Just down the road from where families sit and eat before jumping on a flight out to go on vacation, dozens of immigrants at a time are being held at a secluded facility at a suburban Phoenix airport. They’ll be there, with no beds or showers, until they board a plane that will either fly them to an out-of-state immigrant detention facility or deport them.
The Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center, or AROCC for short, is a 25,000-square-foot facility at the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport. It opened in 2010 to little fanfare and can house up to 157 detainees and 79 employees from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to an ICE press release from 2010.
While larger detention facilities in the state have gotten much more attention, AROCC has avoided the limelight. It is one of many temporary hold facilities across the country, meant to house detainees for short periods of time before they are shipped to longer-term facilities or removed from the country.
However, an analysis by the Arizona Mirror of data of ICE detention records that the Deportation Data Project obtained via the Freedom of Information Act shows that, in some cases, detainees have stayed for longer than the 12 hours ICE has said the facility is meant for.
“The short-term hold facilities are meant to be very short-term hold facilities,” Noah Schramm, border policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona told the Mirror. “If you are finding people who are staying there for extended periods of time, that is something we would find concerning.”
Of the more than 9,000 people who have gone through the facility between September 2023 and June 2025, the Mirror was able to identify 95 instances in which people stayed at the facility for longer than 48 hours. In one case, a detainee was recorded as having stayed at the facility for 42 days.
The man held for 42 days was listed as “not an aggravated felon” from Venezuela whose charge was listed as “immigrant without an immigrant visa.” He was deported to Mexico, according to the data.
As recently as June of this year, 77 people were detained for approximately four days over a weekend that included the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha; at least one of the detainees was identified in the data as a practicing Muslim. The 77 people were ultimately deported via a lengthy charter flight.
President Donald Trump has implemented a “mass deportation” agenda, claiming to be removing violent criminals and countering what he and his allies claim is an “invasion,” a dog whistle to white nationalist propaganda used to stir up anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Data on detentions at AROCC show that a large number of those who have come through its doors in recent months have been listed by ICE itself as non-violent.
Many of the people overstayed visas or entered the country illegally at the state’s southern border.
Arizona, and specifically Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, is at the center of a ramping up of ICE’s aerial deportation efforts, in which AROCC plays a major role. The airport hosts the agency’s headquarters for its “ICE Air” operations, which use subcontractors and subleases to disguise deportation aircraft.
“We have seen the use of short-term detention facilities expand dramatically,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told the Mirror. “These are not locations designed for long-term stays.”
Temporary hold facilities in New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore have come under scrutiny for conditions such as lack of beds and food, leading to lawsuits against the agency. The AROCC facility shares its space with the U.S. Forest Service and the Phoenix Interagency Fire Center.
“Reports like this are extremely alarming and my office is working with elected officials that represent the area, nonprofits, and legal groups to get to the bottom of what is going on here,” Democratic Congresswoman Yassamin Ansari said in a statement to the Mirror. “Every person must be treated with basic human decency, and a temporary holding facility keeping people for days or weeks on end with no showers does NOT provide that. I’ve seen the conditions in Eloy — I’d be more than willing to do a drop in here as well.”
ICE Air
The Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport is the operational hub for ICE’s air operations that are commonly referred to as “ICE Air.”
The airport is owned by the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport Authority, which consists of stakeholders from the cities of Phoenix, Mesa, Apache Junction, Gilbert, Queen Creek and the Gila River Indian Community.
Once on the planes, immigrants are shackled at their feet and hands for the duration of the flight. In testimony in a class action lawsuit against the United States, where passengers were shackled for 23 hours sitting on the tarmac, some soiled themselves as they were denied access to the bathroom on a flight leaving from Louisiana.
Abuse on ICE Air flights has been reported going back to 2016, when some passengers were left bloodied after being beaten and placed in body-bag style restraints. In some cases, deaths and miscarriages have been reported on ICE Air flights.
The campaign jet for Vice President JD Vance now is part of that fleet of aircraft.
Those operations have been ramping up, with companies like Avelo Airlines making deportation flights out of Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, increasing public scrutiny. The company has begun painting the aircraft it uses all white, removing their livery as protests of Trump’s deportation agenda have continued.
Jillian Ryan, an organizer with Indivisible Mesa, has been outside the airport with a group of protesters every third Saturday since April and has been part of a national push to try to get airports and cities to stop working with Avelo.
“Our situation in Mesa is unique because we don’t have commercial flights,” Ryan told the Mirror, explaining that boycotting the airline wouldn’t work. It also means there are no contracts the airline has with the city or airport itself.
But Avelo isn’t the only game in town, and the company is actually working for someone else.
Contracts to conduct deportation flights are lucrative for the companies involved. The Project on Government Oversight has reported that CSI Aviation, whose corporate director was a “fake elector” in New Mexico for Trump, was awarded a no-bid contract for $128 million.
A letter provided to the Mirror by a Chandler resident who asked the airport to stop working with Avelo Airlines shed further light on who exactly is flying people in and out of the ICE facility there.
“Gatewaay Airport DOES NOT have an airline operating agreement with Avelo Airlines, and Avelo DOES NOT offer commercial passenger flights at the Airport,” J. Brian O’Neill, the airport’s executive director and CEO, said in an email. “Avelo operates soley (sic) as a charter aircraft sub-contractor for CSI Aviation, a company that works with the federal government on repatriation efforts.”
CSI Aviation mostly uses subcontractors to conduct many of its flights, with companies like GlobalX doing the vast majority of the work. Those subcontractors are present in Arizona at AROCC as well.
Subleases and subcontractors
To find out a facility like AROCC even exists at the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport takes some digging. Press releases by ICE have been scrubbed from its own website and the facility isn’t listed as a detention center, either.
A public records request with the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport Authority for any and all lease agreements with ICE or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security does not reveal any records. That is because ICE subleases the space from a company called Strategic Equity Investors.
The company boasts a portfolio of other government buildings, including multiple FBI field offices and a Department of Defense training facility.Subcontractors are a regular part of the deportation process at AROCC.
Security guards with companies like G4S and Akima Global Services have been hired to oversee detainees, and the Mirror discovered a job posting for an “unarmed security guard” position for the company Metro One Loss Prevention Services Group that lists the address of the facility.
Many of the aircraft that fly in and out of the facility are often chartered aircraft that are subcontractors, such as GlobalX or Omni Air, which also often charters sports teams around the country.
They also fly military personnel to Guantanamo Bay.
Omni aircraft, GlobalX aircraft and others have all been spotted flying in and out of the airport, often concluding their flights outside of AROCC or a nearby hangar.
Past audits
While ICE has said little publicly about the facility, information can be gleaned from two audits that were conducted on it in 2017 and 2022.
The Prison Rape and Elimination Act was established in 2003 and led federal and state officials to begin gathering statistics and data to address the problem of prison rape and sexual assault. In 2017, AROCC had its first PREA audit.
“The facility has a privacy wall in each holding room for detainees to perform bodily function (sic). The facility does not have showers. The facility is designed with a control room in the center of the building allowing direct visual observation of each hold room,” auditors wrote.
The audit also states that if individuals need medical care or other needs, that would fall under the purview of ICE’s Florence Service Processing Center, an hour drive away.
While the auditors only found one minor problem in 2017, the auditors themselves would come under fire after a DHS Inspector General report claimed they had overlooked problems when conducting audits of detention facilities.
In 2022, a different company audited the facility and found other issues.
Those auditors found that ICE deportation officers and supervisors “did not confirm that they would coordinate” with the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor “or report the incident to any local authority” of reported allegations of sexual abuse involving a juvenile or vulnerable adult.
Auditors said that they were “provided an email” saying that there would be a mandatory refresher training on sexual abuse and assault prevention and intervention that included directions on how to report incidents that involve a juvenile or vulnerable adult. They also provided a memo to auditors saying that they had “no allegations of sexual abuse involving juveniles or vulnerable adults” during the period being examined.
They also discovered that, while the facility had an informal agreement with the Mesa Police Department to investigate instances of sexual assault or abuse, there was nothing set in stone and no assurances that an investigation would follow federally mandated guidelines.
The 2022 audit also describes more of the inside of the facility. At the rear of the building is a gated sally-port for vehicles to enter, where detainees are brought into a larger room and processed.
They’re then taken to one of 10 “multiple occupancy hold rooms” that do “not contain showers” or beds “due to the short stay.”
“Detainees remain in the clothing they arrive in and are offered sweatpants or sweatshirts for temperature comfort if needed. There are no educational rooms, library, on-site medical clinic, food service or recreation areas located at the AROCC,” the audit report says.
Auditors do note that there is one shower with a curtain at the facility, though it is not in the holding rooms.
ICE did not respond to questions about the current state of the facility, the cases it identified of detainees who stayed longer than 48 hours or provide additional information on how it works with subcontractors.
“Thank you for contacting ICE Media. We have routed your query to the appropriate public affairs officer for handling,” a rapid email response to the Mirror’s questions said. Two weeks later, when the Mirror followed up, the agency replied, “Acknowledging receipt of your query. Thank you.”
People like Indivisible Mesa’s Ryan who have been trying to research ICE Air and the airport’s role in Trump’s deportation agenda had no idea about AROCC when informed by the Mirror, saying that it never showed up in any research they did.
Similarly, immigration advocates and attorneys contacted by the Mirror were not aware of the facility’s existence.
“I think it is just incredibly disturbing that they are holding people there, and just the fact that there are people at this airport while people are going on their vacations, while people are being held in conditions that don’t sound safe or good,” Ryan said. “I find that really disturbing and inhumane.”
Oversight
Democratic members of Congress across the country have been making headlines for unannounced visits to detention facilities, including in Arizona. That type of oversight is something that advocates like ACLU Arizona’s Schramm said there needs to be more of.
“That is what is so concerning about the gutting of that kind of oversight capacity by the current administration,” Schramm said, alluding to Trump’s firing of over 20 inspectors general since he took office. “The way that you get conditions to change is not by filing a single records request. The way you get it to change is in one’s official capacity as an official member of Congress is by pointing to systemic patterns of issues.”
According to Schramm, that oversight by Congress to get reports from the DHS Office of the Inspector General giving them a better idea of systemic problems allows them to put better public pressure on agencies to change. But when it comes to AROCC, that may be difficult.
ICE has historically seen temporary hold facilities not as detention facilities due to the short stays, claiming they are exempt from congressional oversight, according to Reichlin-Melnick. Additionally, under the Trump administration, ICE has been insisting that Congress needs its approval to conduct oversight duties.
For places like AROCC, this means that oversight likely has to be done internally by the Office of the Inspector General or internal DHS units that have all been gutted by the Trump administration.
Things get even more complicated when private corporations are thrown into the mix.
Since Trump’s election, private prison company GEO Group, an ICE contractor, has seen its stock price skyrocket. The company is currently hiring “flight security officers” out of Mesa.
“These corporations are not incentivized to favor detainee or inmate care. The profit incentive is such that the more people that they have in these facilities and at the lower cost they can do that at the more money they can make and that leads to problematic conditions,” Schramm said. “Now, I would emphasize that we also see that in federally run detention centers.”
However, at least one member of Arizona’s congressional delegation has visited the facility before. Prescott Republican Congressman Paul Gosar toured the facility in 2013 alongside former Arizona U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon.
For people like Ryan who are still trying to find ways to stop or slow down deportations in the cities they live in, they’re now looking for a bigger option.
“I think it’s time for a full-on boycott of the airport,” Ryan said.
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This story was first published by Arizona Mirror, which is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
