Democratic Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly are calling on the Department of Homeland Security to immediately halt operations on new ICE facilities in Arizona.
In a letter to new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Gallego and Kelly say they’re writing to follow up on an original request from February — in which they asked the agency for more details about plans for a warehouse facility in Surprise, and an old jail in Marana, just outside Tucson.
ICE has been planning to expand detention capacity in Arizona for months, according to reports, and more recent government documents confirm those plans. But the agency has only recently acknowledged its plans to local officials.
Gallego and Kelly say they haven’t received any response yet from their February letter, and are calling on all expansion plans to halt until they do.
"Despite that letter and concerns raised by local, state, and federal officials, the Department has continued to move forward with acquisitions and contracts with only minimal public input or transparency—leaving communities to learn primarily through public reporting about major decisions that will impact them for years," the new letter reads. "While it is a positive step that DHS has since met with some local leadership, that outreach occurred as an afterthought, only after key decisions had already been made."
The letter comes amid a record number of deaths in ICE detention — a 27-year-old Cuban national died in the agency's custody in Miami on April 12, according to an April 16 press release, marking the 17th in-custody death this year.
Meanwhile, oversight mechanisms usually in place to monitor conditions in detention have drastically scaled back.
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A notice posted on the Federal Register this week details a $150 million government contract with Burke Law Group to represent unaccompanied immigrant children. A multimillion-dollar contact with nonprofits across the country to do the work expired Friday. -
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Some 20,000 children alone in the US receive legal aid through the contract — part of a federal program established by Congress almost two decades ago. The contract to do that work expires July 31.
