Arizona AG sues over ICE warehouse on eve of nationwide protests
The Trump admin wants to lock up immigrants next to a chemical facility, risking a "mass casualty" event, AG Mayes said.
The day before nationwide protests against a plan to convert warehouses into immigration detention camps, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a federal lawsuit seeking to block the construction of a facility slated to be built directly across from a chemical storage plant.
"If there is a tank rupture or a chemical spill or a fire, emergency responders will be responding to a potential mass casualty event involving hundreds, if not thousands, of people who are locked in and cannot get out," Mayes told reporters at a press conference this morning in Surprise, Ariz., the proposed site of the camp.
Three other lawsuits filed by state AGs remain pending in New Jersey, Michigan, and Maryland, where a federal judge recently issued a preliminary injunction blocking the conversion of a facility that would have held up to 1,500 people.
According to Project Salt Box, the proposed Immigration and Customs Enforcement warehouse in Arizona would be of similar size and occupancy. ICE bought the warehouse for more than $70 million, roughly five times its estimated value, the group’s tracker says.
‘Dismantling Detention’
The lawsuit is poised to deliver the latest blow to an increasingly cratered pillar of Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Last year, then-Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said he intended for a network of converted warehouses holding immigrants to operate like Amazon Prime, “but with human beings.” The Trump administration has been forced to scale down its ambitions amid nationwide protests and litigation. More ICE warehouse contracts have been cancelled than completed. The projects have come under legal challenges for failing to comply with public notice obligations and environmental law.
The Department of Homeland Security leaders who led the initiative — ex-Secretary Kristi Noem and former Acting Director Lyons — are no longer at their jobs, and Noem’s successor Markwayne Mullins paused new contracts following a record of failure.
But watchdogs and activists aren’t relenting.
Indivisible and other organizers called for a “National Day of Action” on Saturday under the banner of “Dismantling Detention.” An interactive map shows dozens of planned protests across the United States.
“Our position is clear. Cancel the warehouse detention plan and stop every conversion immediately,” Indivisible’s call to action states. “Reject all public funding, permits, and local resources that enable ICE to expand detention. Require full transparency and real community consent before any federal detention action moves forward. Decisions about detention cannot be made behind closed doors.”
‘Stone’s throw’ away from ‘hazardous chemicals’
Like the other lawsuits, the Arizona complaint alleges that the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act’s safeguards against arbitrary and capricious government actions and the National Environmental Policy Act’s protections.
Mayes noted that the laws required input from residents of Surprise, a Maricopa County city that counted a little more than 143,000 people at the time of the last census.
"The Trump administration has run roughshod over federal law in its rush to expand detention capacity across the country," Mayes said. "The federal government did not ask the people of Surprise whether they wanted this facility in their backyards. They simply bought a warehouse, handed a $300 million contract to a private company and told the city to deal with it.”
As noted in the complaint, the warehouse sits a “stone’s throw from a storage facility for hazardous chemicals” — and roughly a mile from a public high school and middle school.
“The Surprise warehouse was constructed as an industrial distribution facility for up to four commercial tenants, not a space to house hundreds of human beings,” the complaint notes. “Because [the Trump administration] failed to conduct any environmental analysis, the State has no idea how defendants plan to modify the Surprise warehouse for its new intended purpose. As constructed, though, the Surprise warehouse almost certainly does not have the appropriate water and wastewater infrastructure to safely (and humanely) house hundreds of people.”
Read the 34-page complaint in full here.
This is preparation for genocide! Remember Miller, Bannon, Vance, Vought, et. al, mimicked Trump by calling all black & brown people “vermin “ & announced that they will “rid” our country of them all. So called “immigration reform “ is a cover -designed to desensitize us first.
Thank you, Adam, for highlighting this AZ problem. AG Mayes has worked tirelessly on stopping grocery mergers, power companies shutting off power in 99+ degree weather, slum landlord practices, election suppression, environmental impact issues, elder abuse by nursing homes, and SO MUCH MORE. She really has outdone the previous AG in her efforts to protect Arizonans! I’m hoping we can give her four more years.