DHS says Democrats are lying about overcrowding and broken toilets at the Mesa ICE facility

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security accused two Arizona Democrats of lying about what they saw during unannounced oversight visits of a Mesa facility and insisted that reports of overcrowding and overflowing toilets are false, in spite of the agency’s own data and information the congresspeople got directly from immigration agents working at the facility. 

“Any allegation of overcrowding at AROCC is FALSE,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson said in a statement to the Arizona Mirror in response to questions raised from a recent congressional oversight visit. 

U.S. Reps. Yassamin Ansari and Greg Stanton conducted a second surprise oversight visit this week of the Arizona Removal Operations Coordination Center. The facility  at the Mesa-Gateway Airport has been operating far over its 157-person capacity for most of this year according to data U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released under the Freedom of Information Act. Daily populations at the facility have reached as high as 777. 

An Arizona Mirror analysis of ICE’s own detention data found that one of the few times that detainee levels were below capacity was when those same Democrats toured the facility in February — after giving ICE a week’s notice that they’d be taking a tour. Almost immediately after that visit, the number of detainees shot back up.

And a week later, ICE used pepper spray on 47 detainees who were housed there in the early morning hours; one person reportedly had a “seizure,” according to a 911 call obtained by the Mirror. 

During the most recent unannounced oversight visit, Ansari and Stanton said they were told by ICE agents working at the facility that the toilets in the detention rooms “regularly overflow,” confirming recent reporting by the Phoenix New Times that detailed the story of one detainee whose wife told the publication that he had slept on feces-covered floors because of an overflowing toilet. 

DHS said none of that is true.

“There are NO recurring plumbing issues. On the rare instance when a toilet issue occurs, the facility staff immediately moves detainees from the affected cell and maintenance is immediately initiated,” the unnamed ICE spokesperson said. 

While ICE contends no overcrowding issues at the facility, the Mesa Fire and Medical Department witnessed that overcrowding firsthand during a medical call earlier this year, prompting it to give ICE officials a list of corrections. 

It also led to airport authorities sending a letter to the property owner that ICE leases from warning them that, if the overcrowding continues in violation of city fire codes, the airport could cancel their lease with the property owner. 

Ansari said DHS is lying about the condition inside AROCC.

“I have seen with my own eyes that this is not true,” she said in a statement to the Mirror. 

Stanton called the oversight visits a “critical function of my job” and said that he has provided “accurate information to the public” based on what he has seen and learned during them.

“I will continue to conduct oversight visits to demand accountability,” he added in a statement to the Mirror.

Detainees are supposed to be at AROCC for no more than 12 hours while they wait to be loaded onto a plane, either so they can be deported or transferred to a different ICE facility. The Mirror’s reporting found that ICE data shows how overcrowded the facility has become in the past year: The average length of stay in 2026 is about 36 hours, compared to the same time frame in 2025, when the average stay was about 12 hours. 

In 2025, the average daily population was approximately 21 people for the same timeframe. So far in 2026, there have been an average of 274 detainees each day. The Mirror found one individual in the data who stayed for 18 days, coinciding with a time when the population of the facility was near its peak of 777 individuals in a single day. 

While the facility wasn’t as overcrowded during this week’s oversight visit as in previous visits, with ICE telling lawmakers the population was two people below its listed capacity, both Stanton and Ansari said that some of the holding cells still held more people on Tuesday than the listed capacity for the rooms.