Organizers, elected officials determined to stop ICE detention center from opening in Marana

Southern Arizona elected leaders gathered outside the former Marana state prison on Tuesday to denounce the federal government’s intent to reopen the facility as an immigration detention center, while organizers and activists look into possible legal action to prevent the prison from becoming a reality.

U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Pima County Supervisor Jennifer Allen, lawyers and organizers whose work has focused on supporting immigrant communities took to a podium to talk about the inhumane treatment of immigrants inside detention centers as well as the lack of accountability and transparency from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the contractors hired to run Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) prisons.

In February, the DHS confirmed the intended use of the prison, something that community members across Pima County had been warning about and protesting against for months. The memo released on Feb. 25 states that the facility run by Management and Training Corporation (MTC) would need to house 775 people and should be fully operational "within a reasonable time of the contract award date," which was not specified.

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.

‘Zero transparency, zero accountability and zero community input’

Immigration attorney Daniela Ugaz, who heads the research and legal team at Pima Resists ICE (PRICE), said organizers are looking into taking possible legal action to stop the facility from opening. Meanwhile, elected officials have consistently voiced their opposition to the DHS’s plan, even before the ICE prison was confirmed.

And while Grijalva admitted to CALÓ News that she was unsure what she could do to stop the ICE center from happening, she said she would continue to voice her opposition.

“They are opening up these facilities with zero transparency, zero accountability and zero community input,” Grijalva said during the conference. “At the same time, they are neglecting care for the people who are trapped inside.” 

She pointed to the death of Emmanuel Damas, a Haitian man seeking asylum who was being held at a Florence detention center. His complaint of a toothache went ignored by guards for weeks, leading to his death on March 2 of a tooth infection after being hospitalized in Scottsdale.

“A toothache should not be a death sentence,” Grijalva said. “We cannot allow policies that dramatically expand detention levels and lead to overcrowded facilities that undermine the medical care and treatment that every human being deserves.”

Kristin Downing, an organizer with PRICE, shared that they’ve been told the MTC detention center will be more humane. Grijalva, however, isn’t buying it. She has visited several privately run detention centers, where when something goes wrong, the DHS points fingers elsewhere and uses the fact that they’re run by private contractors as an excuse to evade accountability, she said. 

“I am very concerned about [many] different places, [especially] here in Marana when [local leaders] are not talking to the people and the mayor and the council are not voting on what is happening here,” Grijalva said.

Brinley Carrillo, an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation in Tucson (PSL) shared her father’s experience, who migrated to Phoenix in the 90s and was deported when she was only eight weeks old. 

“He lost his documentation status, the beautiful life he had built and also his faith in the system, the system that told him, ‘if he did it the right way, he would be okay; that as long as he worked hard, he would thrive,’” Carrillo said as her voice started to shake. “This was always a lie. I share this part of my family story to remind everyone that the conditions for my father's deportation did not happen in a vacuum. They were created by policy choice that is rooted in racism and prioritizes profit over people.” 

Carrillo’s father returned to the U.S. to reunite with his family, only to be detained again and held in an immigration detention center, she said. At eight years old, Carrillo remembers being angry at the system that kept her father from her. 

“When I have been asked, ‘Why do you oppose this detention center?’ It starts with my personal experience,” she said. “But bigger than that, it is because, as a socialist organizer, I believe that the government should work for us to meet our needs, not to pour billions of dollars into the cruel deportation machine.”

Allen, who has been working alongside PRICE organizers since last fall, said ICE agents bring “chaos and violence” to communities, citing the 39 known in-custody deaths that have happened since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. An additional 33 people have been shot and at least nine killed by immigration agents across the country. 

Detention centers have a pattern of medical neglect, physical and sexual assault and other human rights violations, Allen said, adding that MTC has a history of health and workplace safety violations in other detention centers they run.

“Trump has been very clear that his vision of America has no place for Black and Brown people,” Allen said. “We know what unity looks like. We know that our country and our neighborhoods are stronger because of immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers. We know that we are on the right side of history and that our numbers continue to grow. We will fight, we are strong and we will win.” 

Organizers commit to not backing down in support of their neighbors

PRICE organizers told CALÓ News before the news conference that they’re working with a land use attorney, public officials and advocacy attorneys analyzing records and looking for any possible legal action they can take to try to stop the detention center from opening. 

The DHS memo gave the group more information to dig into — an 82-page document that reads like a preliminary draft of a contract, detailing what is required of MTC to run an immigration detention center as a government contractor.

In a statement released this week, PRICE said it’s “doing the due diligence that our elected officials have failed to do and has found serious discrepancies between the DHS requirements for the contract and the Marana facility’s capacity.”

In addition to requiring that MTC “raise the population by 50%,” the DHS has also asked that the facility be upgraded from minimum security to a high security facility, Ugaz said during the news conference. MTC has yet to disclose how they will do that.

PRICE organizers said they plan to continue showing up to Marana Town Council meetings, protesting and informing residents about DHS’s plan through flyer campaigns. They’re looking to other cities and states like New Mexico and Kansas City who have taken steps to stop detention centers from opening, they said. 

Downing invited people to join PRICE as they continue to push back against the MTC immigration detention center. 

“We are just getting started in this fight and we are determined to stop this ICE detention center from opening,” Downing said. “Our neighbor’s lives mean too much for us to back down.”

Stephanie Casanova is an independent, bilingual journalist from Tucson, Arizona, covering community stories for over 10 years. She is passionate about narrative, in-depth storytelling that is inclusive and reflects the diversity of the communities she covers.