Ansari and Stanton say Mesa ICE facility is still 'inhumane' as overcrowding issues improve

Reps. Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton said overcrowding at an ICE detention center in Mesa has improved over the past month, but said conditions at the facility remain “inhumane and deeply troubling.”

Ansari and Stanton conducted a surprise visit this week to the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center at Mesa Gateway Airport. They had previously inspected the facility in April following reports in the Arizona Mirror that 250 people were being housed in a space with a 157-person capacity.

Ansari said that during the visit this week, there were 125 people in holding.

“When we asked why that was, the staff members had read public reporting, that advocacy, and local government advocacy, our advocacy had made a difference in the pressure to bring those numbers to par,” she said.

But Ansari said ICE is still regularly holding people for much longer than they are supposed to at the Mesa facility.

“I still think that there’s a lot of work to do,” she said. “They are regularly keeping people here for longer than 12 hours. They admitted regularly 36 hours.”

And Stanton said the facility isn’t designed to hold people for long periods of time, saying there is one shower that detainees are not even allowed to use to clean themselves.

“There’s a reason why this is built for only 12 hours, and there’s a reason why there’s a significant cost to people’s health for staying three days or more in a facility that wasn’t built for that,” he said.

The Arizona Mirror reported that there is no onsite medical care in the facility and toilets regularly overflow in areas housing dozens of people.

Stanton, Ansari and Rep. Adelita Grijalva have also introduced legislation that would create a 12-hour time limit for detainees at temporary ICE facilities.

Stanton and Ansari said they are also demanding answers from the Department of Homeland Security about an incident, also reported by the Mirror, in which ICE officers allegedly sprayed 47 detainees with pepper spray, resulting in at least one hospitalization.

“We are concerned that this incident fits into a broader national trend of widespread use of physical force and chemical agents inside ICE detention facilities nationwide,” according to a letter from Stanton, Ansari and Grijalva to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons. “Further, this incident continues a disturbing pattern of unsafe practices at the AROCC facility.”

The lawmakers indicated they plan to continue making surprise visits to check on conditions at the facility.