Detainees say fire alarms blare day and night at Arizona ICE facility, creating ‘cruel’ conditions

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Florence has had fire alarms going off throughout the day for at least two months, according to detainees who spoke with the Arizona Mirror. 

One detainee said that the alarm has been going off every few hours for the week he has been held in the facility. It also goes off multiple times a night, as well, keeping detainees awake as the alarm sounds are also accompanied by flashing lights. The alarm lasts for anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes, detainees said.

Detainees compared it to “torture” because the alarm makes it impossible to sleep. 

“You can’t really sleep, you wake up in the middle of the night and it’s hard to go back to sleep again,” one detainee told the Mirror. 

The Mirror granted the detainees anonymity because they feared retaliation from prison and ICE officials. The Mirror was contacted by a family member of one of the detainees who got the Mirror in contact with the detained relative, who subsequently helped arrange contact with other detainees. Two detainees spoke to the Mirror for this story. 

ICE and CoreCivic, the private prison company that operates the facility, both denied that the alarm had been going off multiple times a day, much less for weeks on end. But during a phone interview with a detainee on Oct. 7, the Mirror heard as the alarms began blaring. 

“You hear that alarm?” the detainee asked the Mirror. “Thats a fire alarm that goes off, I’m telling you, every day.” 

Both CoreCivic and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent written statements to the Mirror. 

“Any claims Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex (CAFCC) is experiencing problems or continuous activations involving the fire alarm system are false,” an unnamed DHS spokesperson said. “ICE routinely checks critical infrastructure at CAFCC and has protocols and contingency plans in place should any issues arise.”

CoreCivic made a similar statement, telling the Mirror that it had gotten “bad information” and adding that leaders at the facility had confirmed that no alarms had been triggered. 

After the Mirror shared audio of the alarm going off with CoreCivic in response, the company said that the fire alarms are “operating under normal conditions,” though the spokesman added that the detention facility is “in the process of upgrading the fire suppression system with new sprinkler heads, facility-wide, in addition to our scheduled fire alarm testing. This project is scheduled to be completed mid-November.” 

Once the Mirror began asking CoreCivic and ICE about the alarm, the frequency decreased, according to detainees. But they said the alarms are still going off throughout the day and night.

The Florence Fire Department said it is unaware of any repeated alarm activations at the ICE facility, but said it has been working with CoreCivic to address “recurring nuisance alarms and the triggering of intentional false alarms at the facility.” 

“The facility has experienced alarms triggered by nonhazardous conditions, such as cooking smoke, as well as deliberate false activations,” an agency spokesperson said in a written statement.

As a result of those recurring nuisance alarms, the Florence Fire Department has established a mitigation plan that requires a verification step before an alarm triggers a dispatch to the facility. 

“With this protocol in place, the Department has had no fire-related responses to the facility over the past few months,” the spokesperson said.. 

A Tucson Democratic congresswoman blasted ICE for the conditions in the facility and pledged to bring immigration officials to account.

“This is yet another example of the cruel and inhumane conditions people in ICE detention are being forced to endure, including the disruption of something as basic as a good night’s sleep,” U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, who has conducted multiple oversight visits of the facility, told the Mirror. “No one should be subjected to these kinds of conditions, and ICE must be held accountable.“

Grijalva said she has not witnessed the alarm during her oversight visits.

The alarms aren’t the only issue detainees said is cruel about the facility. 

One detainee the Mirror spoke with, who has previously been incarcerated in an Arizona prison, said that food at the Florence ICE detention facility is the worst he has experienced. 

“Number one, the portion is not a lot. Number two, all the food is (awful). For example, you get gravy that is all powdery and not all mixed in,” he said, adding that most of the time, food is provided undercooked. “This is not humane.” 

The detainee said they’ve witnessed other people in custody losing weight because of the small portions and inedible meals. 

The complaint echoes similar complaints made by detainees in other facilities operated by CoreCivic. Another issue raised by detainees who spoke with the Mirror was about the price of things in the facility. 

“Everything here costs money — a lot,” the detainee said. 

At other facilities in the country, boycotts have occurred over high prices for items, including tampons costing $21 or coffee costing $18. Multiple detainees the Mirror spoke with said similar prices are in place at the Florence facility, and that CoreCivic’s program that gives detainees pay for work cleaning or helping manage the facility borders on slavery. 

It has been widely reported that CoreCivic pays detainees $1 a day for work in its facilities. 

“Like literally a bill, a one dollar bill in cash,” one detainee said of the wages for an eight-hour work day. Earlier this year, ICE released more relaxed detention standards that allows CoreCivic to continue to pay only $1 a day to detainees and allows contractors to lean more heavily on artificial intelligence.  

The facility in Florence has previously come under national scrutiny for its conditions. Earlier this year, there was a measles outbreak and members of Congress who have conducted oversight visits have compared its conditions to “concentration camps.” 

The facility has also seen deaths recently, as a Haitian man died after a tooth infection went untreated, resulting in a severe throat and chest infection earlier this year. 

Both of the detainees the Mirror spoke with said that their complaints have fallen on deaf ears and each has filed multiple grievances about the issues. They have gotten no response.