Highlights

ICE agents pepper-sprayed 47 detainees packed into a single room at the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in late February, triggering a 911 call and a multi-department fire response, according to records obtained by the Arizona Mirror.

The Mirror obtained the 911 call through a public records request. In it, ICE Officer Gene Rivero told a Mesa Fire and Medical Department dispatcher that pepper spray had been used and that one detainee appeared to be seizing. Rivero paused repeatedly to cough as he spoke, and coughing was audible in the background. ICE agents were attempting to air out the facility to clear the chemical agent at the time of the call.

ICE said in a statement to the Mirror that officers deployed oleoresin capsicum spray after detainees repeatedly kicked a cell door, banged windows, and exhibited aggressive behavior toward officers despite verbal commands to stop. The agency said one detainee was transported to East Valley Emergency Room at approximately 2:15 a.m. for an asthma episode and was released an hour later. ICE said there was no evidence the asthma episode was caused by the spray given the detainee's pre-existing condition. The agency did not respond to questions about its own officer's description of a detainee seizing, whether any ICE employees required treatment, or what policies govern pepper spray use in confined spaces.

A Mesa Fire and Medical Department report obtained by the Mirror described firefighters finding one individual outside with security struggling from pepper spray exposure, and many others shackled at the feet in a breezeway. Security was bringing detainees out five at a time. A second patient was eventually evaluated but refused transport. The fire report noted that approximately 30 others were getting out of cells and may need a large-scale decontamination wash-down. Both Queen Creek Fire Department and Gilbert Fire Department assisted with the response.

The room where the incident occurred has a posted capacity of no more than two dozen people. On the day of the incident, nearly 50 detainees were in that room, and the facility as a whole held a reported 332 people against a listed maximum of 157.

The overcrowding was not new. Mesa Fire had responded to a medical call at AROCC in late January and found conditions severe enough to give ICE a written list of corrections. ICE told Mesa Fire that the 238 people detained that day was an aberration caused by a measles outbreak at another Arizona facility and promised the population would return below 157 within a week. The next day, records show the population was 646. It reached 777 within days. On Feb. 4, the date ICE had said the problem would be resolved, 513 people were locked in the facility's detention rooms.

The pepper spray incident occurred one week after a congressional oversight visit, before which ICE had shuffled detainees so that AROCC showed some of its lowest population numbers of the year. Last month, three Arizona Democratic members of Congress made an unannounced visit to AROCC. They reported afterward that holding rooms contained roughly double the number of people posted as the maximum outside each room. U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, one of the three lawmakers, told the Mirror in a written statement that listening to the 911 audio made her physically ill. "This makes me sick to my stomach. You could hear detainees coughing and struggling to breathe," Ansari said, adding that she has witnessed what she described as medical neglect of constituents at the facility and will continue to vote against additional ICE funding.

U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva said she is deeply concerned by the increased use of force against detainees and called the overcrowding on the day of the incident a condition that raises the risk of escalation and harm. Grijalva called on ICE to provide full transparency on whether proper protocols were followed and what steps are being taken to protect the health and safety of people in custody. She also said ICE's effort to dismiss any connection between the pepper spray and the medical emergency reflects a broader pattern of deflecting accountability.

How does this incident fit the broader use-of-force trend?

A Mirror analysis of ICE detention data obtained by the Deportation Data Project through the Freedom of Information Act shows use-of-force incidents at Arizona detention facilities are accelerating sharply. In all of 2024, there were 23 reported incidents statewide. In 2025, that rose to 34. In just the first two months of 2026, there were 13 incidents, putting ICE on pace for 78 incidents this year. From January through February 2024, there were three such reports; the same period in 2026 produced 13, a 333% increase. Reporting by the Washington Post found that detention staff nationally have used force 37% more often than the prior year and 54% more than under the Biden administration.

Transparency over those incidents has also declined. Use-of-force reports from 2024 included narrative detail about what force was used and why. Reports filed in 2026 list only the nationalities of those involved, the date, and the phrase "use of force," with no description of what happened or what led to it. ICE did not respond to the Mirror's questions about why the narrative sections have become less detailed.

Katherine Hawkins, senior legal analyst of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Mirror that access to this data has never been straightforward, because use-of-force records are routinely withheld as sensitive law enforcement information and incidents typically surface only through detainee lawyers. Hawkins added that witnesses to conditions inside facilities may be deported before any investigation can proceed.

Oversight of facilities like AROCC exists in theory through the Office of the Inspector General and internal DHS units, but those offices have been reduced significantly under the current administration. This month, the administration closed the office responsible for oversight of detention center abuses. The private companies operating facilities like Eloy Detention Center and the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex, both run by CoreCivic, reported a 25% increase in total revenue for the first quarter of 2026, attributing the growth largely to government contracts with DHS and ICE.

At AROCC itself, the average length of stay has grown from approximately 12 hours in early 2025 to approximately 36 hours in the same period of 2026. The average daily population has risen from roughly 21 people to 274. The Mirror identified one individual in the data who remained at the facility for 18 days, coinciding with the period when the population peaked at 777. The airport authority has raised concerns that conditions at AROCC may constitute a violation of the lease agreement with the private company that sub-leases the space to the federal government.

ICE has not announced any policy changes at AROCC following the February incident.

Sources

Every factual claim in this article traces to one of the sources below. See how we work for the editorial process.

  1. azmirror.com retrieved 13/05/2026 23:28

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 13/05/2026 23:28. Every claim traces to a source.