Ansari makes surprise visit to Phoenix ICE facility after Mirror report

U.S. Rep. Yassamin Ansari, D-Phoenix, conducted a surprise oversight visit of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Phoenix on Wednesday after reporting last week by the Arizona Mirror showed that detainees are staying longer and in larger numbers than in previous years. 

Ansari cited the Mirror’s reporting for prompting her to conduct the visit, the 13th time she has visited ICE detention and temporary hold facilities to provide congressional oversight. 

The ICE facility Ansari visited Wednesday is in a midtown Phoenix office building that is home to the Arizona headquarters for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE. It sits next door to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and has been the subject of weekly protests that began last summer, some of which led to clashes between protesters and ICE officers. 

The Phoenix ICE District Office, while being the primary base of operations for ICE in the Grand Canyon State, also houses a temporary hold facility. It features 10 holding cells that can hold upwards of 150 people. The facility has no beds, no on-site medical services, limited access to food and no shower that is accessible to detainees. According to ICE, it is meant to house people for no more than 12 hours. 

But as ICE has implemented President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda and immigration agents have sought to meet high quotas for arresting immigrants, detention sites have become more crowded and short-term facilities are being used for longer than intended. 

As reporters waited outside for Ansari to brief them on what she saw inside, multiple people could be seen going in and out of the building for immigration appointments with ICE. Workers were also replacing windows that had been shot at in July.

“I am very concerned about medical access, given what severe medical neglect we have seen at the detention centers, as well as the holding facility in Mesa,” Ansari said in an interview with the Mirror prior to the visit. 

Records obtained by the Mirror found that the Phoenix Fire Department responded to the facility 11 times between December 2025 and March 2026. Almost all of those calls resulted in a detainee being sent to a local hospital on a “Code 3” response, meaning emergency services drove with their lights and sirens on to the hospital. 

“I’m really alarmed that we know people have been held here for longer than they should have and over capacity, it is completely unacceptable,” Ansari told the Mirror in an exclusive interview, referencing the Mirror’s reporting which found the average length of time detainees have been staying at the facility has gone from between eight and 10 hours to 20 hours. 

When Ansari visited the facility Wednesday, it housed 29 detainees, she said. 

Ansari said ICE officials had told her that a waiver issued by ICE last year removing the 12-hour holding cell limit was “lifted” in July. That waiver was vacated in federal court in June as “arbitrary and capricious” because it conflicted with ICE’s own detention standards. 

She told reporters that an ICE official told her that the agency is “trying to be more responsive” to inquiries from members of Congress on conditions and are committed to not holding detainees longer than 12 hours. 

ICE itself called the Mirror’s reporting on its own publicly released data “FALSE,” adding that the facility does not hold people for longer than 12 hours, despite the data showing otherwise. 

Ansari was unable to speak to detainees at the facility due to a new ICE policy that bars them from doing so without prior approval from the agency. 

“Every time we do an oversight visit, we are informed of a new rule,” she said. 

Ansari added that oversight visits like this will continue to be important, even if the agency puts a best foot forward to members of Congress. 

“I think that constant oversight is needed,” she told reporters. 

When speaking with the Mirror, Ansari said she hopes her Republican colleagues also perform their oversight duties, and she warned about the possible sanitized tours that the agency provides to members of Congress. ICE previously moved detainees prior to visits. 

“I absolutely urge my Republican colleagues to conduct an oversight visit,” Ansari said. “I think it is really important but what I think is more important than going is getting an authentic sense of what is going on and not accepting a standard tour by the staff members of these facilities but actually talking with detainees.”