Arizona leaders, community continue to rally against incoming Surprise ICE facility

Community members and Arizona leaders continue to fight back against an incoming immigration processing center expected to open this fall in Surprise, Arizona, as city leadership engages in talks with federal officials.

In January, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) purchased the 418,000-square-foot space with the intention of converting it into a short-term processing facility. Since then, community members have packed city council chambers and state legislators have addressed the council, demanding they take a stand against the proposed conversion.

On March 6, the DHS awarded a contract ranging from $313 to $704 million to Gardaworld Federal Services LLC to renovate the Surprise warehouse, located off of Sweetwater Avenue and Dysart Road.

On April 7, ahead of a city council meeting, Democrat members of the Arizona Legislature sent a letter to Mayor Kevin Sartor and his colleagues, asking the city to stop DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans. The asks include pursuing legal action against the DHS, refusing water, sewer and other city services to the department, the passage of ordinances prohibiting all non-municipal detention facility permits, and more.

That same evening, residents expressed their discontent with the outcome of Sartor's recent conversation with federal officials.

The meeting, held in mid-March in Washington, D.C., involved discussing community and environmental impacts, public safety, release procedures and DHS-city communication. In a news conference in late March, Sartor said that the processing center would hold up to 542 adults, with an expected stay of three to seven days, and, for transparency purposes, facility tours would be hosted with city leadership and a community relations board would be created.

According to Sartor, the DHS intends to begin processing no more than 250 people a week at the facility by the end of the 2026 Fiscal Year, which ends on Sept. 30. The DHS also said its agents would avoid enforcement operations in sensitive areas, such as schools and churches.

While no operations have been reported at sensitive areas in Arizona, some have occurred near them, sparking outrage from communities across the Valley, especially as reports of ICE using children as bait to detain parents have been widely spread.

The Surprise warehouse plans — among a growing list of buildings being bought by the DHS to expand ICE operations —  come amid a call from Congress members for additional oversight. In Arizona, Democratic U.S. representatives Adelita Grijalva, Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton have been leading the fight for investigations of human and civil rights violations in immigration enforcement and detention operations.

On April 2, they held a briefing in Phoenix on the current state of detention centers, during which they heard testimony from previously detained immigrants, experts and advocates who described unlivable conditions in centers in Eloy and Florence — the largest in the state. A couple of days later, the trio held a news conference in Mesa, just outside the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center at Mesa Gateway Airport, denouncing similar inhumane conditions at the small processing center.

So far immigration officials have spent a total of $1.074 billion for 11 warehouses. They've mostly faced fierce opposition. And days after Mullin was sworn in, the Department of Homeland Security paused the purchase of new warehouses intended to house immigrants. The department is scrutinizing all contracts signed under his predecessor, Kristi Noem.

In addition to the incoming Surprise facility, the DHS recently released a memo indicating its intent to convert a former state prison in Marana into an ICE detention center, confirming what activists in southern Arizona had been fighting against since the fall of 2025. 

Management and Training Company (MTC), which operates detention and correctional facilities nationwide, quietly acquired the Marana site in July 2025 from the Arizona Department of Administration. MTC was the previous owner before the state obtained it in 2013. For months, immigration, environmental and civil rights activists have been fighting to prevent the former prison, shuttered in 2023, from becoming an ICE detention center since its purchase.

During last week’s meeting, several council members expressed concerns about the fact that all the agreements the DHS made with them were only verbal. Councilmember Johnny Melton said U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar is working to formalize an agreement with ICE.

Toward the end of the meeting Councilmember Chris Judd said he wanted to continue discussing what the city could do in response to potential increased ICE presence, asking to add an item to the agenda on protecting local authority, services and residents.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.