ICE caught frantically moving detainees from crowded cells before congressional visit

When Democratic Reps. Greg Stanton and Yassamin Ansari visited an Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facility in Mesa earlier this year meant to temporarily house 157 people, it was one of the few times the facility had been under capacity in more than a month.

Just two weeks prior there were 513 people housed there in a single day. And a couple of weeks before that, there were nearly 800 people being housed in the facility tucked into an unassuming corner of a suburban Phoenix airport.

From Jan. 15 to Feb. 20, when the two members of Congress visited the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center, the facility had spent 33 of 37 days over capacity, some days with several times the number of people the facility is authorized to house.

In the seven days after Ansari and Stanton told ICE they would be visiting the facility — members of Congress are allowed to inspect facilities, but ICE policy requires they give seven days’ notice before arriving — the number of detainees began to decrease to some of the lowest numbers the facility had seen all year.

Almost immediately after the inspection, those numbers began to climb again.

The facility, first exclusively reported on by the Arizona Mirror, is a 25,000-square-foot facility at the Mesa-Gateway Airport. It opened in 2010 to little fanfare and can house up to 157 detainees and 79 ICE employees, according to an ICE press release announcing its completion.

It is one of many temporary hold facilities across the country, meant to house detainees for short periods of time before they are shipped to longer-term facilities or removed from the country.

But a Mirror analysis of data of ICE detention records that the Deportation Data Project obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that, in some cases, detainees have stayed for longer than the 12 hours ICE has said the facility is meant for.

Newly released data now shows that the facility, which in previous years has stayed below the 157 capacity of the facility, has been surging well above that number — and detainees are staying for longer.

“The Deportation Data Project relies on information releases that have not been reviewed, audited or given context,” ICE said in a statement to the Mirror. “Neither (the Department of Homeland Security) nor ICE have verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the project and its results. The bottom line is that the Deportation Data Project is not accurate.”

However, the data obtained by the Deportation Data Project comes directly from the agency.

“ICE sent us these datasets in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. We posted the original data,” the Deportation Data Project said in a statement to the Mirror. “These are ICE’s own records of who is arrested, detained, and deported.”

Arizona, and specifically Mesa-Gateway Airport, are at the center of ICE’s accelerating aerial deportation efforts, in which AROCC plays a major role. The airport hosts the agency’s headquarters for its “ICE Air” operations, which uses subcontractors and subleases to disguise deportation aircraft.

A detainee boards a 747 that is part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Air Operations at Mesa Gateway Airport on Sept. 23, 2025. (Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy/Arizona Mirror)

The AROCC facility has also been at the heart of flights that have sent immigrants to African countries, even when they’re not from those countries. Most recently, the facility made national headlines because it was set to be where two gay Iranian men were set to be deported from, ultimately to their deaths.

In data provided to the Mirror by ICE Flight Monitor, a data-driven initiative published by Human Rights First, flights out of AROCC this year appear to largely be domestic shuffle flights. Such flights are when ICE transports individuals, generally on chartered aircraft, to and between immigration detention centers across the United States.

Temporary hold facilities in New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore have come under scrutiny for lacking beds and food, leading to lawsuits against ICE.

Similarly, AROCC does not have showers, beds or on-site medical care, according to past audits of the facility. Medical care or other needs would fall under the purview of ICE’s Florence Service Processing Center, an hour drive away.

ICE said that it only uses the facility for the “short-term detention of individuals” and holds them for “typically under 12 hours” and complies “with all applicable standards.”

The agency said AROCC serves as a “transit and staging hub, similar to a layover at a commercial airport.”

“Flight delays, cancellations or mechanical issues may occur, and ICE personnel adjust operations to maintain continuity of care and security,” ICE said. “Facility population levels fluctuate based on flight schedules and operational needs. During peak arrivals and departures, on-site numbers may temporarily increase, then decrease as flights depart and processing concludes. This is a normal part of operations.”

The agency also said it has “increased removal flights to address case backlogs, resulting in higher volumes at AROCC. Population counts may temporarily reflect individuals arriving or departing by ground or air, which can inflate numbers during high-volume movements.”

In its statement to the Mirror, ICE said it also works with local authorities who are “promptly notified of emergencies or significant developments.”

The Mesa Fire and Medical Department said it was looking into a request by the Mirror asking if ICE had notified their agency or the city when the facility had been over capacity, but did not respond before publication.

“We have seen serious problems with overcrowding at ICE field offices around the country,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told the Mirror. “It really heralded what we would see in the months to follow.”

Lawsuits have followed, leading to ICE shutting down some facilities temporarily, like in Baltimore, where the detainees were sent to Arizona before an oversight visit by members of Congress. Courts are also getting flooded with requests from detainees seeking relief.

In Arizona at AROCC, those who are staying at the facility are staying for longer periods of time in larger populations. The average length of stay in 2026 is about 36 hours, compared to the same time frame in 2025, when the average stay was about 12 hours.

In 2025, the average daily population was approximately 21 people for the same timeframe. So far in 2026, there have been an average of 274 detainees each day. The Mirror found one individual in the data who stayed for 18 days, coinciding with a time when the population of the facility was near its peak of 777 individuals in a single day.

For Ansari, the issue is crystal clear: ICE is arresting more people than it has the capacity for in order to meet President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

“When you keep growing into that, it becomes very clear that you have people staying longer than they should be or places are over capacity. That is just simple math that anyone can figure out,” Ansari told the Mirror. “The irony is they would never admit to that. The number gap and the fact that they are going to have to break their own standards, but when you ask them how often that happens, they brush it under the rug and act like it never happens.”

Ansari said that when she visited the facility in February, ICE officials told her that they had more people detained nationwide than the number of available beds.

Reichlin-Melnick agrees with Ansari’s assessment.

“I think this is a side-effect of mass deportations,” he said, adding that the agency is running into “very real logistical bottlenecks” as they are trying to fulfill arrest and deportation quotas set by the administration.

Reichlin-Melnick also wasn’t surprised to hear that ICE may have shuffled detainees around prior to the oversight visit by Ansari and Stanton.

“This allegation has come up elsewhere in the country,” he said.

When a group of Maryland lawmakers attempted to visit an ICE facility unannounced earlier this year, they found the facility empty. That facility in Baltimore had previously been the site of an alleged legionella outbreak and the subject of a lawsuit for inhumane conditions.

When Minnesota lawmakers went on an oversight visit to a similar facility in their state, it was also empty. The same thing happened to lawmakers in California.

U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Phoenix, speaks to an estimated 3,000 people who gathered at the Arizona Capitol on April 5, 2025, to protest President Donald Trump and his administration. The protest was one of more than 1,300 across the nation aimed at galvanizing people against Trump, who has sought to expand executive power to enact sweeping changes to the federal government and the fabric of America. Photo by Jerod MacDonald-Evoy | Arizona Mirror

“I can’t say that it was obvious to me that there was mass movement of people, but I’m not surprised at all that they make things look much nicer when they know members of Congress are coming,” Ansari said, noting that ICE makes lawmakers fill out forms and give prior notice before visits.

Arizona also has some historical context around this particular issue.

In Doe v. Wolf, several groups, including the American Immigration Council, filed a class action lawsuit challenging the conditions at detention centers run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The suit focused primarily on two women and two men detained in the Tucson Border Patrol Station who described overcrowding, lack of beds, inadequate food and water, lack of medical care and freezing conditions.

The court eventually enjoined CBP from holding detainees longer than 48 hours unless they could provide adequate conditions that included a bed with a blanket, shower, food and more, deeming anything less than that unconstitutional.

Reichlin-Melnick said that while the context might be different — families detained at the border versus people arrested in the interior of the United States — stories about the conditions are similar. He also noted that, during the lawsuit, cleaning crews would show up at the facility 24 hours prior to court-sanctioned inspections.

“I think it is possible it is a coincidence, it is possible there is more going on,” Reichlin-Melnick said. However, he added that there is a solution to this issue: “The answer is surprise inspections, and this is something that the Trump administration fought bitterly to prevent.”

In a statement to the Mirror, ICE admitted that visits are scheduled during times when there are less detainees at their facilities.

“Congressional and VIP visits are scheduled during lower operational periods to minimize impact on mission-critical activities,” ICE said. “ICE does not alter procedures or inconvenience individuals in custody for these visits, and all core operations continue as usual, with safety and security as top priorities.”

For Ansari, though, the truth comes not from oversight visits, but from speaking directly to the people they detain.

“I think no matter what, the real picture and the real situation cannot be understood unless you talk to people who are detained there,” Ansari said. “Even that day, even if there were far fewer people there, I feel if I talked to people, they probably would have told me, ‘There were far more people here.’”

Ansari said she wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone at AROCC that day.

And talking to those who have been released from detention is what Ansari, Stanton and other members of Arizona’s congressional delegation are doing.

At a community briefing last week, Ansari and U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat, heard about the conditions inside these facilities from family members of detainees, detainees themselves and those who advocate for them.

During the meeting, Ansari also advocated for abolishing ICE, a call that many in her own party have rejected, despite the rising popularity of the movement. But Ansari said she is undeterred and believes reforms could happen if Democrats make major gains during this year’s midterm elections.

“I think that even the most historically moderate members of the Democratic Party have seen how horrific this agency has become,” Ansari said. “I think the need for vast overhaul and oversight is going to be a top priority for Democrats.”