Immigration advocates bring protest to Marana mayor’s door, call for council to stop ICE plans

Over a dozen protesters stood outside of Marana Mayor Jon Post’s house on Saturday to call for a stop to an immigration detention center planned in the area. The event was part of a national day of action against the growing number of properties the federal government is obtaining to open more detention centers.

The event was organized during a fundraiser event for the Marana Unified School District (MUSD) that was being held on Post’s property. 

“We are 100% in support of education, just not at the expense of a detention center,” said Jose Ferrum, a protester at the event. “We believe that education should be funded with our tax dollars instead of those tax dollars being used to open up this ICE detention center, where again, we'll see that pattern of violence and abuse and sexual abuse happening behind those locked cages.”

He was referring to the private prison contracts with the federal government, which pay per person detained in detention centers with tax payer money, and to the documented cases of abuse in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. 

CALÓ News confirmed in February that the location would be used as an immigration detention center, but people have been protesting the site since September of last year. Town of Marana council members have continuously said that their hands are tied in the matter. The state of Arizona sold the property to the private prison company Management and Training Corporation (MTC) for $15 million last July. 

Shortly after the protest started, Post drove up the driveway to meet a Marana police officer and asked him to move protesters to the other side of the road and off of his private property. After a discussion between the officer, Post and the organizers, they moved the protest a few feet away.

Post has repeatedly told protesters that he doesn’t want the detention center, but that there is little he or the council can do that would not get the Town of Marana involved in a legal battle.

“We have given the town council and the mayor several tools that they can use to stop the opening of this detention center,” says Mary Romer, an organizer with Pima Resists ICE (PRICE). “And to date, (the mayor) has not taken action. So that's why we brought it to his front door.”

Kathryn Mikronis, governing board president of MUSD, and Hunter Holt, also a board member, were confused about the protest when they pulled into the event and decided to speak with protesters.

The flier from the Party for Socialism and Liberation indicated that the protest would take place while Post was hosting a private fundraiser “instead of directly funding our schools,” the Instagram post reads. But according to Mikronis, “that's not what this is. This is the centennial celebration for our local school district.”

While Post donated the space to host the event, the money raised goes to 2340 Foundation, which provides scholarships to students throughout their K-12 educational career, she said.

“I do not want an ICE detention center in my backyard. I don't want one close to my high school. I don't want one in my community,” Mikronis says. “I think that, yeah, the protests are important. But I think you've got to make sure your messaging is clear that people know that they're here protesting, that they're not protesting the school.”

MUSD has put protocols into place in the event ICE shows up at one of their schools. Immigration officers must have a warrant with the child’s name on it and they must step off the property while the school calls the child's parents, the school’s attorney and the superintendent.

“We have a whole protocol in place because we do understand that by having an ICE detention center in our backyard that we're going to be under scrutiny and that ICE is going to be under review,” Mikronis says. “We know this is going to happen. So we're doing what we can to be proactive for the security of our students.”

But Victoria Curry, 17, a junior at Marana High School, said these protests are necessary to call attention to the detention center and to protect students and families. 

“They need to do more research, because if they knew or if they were fully educated, they would understand why we’re up here,” she said. “The detention center could very easily affect our students directly. And you don't want students to have their families ripped away from them and that's exactly what ICE does, that's what these detention centers do.” 

A 2022 report from Detention Watch Network found that immigrants in counties with more detention space are more likely to be arrested and detained by ICE because they have the capability to. 

Currently, Arizona has two large-capacity immigration detention centers in Eloy and Florence, while another is planned for Surprise. A fourth in Marana would have the capacity to hold 775 people. 

In Arizona, ICE arrests nearly tripled last fiscal year, according to an investigation by CALÓ News and Arizona Luminaria. As immigration enforcement continues to increase, the Department of Homeland Security (DOJ) is buying up more warehouses and funneling millions into converting them into detention centers to meet the Trump administration’s demands.

“A detention center directly in our town means that ICE’s presence will be increasing very highly, which will cause a lot more chaos and a lot more tragedy,” Curry said. 

Despite months of organizing, it is likely that the prison will open up as an immigration detention center.

“I wish that our mayor and our town council would listen to their people. They were voted in through the voice of the people, and that is the exact voice that they are supposed to be listening to,” Curry says. “And I wish that the school board as well would do the same exact thing and listen to their students.”

Susan Barnett is an independent journalist in southern Arizona covering the immigrant and Latine community. She is a recent graduate from the University of Arizona, where she received her Master of Arts in Bilingual Journalism. She previously worked at La Estrella de Tucson and co-founded Tucson Spotlight.