and DHS to court to expose the full scope and impact of their lawless behavior.”
“The allegations surrounding the conditions at the George H. Fallon Federal Building in Baltimore are deeply disturbing and merit full investigative cooperation. We cannot stand by as ICE and the federal government continue to lack transparency and dodge accountability for their cruel and unlawful immigration enforcement actions,” said Governor Wes Moore. “In Maryland, we uphold the Constitution. We recognize our solemn obligation to promote public safety and defend civil rights, and we will pursue justice to protect our people.”
The OAG has been monitoring the conditions in the hold cells since summer of 2025. As it reviewed viral video from inside the hold cells, declarations from detainees in litigation, and media reports of visits by members of Congress, the office concluded that the crowding and the denial of basic human needs had grown worse, prompting it to open an investigation into these conditions in late January 2026. The investigation focuses on whether ICE has engaged in a pattern or practice of civil rights violations, including overcrowding, extended detention beyond legal limits, denial of medical care, denial of food and water, failure to provide sanitary conditions, and denial of access to legal counsel.
Declarations filed in a related class action lawsuit describe as many as 40 to 50 people crowded into a room measuring just 15 feet by 15 feet – so overcrowded that detainees slept sitting up, without bedding, in rooms kept extremely cold. A federal court reviewing that case found on March 6, 2026, that individuals detained in the Baltimore hold rooms are “routinely held there overnight and in excess of 12 hours” – and often for more than 72 hours – in conditions that likely violate the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
The allegations are disturbing. One described an individual wearing an adult diaper who was not provided with sanitary products after being taken into ICE custody and was forced to live in their own excrement for five days. In another case, a detainee with leukemia was denied cancer medication for two days until a friend was able to bring the medication to the facility. A whistleblower who worked at the Baltimore ICE field office confirmed detainees’ accounts, describing blankets “covered in feces, lice, urine, and throw up,” and a field office that failed to provide menstruating women with hygiene products.
The hold rooms – designed for short-term confinement of no longer than 12 hours – have no showers, no on-site medical staff, and only a single open toilet per room. Despite this, ICE has detained individuals there for days or weeks at a time. The Baltimore facility has held more than 120 individuals in a single day – over 200% of its stated maximum capacity of 56. ICE’s own Deputy Field Office Director warned in a February 2025 internal memo that the lack of medical staff “could potentially lead to liability issues or, in the worst-case scenario, fatalities.”
On January 30, 2026, OAG issued an administrative subpoena to DHS and ICE demanding records about conditions in the hold rooms, detainee demographics, and the legal basis for individual detentions. ICE denied the subpoena in full on February 25, offering mostly boilerplate objections that the requests were overly broad, unduly burdensome, and implicated privacy protections – without citing or applying its own required regulatory factors, and without offering to produce even partially responsive or redacted records. After OAG detailed these deficiencies in a follow-up letter, ICE indicated it would need until April 6 just to determine whether it could share any information.
The lawsuit, filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, alleges that ICE’s refusal to comply with the subpoena violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it was contrary to law and/or arbitrary and capricious, or (in the alternative) unreasonably delayed. The lawsuit asks the court to order DHS and ICE to produce the subpoenaed documents or order other appropriate relief.
The Attorney General is authorized under Maryland law to investigate potential civil rights violations and to take action when the federal government’s conduct threatens the health and welfare of Maryland residents. As ICE seeks to dramatically expand immigration detention in Maryland – including through a rushed plan to convert a commercial warehouse in Washington County into a 1,500-person detention facility by May 2026, an unlawful action for which OAG filed a separate lawsuit – OAG’s investigation into ICE’s existing pattern of conduct is critical to protecting Marylanders.
The OAG is asking individuals who have information about conditions in ICE detention facilities in Maryland to email [email protected].
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