For months at Marana Town Council meetings, the same debate has unfolded.
During a routine call to the public, community members step up to a podium, largely to discuss one issue: the possibility of an ICE detention center coming to the town.
Some share stories of immigrants who’ve grown sick and died and ICE custody. Others voice their support for ICE operations. Repeatedly, people ask the town council to take a stance against the detention facility.
Planned detention centers in Marana and Surprise appear to be part of a larger nationwide trend: ICE is planning similar centers in Maryland, Georgia, Texas, and Michigan, among other states, a New York Times report found.
In a three-part radio series, AZPM took a look at these planned ICE detention centers, and explored how lawmakers — in Arizona and across the country — are responding.
In Marana, a possible detention center has dominated council meetings
The Marana Town Council has not introduced or passed a resolution opposing the detention center. In past meetings, Mayor Jon Post has pointed out that the site of the possible facility is already zoned for a prison or detention center.
“We have determined that they have the zoning for that. And this town will uphold that, because we believe in the rule of law,” Post told residents last month.
As he walked out of a council meeting, Marana resident Bennett Burke said he wasn’t satisfied with that answer.
“I don’t want to hear people talk about, ‘there’s nothing we can do and it’s legal,” he said.
Burke is a member of Pima Resists ICE, a group that formed last year, in opposition to the planned detention center. Speaking to AZPM, he pointed to upcoming elections for the town council.
“Some of the people who are running to unseat some of these folks, they came out of this movement. … That's one of our next steps, to see if we can unseat some of the council members and perhaps elect council members who will do more about it, or care more about it from a moral perspective,” he said.
Nationwide, ICE’s detention system is growing, according to experts and federal data
For years, under Republican and Democratic presidencies, the Department of Homeland Security has detained thousands of people at a time for civil immigration offenses. Under the second Trump administration, however, experts say the immigration detention system is growing to an unprecedented size.
“They’ve really super charged [the detention system] to make it bigger than it’s ever been before,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer and policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute.
Earlier this year, ICE detention capacity reached 70,766 — a record high, according to TRAC immigration, a data project at Syracuse University.
Communities are responding to new detention centers in varying ways. In the small, conservative-leaning City of Social Circle, Georgia, local officials are demanding more details about a planned facility that could hold up to 10,000 people. This month, the city manager of Social Circle locked a water meter on the site of the planned facility — blocking ICE from accessing the water system.
A bill in Congress addresses new ICE detention centers##
Last month, Congressman Chris Pappas and Senator Jeanne Shaheen, both Democrats in New Hampshire, introduced a bill in Congress: the Respect for Local Communities Act. Under the law, ICE would need approval from local government officials before building a new detention facility.
A few weeks ago, the bill gained two new supporters: Arizona Democratic Senators Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego.
“This is really a reaction to this, you know, federal government not respecting local communities … You should be able to have the right to tell the federal government, ‘I don’t want this type of facility next to my house,’” Gallego told AZPM this week.
Republican Congressman Juan Ciscomani said he supported communication between local officials and the federal government in regards to new detention centers. But Ciscomani said he took issue with how the bill had been introduced.
“[Democrats] never reached out to us for any kind of input,” he said.
Asked whether he’d support the bill, Ciscomani responded that the bill would have to be sent to committee for further study.
The bill, he said, “has months to go, even if it was on the path to actually get it done.”
