Highlights

A congressional oversight visit to a midtown Phoenix ICE facility Wednesday found 29 detainees held in a building with no beds, no on-site medical services, and no detainee-accessible shower, U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari said after completing the inspection.

Ansari, a Democrat representing Arizona's Third Congressional District, credited Arizona Mirror reporting published last week for prompting the visit, her 13th oversight inspection of ICE detention and temporary hold facilities. The Mirror found that average detainee stays at the Phoenix facility had climbed from between 8 and 10 hours to 20 hours, well above the agency's own 12-hour limit.

The facility sits inside a midtown Phoenix office building that serves as the Arizona headquarters for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE, adjacent to the Arizona Attorney General's Office. ICE designed the site as a short-term processing stop, with 10 holding cells capable of holding upward of 150 people. The building has been the subject of weekly protests since last summer, some of which produced clashes between protesters and ICE officers. Workers were replacing windows that had been shot at in July when reporters waited outside for Ansari's post-visit briefing.

Phoenix Fire Department records obtained by the Mirror show the agency responded to the facility 11 times between December 2025 and March 2026, with nearly all calls resulting in a detainee being transported to a local hospital on a Code 3 response, meaning emergency vehicles ran lights and sirens.

"I'm really alarmed that we know people have been held here for longer than they should have and over capacity, it is completely unacceptable," Ansari told the Mirror, referencing the outlet's data findings.

Ansari said ICE officials told her during the visit that a waiver issued last year removing the 12-hour holding limit had been lifted in July. That waiver was vacated in federal court in June as arbitrary and capricious because it conflicted with ICE's own detention standards. An ICE official also told her the agency is working to be more responsive to congressional inquiries and is committed to not holding detainees beyond 12 hours. ICE separately characterized the Mirror's reporting on its own publicly released data as false, asserting the facility does not hold people longer than 12 hours.

A new ICE policy barred Ansari from speaking directly with detainees without prior agency approval. She noted that each oversight visit brings a new procedural restriction and urged Republican colleagues to conduct their own unannounced visits rather than accepting standard staff-guided tours, pointing to prior instances in which ICE moved detainees ahead of congressional inspections.

Ansari's concerns about medical access at the Phoenix site follow a prior unannounced visit she and other Arizona lawmakers made to the Mesa ICE facility, where they observed rooms holding 40 to 50 people against a posted maximum capacity of 21. In late February, a 911 call was placed from the Mesa facility after a man suffered a seizure when pepper spray was deployed against 47 detainees in an enclosed room. Ansari, Rep. Greg Stanton, and Rep. Adelita Grijalva subsequently sent a formal letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons demanding accountability.

Ansari said oversight visits will continue regardless of how the agency presents conditions to members of Congress. No date for a follow-up visit has been announced.

Sources

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  1. azmirror.com retrieved 09/09/2026 21:54

Authored by The Scottsdale Signal. Drafted by AI from primary-source material under our beat-specific editorial guides; reviewed by humans before publish under our five-gate process. Sources retrieved at 09/09/2026 21:54. Every claim traces to a source.