WASHINGTON – The uproar over an immigration detention center planned for a converted warehouse in Surprise, Ariz., continues to mount.
More than a thousand residents turned out Tuesday at a Surprise City Council meeting to vent their concerns about the 1,500-bed facility.
On Wednesday, Rep. Paul Gosar, a Bullhead City Republican whose district includes the site – and who loves President Donald Trump so much, he has proposed putting him on a $500 bill – wrote a terse letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding “transparency” and coordination with a community that had received none so far.
Residents and city officials learned that DHS bought the 418,400-square-foot warehouse for about $70 million when the Arizona Republic reported the sale Jan. 29, six days after the deal was finalized.
Gosar’s letter made clear that he got no heads-up, either.
“Concerns regarding infrastructure capacity, traffic, emergency services, environmental impacts, and public safety deserve serious consideration. These are not anti-illegal immigration concerns; they are common-sense expectations of transparency, planning, and accountability,” he wrote.
DHS has been buying warehouses nationwide for use by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as ICE tries to keep up with Trump’s demands for mass deportations.
Jon Mannella, one of dozens of residents who spoke out against the facility during the 4-hour public comment portion of Tuesday’s council meeting, noted that federal officials repeatedly say that ICE is going after “the worst of the worst.”
So, he said, “You’re allowing the so-called ‘worst of the worst’ to be housed right there. I do say ‘allow’ because other cities are successfully fighting back against these facilities.”
But cities have very little leverage when it comes to stopping the federal government from buying a facility or regulating how it is then used.
“The problem is, we don’t have anywhere near the power that our residents wish we had,” Chris Judd, the Surprise council member who represents the site, said in a phone interview.
Under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, federal agencies can generally ignore local and state zoning or city planning laws, legal experts say.
The federal government doesn’t have to “cooperate with local zoning authorities,” though “they often do,” said Linus Kafka, a part-time zoning hearing officer in Tucson and a University of Arizona law professor.
The facility in Surprise is in an industrial area, though the nearest homes are less than a half-mile away. Dysart High School is just over a mile away. Roughly 60% of the students are Hispanic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Numerous residents cited the school’s proximity.
Alexandria Moen, who graduated from the school in 2022, warned that ICE would bring “increased profiling and increased police presence” to the area.
“The children are terrified,” Moen told the council. “These children are … our duty to protect.”
