End the ICE Deportations & the AROCC Detention Center at Mesa Gateway Airport

In 2025, we began to see the true scale of this crisis as the National Guard was deployed in cities like Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Portland, and the death toll in ICE custody hit an all-time high of 31 people. The situation worsened immediately as we entered 2026, with six people dying in ICE custody in just the first ten days of the year. As of today, late April 2026, the national death toll in detention has already reached 17 people.

For the past year, Mesa Valley Indivisible members and a coalition of groups around the country have been working relentlessly to end Avelo Airlines’ involvement in the unlawful and inhumane deportation of primarily non‑violent immigrants via Mesa Gateway Airport.

Americans dedicated to ending Avelo's contract with ICE boycotted, protested, emailed and called our representatives/senators, held weekly meetings, etc. and on January 7, 2026, news broke that Avelo Airlines announced they were ending their ICE deportation flights!!

As we all celebrate this HUGE WIN, we also know ICE deportation flights are still occurring at the Mesa Gateway Airport & the AROCC detention center remains active on the grounds.

When local lawmakers recently (April 9, 2026) conducted a surprise visit to the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center here at Mesa Gateway, they were sickened by what they found. Despite being a transit hub meant for 12-hour stays, people were being held for weeks, packed like sardines on bare concrete floors with no beds or showers. While the administration continues to claim these are short-term facilities, the reality has proven to be gut-wrenching medical neglect and overcrowding.

We are watching as the Department of Homeland Security moves to double its capacity to detain over 110,000 people this year, including plans to use industrial warehouses to hold 80,000 people nationwide. Private contractors like GEO Group and CoreCivic are already cashing in on over 130 new detention contracts, turning human lives into commodities for profit.

Billions of dollars are being funneled into this deportation machine—money that should be going toward lifesaving healthcare and school lunches for our children. The administration is scapegoating immigrants for the housing crisis and rising grocery costs to distract from its own failures, but we aren't buying it.

Our Key Concerns:

U.S. Representatives Greg Stanton, Yassamin Ansari, and Adelita Grijalva were initially blocked from entering the AROCC. When they finally forced their way in, they found a humanitarian disaster:

  • Extreme Overcrowding: A facility capped at 157 people held an estimated 250 detainees during the visit. Internal data shows it peaked at 777 people in a single day earlier this year. Oversight visits have revealed sickening conditions where detainees are held "like sardines" forcing them to sleep shoulder-to-shoulder on bare concrete.

  • Inhumane Conditions at AROCC: Reports document clogged and overflowing toilets, no access to showers, inadequate food—sometimes nothing more than bread, water, or military rations—and limited access to drinking water. While designated as a "12-hour layover" facility, records show hundreds of people held for days—and in some cases weeks—without basic human necessities. One individual was held for 42 days! 

  • Medical Neglect: The facility lacks on-site medical services. Detainees have reported suffering from untreated fevers and illnesses while being held in overcrowded cells that double the fire code's occupancy limits.

  • Corporate Complicity & Secrecy: These operations are driven by profit and political patronage. Private contractors run detention and flight operations through non-commercial hubs, using secretive, unmarked aircraft to shield their actions from public scrutiny.

  • Threat of Expansion: The administration’s push for warehouse detention creates a dangerous incentive loop: more arrests lead to more funding, which fuels more capacity for mass incarceration.

  • See below for additional information

Our Demands

We gather to show visible, public opposition to ICE detention expansion and the criminalization of immigration. We stand in solidarity with those currently detained and demand that our elected officials:

  • Close the AROCC facility at Mesa Gateway Airport.

  • Defend due process for everyone, regardless of citizenship status.

  • End the expansion of the ICE detention warehouse system.

Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center (AROCC)

  • The AROCC is officially a short-term holding site for people awaiting deportation or transfer and serves as the central hub for ICE Air deportation flights. It is tucked inside Mesa Gateway Airport and barely on the public radar

  • ICE hides AROCC behind private subleases with Strategic Equity Investors and subcontracted guards, meaning local airport authorities and the public can’t access basic lease or oversight records. ICE subleases the AROCC facility from a private company, shielding it from public records requests and airport authority oversight.

  • DHS has gutted its own internal oversight offices, ensuring fewer inspections, fewer investigations, and fewer consequences. The heavy reliance on private contractors and subcontractors—for flights, guards, and logistics—only deepens the accountability gap and raises serious concerns about training, conduct, and abuse.

  • A landmark federal judge’s ruling recently granted Members of Congress the right to conduct unannounced inspections of ICE facilities. This ruling specifically overrides ICE’s standard requirement for a seven-day advance notice.

  • Lawmakers discovered that when formal notice was given for previous visits, ICE would systematically move detainees out of the facility to conceal overcrowding. The April 9, 2026, surprise visit was conducted late at night specifically to observe actual daily conditions.

  • ICE staff initially attempted to block U.S. Representatives Greg Stanton, Yassamin Ansari, and Adelita Grijalva from entering, resulting in a tense confrontation at the facility gates before legal access was granted.

  • While some detainees initially tried to speak with the lawmakers about internal issues, the representatives said they were eventually prevented from further communication with them.

Severe Overcrowding & Inhumane Conditions

  • While the facility is capped at 157 people, lawmakers estimated 250 people were inside during the surprise visit. Internal data revealed the population peaked at 777 individuals in a single day earlier in 2026.

  • Lawmakers described detainees being packed into rooms "like sardines” after seeing detainees lying shoulder-to-shoulder on concrete floors. Detainees were reportedly so crowded that they had no room to sit down or lie down, and the facility lacked basic accommodations for the volume of people being held.

  • AROCC has been described as a humanitarian and fire-safety crisis that local officials are legally barred from resolving. The representatives noted that fire code signs for two rooms stated a maximum occupancy of 24 people each, but they observed more than twice that number inside.

    • Despite the clear violation of local fire and safety codes, the City of Mesa admitted it has no authority to enforce these rules. Because the facility is operated by federal authorities, it falls under federal jurisdiction.

  • Detainees reported extreme heat inside the cells. Some were seen attempting to speak to lawmakers through door cracks to plead for help regarding high temperatures and untreated fevers.

  • Reports document clogged and overflowing toilets, denial of showers, zero beds, inadequate food—sometimes nothing more than bread, water, or military rations—and limited access to drinking water.

Medical Neglect & Abuse

  • Medical neglect is rampant: missed medications, delayed or lost medical records, and people with serious conditions such as HIV or leukemia left without proper care.

  • There are also disturbing allegations of physical and verbal abuse by guards, including reports of detainees being forced to walk laps in extreme heat until some became sick or fainted. Oversight audits have flagged serious failures in protocol, including ICE officers’ inability or unwillingness to confirm coordination with legal advisors or local authorities when allegations of sexual abuse involving juveniles or vulnerable adults arise.

  • Internal audits (e.g., 2022 PREA compliance reports) found serious non-compliance issues and gaps in basic protocol adherence—such as failures to confirm coordination with legal advisors or local authorities in abuse allegations—showing that lack of oversight at AROCC isn’t accidental but baked into the structure.

Violation of Short-Term Status

  • Triple the Expected Stay: ICE officially designates AROCC as a transit hub for stays under 12 hours. However, in 2026, the average length of stay has tripled to 36 hours.

  • Prolonged Detention Records: FOIA data and oversight reports identified numerous cases of extreme detention:

    • Between 2023 and 2025, 95 instances of stays exceeding 48 hours were recorded.

    • One individual from Venezuela was held for 42 days.

    • Another individual was recently recorded staying for 18 days.

  • ICE officials admitted they have no official policy for handling detainees held longer than 12 hours and appear unable to accurately track individuals whose stays exceed the layover window, often blaming flight delays for the backlog.

Corporate Complicity

ICE Deportation Flights

  • ICE deportation flights have been widely documented as violating immigrants’ constitutionally protected rights and basic aviation safety standards.

  • Migrants on all ICE flights are restrained for the entirety of transport in three-point shackles (handcuffs, waist chains, and leg irons), regardless of age, disability, or criminal history; as of September, 71% of people in ICE custody had no criminal convictions.

  • Some individuals deemed “unruly” are further restrained with hooding or straitjacket-like devices, making emergency evacuation nearly impossible.

  • Conditions on these flights are frequently degrading and unsafe.

    • Accounts describe extremely long journeys—sometimes exceeding 26 hours—with limited food, bathroom access, and sleep for detainees, while workers report 30-hour duty days.

    • Many migrants are subjected to these conditions repeatedly, with some transferred as many as 20 times.

    • Foreign governments receiving deportation flights have formally complained about the degrading treatment of repatriated migrants.

    • Air marshals report that ICE routinely files incorrect passenger manifests and loses track of detainees, while flight attendants say ICE officers often obstruct or prohibit required safety checks.

    • ICE flight attendants have reported being instructed to abandon migrants during emergency evacuations, and workers who object on moral or safety grounds have faced retaliation, including firing or punitive assignments.

    • Historical records show ICE flights have failed to meet evacuation benchmarks, with evacuations taking several minutes—far exceeding the industry’s 90-second standard, where even seconds can be life-saving.

  • As reports of abuse and safety failures continue to mount, public officials and advocates argue that states should not do business with companies that fail to meet basic health, safety, and human-rights standards.

ICE, DHS, & Trump Administration

  • The administration chose mass immigration enforcement, using legislation such as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” signed on July 4, 2025, pours $170.1 billion into immigration enforcement, making ICE the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in U.S. history—outspending some foreign militaries. To make this possible, the administration has hollowed out oversight, reassigned agents from at least five other federal agencies, intensified visa revocations, and pressured U.S. attorneys to prioritize immigration prosecutions above all else.

  • The administration also built a surveillance‑and‑deportation machine: pressuring the IRS for immigrant taxpayer data, declaring thousands of living people “bureaucratically dead” in Social Security records, and expanding removal flights to a record number of destination countries via opaque, multi‑stop routes. Ambitions once stalled by courts—such as “3,000 arrests per day”—are being revived with massive funding

  • ICE detained record numbers of people—many without criminal convictions—in overcrowded facilities with inadequate medical care. Private‑prison firms CoreCivic and GEO Group became central to operations, with their revenues rising alongside enforcement expansion. Congressional filings documented overcrowding, medical neglect and denied basic rights, producing the highest number of detainee deaths in two decades.

  • Billions of taxpayer dollars now flow to private‑prison and transport companies. Analyses estimate that building and operating detention infrastructure at scale would cost taxpayers hundreds of billions, turning enforcement into a permanent economic engine. Courts repeatedly blocked policies, ordered transparency, and rejected unlawful detention and deportation practices.

  • The harm extends beyond detention walls: raids create fear, disrupt schools, hollow out communities and destabilize labor markets. Economic studies show mass deportations shrink GDP, reduce tax revenue, and cause sector‑specific losses—including billions in agricultural damage—while raising costs for everyone else.

  • These deportations are driven by profit and political patronage. Private contractors run detention and flight operations through non‑commercial hubs, creating durable infrastructure that outlasts elections. The incentive loop is clear: more arrests → more funding → more capacity → more bodies.

Resources