Democrats Report Overcrowding, Medical Neglect at Arizona ICE Facility After Unannounced Visit

Three Arizona members of the US House learned of credible reports of overcrowding at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility at an airport in Mesa, Arizona, and that was "exactly what we saw," said Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva on Thursday night after the lawmakers paid a surprise visit to the detention center.

Grijalva joined fellow Democratic Reps. Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton in visiting the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center at Mesa-Gateway Airport, which the latter two also visited earlier this year—during one of the few periods in recent months in which the center has been under its capacity of 157 people.

As The Arizona Mirror reported Thursday, when Ansari and Stanton alerted ICE ahead of time that they'd be coming for their earlier visit on February 20, the number of detainees held in the facility dipped to one of its lowest levels in the past year.

"Almost immediately after the inspection, those numbers began to climb again," the Mirror reported, reaching as high as 335 in early March. Before the lawmakers notified ICE, as many as 777 people were being detained in the 25,000 square foot facility.

This time, with Grijalva joining them, Ansari and Stanton didn't announce that they'd be coming—and found "well over 240 detainees stacked like sardines in cells," said Ansari in a social media post.

"The last time we were there, they very much cleaned things up and tried to make this horrible place as presentable as it could be," said Ansari. "And what we saw tonight was massive overcrowding of every single cell... Each room has capacity for just 21 people. And in each of these rooms there were 40 or more human beings, people were body-to-body, laying next to each other like sardines."

The congresswoman said the people were "really desperate" to talk to the lawmakers despite an ICE rule prohibiting visiting members of Congress from speaking to detainees.

"Through the cracks in the door, they are telling us that it's extremely hot, that they have been there for days," said Ansari. "One of the men was telling me that someone has a fever in there and I tried to get the ICE supervisor to bring medical staff over, and he was just staring at me blankly like I was asking for the most ridiculous thing."

The coordination center is meant to hold people for no more than 12 hours just before they are deported.

According to the Mirror, publicly available data shows that 36 hours is the average length of time this year that people have been detained at the coordination center, compared with 12 hours this time last year.

The Mirror also reported Friday that a supervisor claimed during the three lawmakers' oversight visit that the center is a "72-hour hold facility, even though it has no beds or showers"—contradicting ICE's own earlier statement to the newspaper.

ICE told the Mirror that fluctuations in population levels at the coordination center are a "normal part of operations" and are "based on flight schedules and operational needs."

But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told the newspaper that "serious problems with overcrowding at ICE field offices" have been reported nationwide as the Trump administration pushes to arrest 3,000 people per day as part of its mass deportation agenda.

"The overcrowding situation is frightening, and you have people that are sick, people that are sweating, women that need sanitary napkins and were asking me if I could get some for them," said Grijalva. "People were laying on concrete without any bedding of any kind, and there were people that were so tightly in there that I couldn't count them."

The three lawmakers said they will be pushing to ensure no new funding for ICE is included in the new budget for the US Department of Homeland Security when Congress debates the spending next week. Stanton told the Mirror that the visit "exemplified exactly why" ICE should not get any more funding.

"What we saw was horrifying—crowded cells at two to three times the capacity and buses of more detainees being loaded in," Stanton said. "This is Trump’s mass deportation machine in action."